McEwen Farming and Family Stuff

Our first week of Grand Tour and we find ourselves in a lovely  vacation cabin alongside a trout stream near the

southern edge of the Rockies in New Mexico. At 7000 ft,  I am little breathless and a lot has happened in one week . Ruidoso is a beautiful vacation town here in the mountains.- Lincoln National Park.

We are with Wally and Faye Chapman and have had two days with them in their home city of EL Paso,   in the far corner of  Western Texas, on the Mexican border . Alison went to Ballarat Teachers College with Faye and Faye  was a Chislett  from Boundary Bend.

We have driven across three states and after leaving Tucson and spending a couple of hours at the Desert Museum just out about 15 miles sth of the city, we headed for El Paso with an ever changing topography into the city of Las Cruces that sits beside a mountain range as we turn south into  the grand  state of Texas that has everything big.

We struck a Chapman family celebration and BBQ in their landscaped shady garden and met many of their family and friends. In the evening, we visited Peter and Dianne Golding in their home on the other side of the city. Peter is from Donald and lecures at the UTEP University here. It was great to catch up with them and reminisce on Donald personalities .

We went to Wally and Faye ‘s Church – Park Hills Christian Church yesterday and then drove with them up to their family cabin here .

We did a side trip into the White Sands National Park alongside the White Sands Missile range and the Holloman Airforce Base . This Base was the source of the Manhattan project and the launch of the A Bomb. The sand is Gypsum and covers 275000 square mile. Be pretty handy to have nearby home.

Today has been `a lay day’  – a very welcome break from travelling. We slept in and sat around reading – sharing poems and photos. Alison is knitting – a project for the many thousands of miles being covered.

We went with Wally and Faye to a theme park for tea . it was the shootout a the OK Carroll and I got to shoot a real colt 45 ,got the target but just missed the bullseye with three shots . Meal was on tinplates very nice beef strips ,baked potatoe and apple pie, real tucker and then a great music and singing show .

Pretty dismal wifi at the cabin so I am now in a Starbucks using their free wifi and enjoying a coffee  and updating blog. Heading for Stumns and the harvest tomorrow in the corner of Kansas and Colorado