this weekend Cody and I (and my brother and his wife, Cody and Stephanie) met up in Cloudcroft, NM. I'm all about seizing the opportunity of these little weekend trips while we live so close to such neat places! We originially planned on going to White Sands hot air balloon festival but it had been raining that week and the ground was mushy so the big launch didn't take place.. that morning at least. So, we missed the hot air balloons but still had a blast. I had heard from a friend to stay in Cloudcroft if we were planning a visit to white sands, and I'm so glad we did. Cloudcroft is such a precious little community!
We left west Texas at about 7:45 our time, crossed the border and the time changed to 6:45 so yay extra hour!!
...it rained the entire drive, but it was soo neat to see the terrain change from flat flat farm land to big hills to mountains with spruce trees!
we finally arrived! despite the foggyness, the weather was actually perfect! We stayed at the historic cloudcroft hotel, right downtown with shops underneath.
on friday when we got into town, we ate lunch, took a lonnng nap, rented bikes, explored the town a bit, and then had dinner with cody and stephanie once they arrived!
on saturday morning we left cloudcroft at 6am and made it down the 4,000ft elevation change to alamogordo just as the sun was rising. this is when the balloon launch got postponed, so we drove alittle more south and went to the white sands first thing!
i've always seen pictures and heard about this place and it is truly so, so neat and pictures cannot capture it! the white sand dunes go on forever! and the sand is cool so you can walk all over it. we had a blast taking wayy too many pictures, sleeding down the hills, writing our names, etc.
we had to see the huge pistachio, and get some local pistachios while in alamogordo, so that was our next stop!
the drive back to cloudcroft was so beautiful, it was uphill the whole time (and it was dark when we came down, so we couldn't see anything!)
^^we stopped at this old old train track (no longer in use)
when we got back into cloudcroft, there was a lumberjack festival going on! we stopped to watch that for a bit and I got some old fashioned cream soda :)
we walked around at more of these precious shops. i felt like we were in the proposal, the little town where everyone knew everyone!
we had so much fun enjoying tall trees... trees in general ;), cool mountain air, and just a different change of pace for a weekend!
