Hatch, New Mexico

I'm so behind on blog posts. I have pictures I took on our trip back from the east coast this Fall and pictures from our dinosaur hike at Clayton lake that I wanted to post. A few weeks ago, we went to Hatch, New Mexico and I took a bunch of pictures but I've been waiting to post them until I caught up on my other posts. I finally decided to just start posting the more current pictures and then maybe go back this winter and post some of those earlier pictures.

There is something about Hatch that I really love. It's a small town, known worldwide for having the best green chiles in the world. It was my birthday that day and I went a little crazy buying green chiles. I ended up with about 10 pounds! I've already used about 2 pounds (green chile stew, green chile cornbread, green chile pizza, etc) so maybe I wasn't so crazy to buy so many.

There are several places in town to buy the chiles and all of them have really colorful pottery and folk art displays out front. Here are some pics I took at the different stores we visited.

There is a man in town who collects the kind of giant roadside statues you use to see on businesses around the U.S., like Muffler Men, giant chickens, etc. He owns a small restaurant where he has a lot of his collection but he also has them placed at other businesses throughout the town. I love this kind of thing. Here are just some of the many that we saw that day along with a few other quirky things he had in front of the restaurant.

It was a gray, cloudy day but we had a beautiful drive from where we were staying in Caballo down to Hatch and back. We saw lots of chile fields but what really surprised us were the cotton fields. I didn't know they grew cotton there but we saw it everywhere. This was late November but they were just starting to harvest it.

I'll end this post with a few pictures from around our campsite at Caballo Lake State Park. Thanks for visiting.

Mindy's Wedding

We made it safely back to Maryland the week after Labor Day and spent three weeks there camped in my sister Cindy's back yard. We both really love parking at Camp Cindy. It's great to be so close to my parents and my sister and her family. Cindy and her husband, Clyde, put a 50amp hook-up there for us last year which we really appreciate. They live on a large tree farm and it's a beautiful place to camp.

Camp Cindy

View from our campsite

Cindy and Molly

We were back in Maryland to visit family and to attend the wedding of my niece, Mindy. She was married one month ago today. It was a beautiful wedding and Mindy was a beautiful bride.

Mindy and Clyde

Mindy and her husband, John

First dance

My favorite photo of the night

 

Mindy and John and the cake

A lot of the pictures I took at the reception came out blurry so I don't have good pictures of everyone. I couldn't find a good, non-blurry photo of my Dad or my sister Karen. Here are a couple of family photos that did turn out.

My beautiful Mom (that's Dad in the background)

My niece Katie and her husband Timmy

My Aunt Shorty

My nephew Matt with Mom, John, Cindy and Clyde

Clyde and Larry

Cindy and Clyde-The proud parents

 The venue where they got married, the Antrim 1844, was really, really nice.  The wedding was held in the garden with cocktails in the mansion afterward and the reception following in the ballroom.

Fountain in the garden at Antrim 1844

Reception ballroom

It was a wonderful wedding. Both families have known each other for a long time so everyone knew each other and had a lot of fun. Cindy and Mindy did such a beautiful job planning everything and it couldn't have turned out any better.

We left Maryland and started heading back for the Southwest about a week after the wedding. It was hard to say good-bye to everyone. We are taking roughly the same route back as we did on the way out. I'll post another blog soon with some photos from our trip back.

I'll end this with one final photo of the beautiful bride. This was taken by one of her bridesmaids, Erin McKeon. Best wishes to Mindy and John. I hope you have a wonderful life together. 

Photo by Erin McKeon

Mostly Kansas

We're still on our drive across the country on our way back to Maryland for my niece's wedding. This has been a nice route. We stayed off the interstate until yesterday and have been mostly staying in Corps of Engineer campgrounds. Since my last post, we've been in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio but most of my pictures tonight were taken in Kansas.

Our first stop in Kansas was at a private park in Dodge City. We had a lot of errands to run so we wanted to stay in a town before we started hitting the C.O.E. parks. That was a good decision as a lot of those parks are in the middle of nowhere. We didn't love Dodge City but it was a good place to take care of things. Most of the historical Dodge City stuff is just really touristy reproductions.

My favorite C.O.E. park, so far, was at the Marion Reservoir near Marion, Kansas. We had a huge, private waterfront site for $10 with Larry's new pass. We are loving that pass! I took lots of pictures at the park and then also in the little town of Marion where we went to mail the R.S.V.P. for the wedding.

We went swimming at this nice swim beach

Marion Lake

Marion Lake

Marion Lake

Marion Lake

Marion Lake

 

 

 I took all those lake pictures from our campsite. Here's one last shot from under our picnic shelter.

We liked the little town of Marion. Here are some random pictures I took around town.

After Lake Marion, we stayed at Melvern Lake C.O.E., the Truman Reservoir near Clinton, Mo., Mark Twain Lake near Hannibal and then Lake Shelbyville in Illinois over the Labor Day weekend. All of these are Corps of Engineer parks and they were all really nice-big spaces, lots of privacy and under $10 with the pass.

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Lake Melvern C.O.E.

Lake Melvern C.O.E.

Lake Melvern C.O.E.

 

We've really stepped up our pace now that Labor Day is over and we don't have to worry about finding a campsite after driving all day. We're in the part of the country that has high traffic and expensive campgrounds so we're anxious now to get back to Maryland. I'll end this with a few random pictures from our drive the last few days. Thanks for visiting!

Small Town in Missouri

Ohio