We hoped to wake up to it snowing, but that wasn't the case. Before we left on the trip there were a couple chances of snow on Wednesday and Thursday. But by the time we got there the chances were more on the slim to none side. We were hoping the weather app was wrong!
We decided to spend the morning driving to Cloudcroft. It's one of our favorite little towns in the area...
We've learned to take the backroads from Ruidoso to Cloudcroft! The drive there is just beautiful and you can see so much wildlife! We spotted wild horses, Apache Indian Reservations, and tons of snow! Mason was super excited about the Apache Indian Reservations because he had just learned about the Apache Indians at school! So then he told us everything he learned. It was so neat to see his gears turning and pure amazing at how much he remembered from his lessons.
About forty-five minutes later we arrived in Cloudcroft. We parked and went into several of the little shops there. We found a bakery that sold the biggest cinnamon rolls! We all got one to share. It was pretty good but probably would have been better warmed up.
After we finished shopping we drove to The Old Apple Barn. It's a tradition for us to visit while we are in town! But, we had to play in some snow first.
We got to the Old Apple Barn and started looking around. They have really neat old-time toys and candies, souvenirs, fudge, cherry cider, etc. It's just a really neat little shop to visit. While checking out the fudge selections we started talking to the employee. Mason told her that he first visited the Apple Barn when he was barely two years old and how it's his favorite place to come back to. She really took to Mason (check out this post here) and told him that she loved his sweet heart and that she would never forget him. She also told him to pick out a souvenir! So incredibly sweet!
Next, we drove to Alamagordo for lunch and to play at White Sands for a bit! We've been to White Sands a few times, but it never disappoints. One of our favorite things on the drive there is this tunnel through the mountain! It's just so cool.
Cool right? We just grabbed lunch at Wendy's. It was New Years Day so most of the nicer restaurants were closed. Options were pretty slim to none. But, it was good and we encountered the kindest people ever. A lady gave us Frosty's because they accidentally made a double batch for them. Then another man came over just to tell us to have a Blessed Day. Then a worker came over to check on us several times and took all of our trash. Gosh, people were so dang kind. I'm glad all of the other restaurants were closed because lunch at Wendy's filled up our bellies and our love tanks!
We got to White Sands and thought about checking out the little visitor center because it's usually closed every time we go. But, there were so many people and it was packed! So we decided to just continue on to the sand. It was quite weird going from the snow to the sand. We brought a couple of sleds from home so Mason got to use those on the snow and the sand. He loves sledding! One thing I missed by going to White Sands in the middle of the day was not being able to catch the sunset there. It's so gorgeous to see the sun setting over the sand. But we made up for that later...you'll see later in this post.
We played for a couple of hours and then decided to drive back to Ruidoso. We remembered someone suggesting that we go up to Monjeau Lookout! That was something we had never done while in Ruidoso so we were super excited. However, it started getting super cold and windy on our way up. We could have spent more time there, but we were freezing on top of that lookout!
To cap off the night we drove to Capitan and got up close and personal with 2 elk. That was exciting! Stay tuned for day three...
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