Cloudcroft, NM, Saturday to Tuesday, June 1 - 4, 2019

Saturday morning, we left Phoenix at 8:00, stopped at Picachu Peak and Wilcox in Arizona, and Las Cruces in New Mexico, and arrived in Cloudcroft before 6:00.  This included a 30 minute delay for construction, stretch breaks, lunch, getting gas for the car and the time zone difference.   We added a barrier just behind the back seats to make a good place for Paulie to ride on her bed.  Surprisingly, we took everything we needed and with the back seats folded down, nothing was higher than shoulder height, leaving us unobstructed rear views.

Our rental has a lovely porch on the west side.  It is mostly in the shade but for some afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees.

We are at the end of the street and less than ten feet from Lincoln National Forest.

In my wanderings around town, I saw this store which would make our friend Shawn happy, as that is the same name of her casita.

There is much interest in astronomy here, as this is a dark sky area and NASA is nearby in Alamagordo and White Sands Missile Range.

One of the town parks has a winter skating rink, disc golf, playground, sports fields, tennis courts and more.

Paulie likes the wall to wall carpet - it is much easier for her to get up and down compared to the . bare floor in the kitchen.

Among the many unique decorations in our rental is this young buck.

The town has tried to be very inviting, especially in the older part of town which is only 5 - 6 minutes walk from our rental.

The US Forest Service maintains a lot of recreational areas and trails.  This is a replica of the old train station that now houses restrooms.  The recreational area has picnic tables, parking and multiple trail heads, including a handicap accessible trail.

On Tuesday, we made a trip down the hill, through Alamagordo and to Holloman AFB.  We shopped at the BX, Commissary and liquor store section of the convenience store.  At the commissary, Patty liked that they had MREs for sale.

Late Tuesday afternoon/early evening, we had a big thunderstorm with lots of hail and rain - no damage to the car, but we later learned that a small tornado touched down in Alamagordo and caused damage including destroying at least one mobile home.  All the white in the photos below are the hail stones that accumulated around our rental.

Otero County has a recycling drop off in the center of town, where they take cardboard, mixed paper, tin cans, aluminum cans and #1 and #2 plastic - but they do not take glass.

They also have had a lot of the public trash disposal dumpsters painted.

Paulie and I walked by this dumpster - it looked a lot like us.