After stewing about this for some weeks, I made a call to a pet store in Portland in an effort to find out which cat pan liners we had purchased in the past. They worked well, and I couldn't remember the name. I had forgotten about the time difference and called early in the morning. To my surprise, instead of getting a the recorded message I expected, a woman answered the phone. She was so helpful! She unhurriedly searched our purchase records and then searched out the types of liners they carried. At the end of our conversation I thanked her and mentioned that I couldn't shop personally because I was calling from Albuquerque. On hearing that, she exclaimed that she was visiting Albuquerque in a few weeks. It was a whim, she said, to take advantage of some cheap airline flights she'd found. I found out she was traveling alone and planning to stay in a hostel, so I asked her if she wanted to house sit our cats. Well, the upshot was that she ended up staying with us. She was a delightful person and we all had a lot to talk about because of all the things we had in common. In fact, it turned out that she knew my son from college and had been following his career as the state rep in her district. What good luck!!
Because we had someone to stay at our house, we decided we could drive the distance to Cloudcroft, a mountainous ski area that is billed as a 4 hour drive to our south. (It took us amost 8 hours.) The area is so beautiful. The photos below don't do it justice. There are high mountain meadows everywhere that you view as you drive along the road. In Oregon, you can only see such scenery by hiking into it. The little town of Cloudcroft is composed entirely of small local businesses that stretch out along a old western style board walk. There is not a corporate bone in that town's body and it was clear that the food in the little restaurants was freshly home-made. We spoke to a coffee shop owner who told us it was by design. The town decided to keep all the tourist dollars spent there in their own town economy. Below are a few photos of our trip. Not only did we see Cloudcroft, but on our way home we stopped at the Peter Herd Gallery http://wyethhurd.com/ The Gallery was built by artist Peter Hurd and his wife Henriette Herd who was the sister of Andrew Wyeth. It's a remarkable story of NC Wyeth's dream to produce generations of painters - and he did! You may remember NC Wyeth from his illustrations in Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Last of the Mohicans, to name a few. He was the iconic painter of western scenes.
This is a rest area along the highway. It's set up on stilts, maybe to keep it cooler. There was a view of White Sands in the distance.
We had the best ever Huevos Rancheros at this Cloudcroft eatery called the Western Cafe. The beans were home made and so were the tortillas. The whole thing was smothered in green chilies with very little cheese and it tasted like the entire breakfast had no added salt!! Very Yum!!
Even their coffee mugs were non-corporate. I believe this one had someone's name on it. It looked like a gift from one of his family.
This photo doesn't do the scenery justice.
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