It’s finally here. Vacation time. We left Thursday afternoon for Raton, NM so we could attend our son’s camp banquet. We passed a dormant volcano along the way called Mt. Capulin.
See how yellow it is around the base of the volcano? The drought is in this area of NM too. I have heard it is 107 where we live and I am not missing that heat, wind and no moisture at all right now.
Our new puppy traveled well. She liked to ride on the console.
I enjoyed looking down at this face while spending hours in the truck.
But, I couldn’t wait to see my son’s face.
Thursday evening we were able to finally see David when we arrived at his camp, however, I had to wait and speak to him while they still had some organized things going on. I hated that. I felt like a little kid that had been told to look, but don’t touch. It took me awhile to even figure out which one was my son. He use to never wear caps and now they are his thing.
I sat outside to catch glimpses of him. To the left of this group is one of the rifle ranges (I think).
Antelope showed up on the range. Luckily for them they are protected here and can’t be used for target practice.
Here is a momma and her babies.
A beautiful bird showed up too.
The view to the right of where I was sitting looked like this.
Lots of yellow ground. There was a large wildfire near the area while David was at camp. I have never been so tired of fires in my life. They are everywhere this year.
David really didn’t have time or want any organized photos during the banquet, but I snuck some shots while he was in the dinner line.
He is the one on the right.
And the one in the middle.
After the banquet he stayed one more night and we headed back to Raton until we could pick him up the next morning.
We took a little drive and I was able to get a pretty photo of the sky as the sun was setting.
The next day we were woke up by our fuzzy white alarm clock at 4:45am. I knew this would probably happen because of the hour time change and the puppy was use to waking up about 5:30 am Texas time.
We headed to camp to pick up our son at his cabin.
I finally got one organized photo of David and a few other campers. The elderly man is Clyde. He was everyone’s favorite. He has the best heart and preached a sermon that moved David to tears on Saturday. It’s Clyde’s last year at camp and the campers were sad.
A few more shots at the cabin.
The guy on the left was David’s cabin counselor. David thought the world of him.
David gathered his things from the cabin and we headed out.
When I was 14 my parents took me to a pretty mountain lake called San Isabel in Colorado. My husband and I visited the same lake when I was pregnant with David. It wasn’t far from our vacation route so we stopped for a bit. My husband fished and I walked the dogs around the entire lake. They deserved exercise after being stuck in the truck for hours and hours.
My redneck husband.
My son still in a cap.
I spotted lots of pretty butterflies while I walked around the lake.
The next stop on our agenda was a castle I visited when I was 14 and then again when I was pregnant with David. It’s called Bishop’s Castle and one man named Jim Bishop has hand built this castle. He was there during our visit and he is very anti government and loudly expresses his opinions and views. I figure he has a right to do what he pleases because he allows visitors free of charge to explore his castle.
It’s amazing. Are you ready to see it?
See the tall tower on the left? I climbed the spiral staircase to the top.
Jim Bishop’s real job is an iron worker so he has welded all of this beautiful iron work on the castle.
He also built this dragon chimney.
Inside the castle the windows are gorgeous.
There were passageways throughout the castle. This one lead to the tower. The steps turned into spiraling iron staircase after the stone stairs.
One of the views from the staircase.
Another view. I didn’t climb into this iron ball thing. Some of the other tourists said it swayed.
Here’s the top of the tower I climbed. It was taller than the ball, but more stable.
Here is the tower with the entire castle.
Jim Bishop is working on a moat around the castle. I think his building skills are amazing.
We left there and headed through the long windy mountain roads to our vacation destination.
Here is a view from the windshield.
We got a little nervous about road closures when we saw this fire, but we made it through with no problems.
So that’s day one and two. Thanks for reading to the end. I know this was a long post. I have to go to the office to get internet service so I will probably not be doing daily posts. Not sure yet.
