White Sands National Monument

White Sands National Monument is just an hour or so southwest of Ruidoso outside of Alamogordo, NM. This place was AHHH-mazing. And hot. Coming down out of the cool mountains into the desert is an extreme climate change. We were wearing long pants and jackets (I was wearing two!) when we left the mountains and ended up sweating our butts off even after we changed into summer gear.

This place though, y'all. It was awesome. The sand is so white it looks like snow and it SPARKLES. You're just driving through scrubby brown dessert and BOOM, hills of pure white. You can see them for miles, glowing in the sun. Most sand is made from quartz, which gives it that warm peachy color, but these dunes are made from pure gypsum. It's beautiful and so so soft. And did I mention it sparkles? It looks just like snow! They have sunset and moonrise hikes daily, I bet that's relatively epic.

After seeing some people sliding down the dunes on sleds, we tried to make our own sled out of a tuperware container lid. Not successful. At all. If you go to White Sands (do it) rent yourself a sled. It looked so fun.

The roads through the park were basically carved out of these dunes, so you were completely surrounded by white! These dunes are fairly active (some moving more than 30 feet a year) so they have to plow the little road, just like snow.

We saw lots of these tracks going all over the dunes and at first we thought they were bike tire marks, but then we realized that it was from a rattlesnake! As scary as it might have been, it would have been neat to spot one in action, cruisin' across the sand.

This place was seriously fantastic and I HIGHLY recommend going if you are any where near it. The park is huge (like 100 acres+) and it only encompasses half the dunes! They make up about 275 acres total, but the dunes outside of the park are a part of a government missile range. Sometimes they have to shut down the nearby highway for hours at a time for missile testing. Cray cray!

After playing around in the sand, sun, and the heat for a while we were very ready to head back up to the mountains. On our way back we stopped at Pistachioland and winery, where I bet Brendon they wouldn't have pistachio wine. They did, so naturally we had to buy a bottle. Such tourists. And for your enjoyment, the world's pistachio:

I mean really, how could you not stop and take a picture with that sucker. Genius business strategy, Pistachioland.

The rest of the trip here.

New Mexico numero uno

This was our view heading up into the mountains to Ruidoso. We have this luck where whenever we go out of town, it likes to rain on us. It rained on us in Arkansas, it rained on us in Fredericksburg, and it rained on us in Ruidoso. But only a little this time, and truly it was great timing all around. New Mexico has been in the midst of a terrible drought. But thankfully, starting a week or so ago they've been having crazy rain which has been a blessing (because dry mountains = forest fires), and we came in the middle of it. We drove into this storm and it was pretty epic. Storms in the mountains are full of thunder and lightning and big fat showers of rain, but they don't last long. The storm we drove into disappeared just in time for us to set up camp. Or find our camp I should say.

We had no plans whatsoever for this trip. I knew Ruidoso was surrounded by Lincoln National forest so there would be ample campgrounds, and I knew we'd probably stay at least one night in a hotel, but that was it. We got into Ruidoso after a rather loooong drive from Texas around three, had a late lunch, and then went on a mission to find a place to stay. At first we were a little defeated by the rain and looked for hotels, but we machoed up and remembered that we camped for days in the rain last year, so we could do this.

After lots of searching and lots of driving, we found our little slice of heaven nestled in the mountains. We were the only campers at the entire site for the first two days (aside from the camp host of course, who was so nice), and on the third we were joined by just a few families. This place was perfect. If you ever go to Ruidoso and want to camp, the Oak Grove campground is where it's at. Actually, go to Ruidoso and camp just for this campground. We had our own private meadow just steps from our tent. A green meadow full of flowers, surrounded by mountains. The recent rains had turned this place into a green wonderland. We overheard some locals saying they can't remember the last time Ruidoso was this green. My words will not nearly do this place justice and neither will these pictures, but we'll try.

I mean, this place was something out of a dream. And down that hill in the forest? A little mountain stream.

Perfection, y'all. Our first night camping there was a full moon! It was so bright, it lit up the whole mountain side. Inside our tent it looked like everything outside was glowing. And the next day, after a rainy and muggy afternoon, we woke up to this loveliness:

The road our campsite was off of was called Ski Run Road. It's the road you take to get to Ski Apache, the local ski area. It's a twelve mile twisty-turny (understatement) road up into the mountains, with a spectacular view. (If you are a hardcore runner, I'd like to see you attempt the Ski Run Road Challenge. Not only is it 12 miles of insane hills, but you're running at crazy altitudes!) Our campsite was five miles up, but we drove the rest of the way up our first morning there. The views were phenomenal.

 

Channeling my inner Weasley clearly, what's up with that hair? I think someone needs a trim. Badly. Look at that mess. Oh and did I mention the temperature? While the highs were hanging around 100 degrees in Texas, the high in Rudioso was like 75. Amazing.

A big shout out to Bruce Wayne, our sweet still fairly new car, who got more than broken in on this trip. She was SO dirty, exterior and interior, by the end of it all and we put an obscene amount of miles onto that odometer. She was a champ though and climbed up and down those mountains beautifully. She even did a little offroading!

Enough mountain photos for you? No? Good, there's a ton more. Just wait.

The rest of the trip here.

Home

We are home. We got back to Austin late last night from our little road trip to Ruidoso, New Mexico, aka our little slice of summer heaven. This trip was so perfect and so needed. Brendon and I both badly needed an escape and some alone time together, and this vacation more than delivered.

I have had an obsession with New Mexico since my early teens. Growing up we spent some time one summer in Ruidoso and hit up Taos in the winter for skiing for a few years. This was the first time I'd been back since I was a wee eighteen, and it still blew my mind. It felt like home. I did not want to leave (there may have been tears on the drive yesterday) and am still dreaming of mountains and cooler temperatures. Needless to say, my obsession for the Land of Enchantment has been fueled.

If you follow me on the ol' facebook or instagram, you saw bits and pieces of this trip, but be prepared, the vacation posts are coming.

52 weeks of baking: 34 - coconut chocolate chip cookies

This is vacation week. I am taking a vacation. A real one. Put it in your books people! Six days with my man and no work. So baking day was Monday (today). And after last weeks rather labor intensive adventure in baking, I thought I'd take it easy. Cookies are easy. And good. Chocolate chip is always my go-to cookie, but I had some coconut in my pantry begging to be baked. So viola, coconut chocolate chip cookies.

I based this recipe on a few general cookie recipes and hoped for the best. Worked out pretty well!
These cookies are fat and all kinds of yummy. Stuff of dreams, y'all. Here's the deets:

Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies (quadruple C's!)

2 cups of all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 sticks of butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
2 cups sweetened shredded coconut

Preheat your oven to 375. Whisk your flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Cream your butter and sugar for about two minutes in the bowl of a mixer. Beat in your vanilla. Add your eggs, beating after each. Dump in those chocolate chips, mix it up! Add your coconut and mix it up some more!

Spoon 1 tablespoonish balls onto cookie sheet, spaced a couple inches apart. If you're me, eat copious amounts of cookie dough during this process. Bake those babies for about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool and devour.

52 weeks of baking: 33 - chocolate chip pretzels

These pretzels! Holy hell, they are good but holy hell, I almost threw my mixer out the window making them. This recipe is from Deb's cookbook, Smitten Kitchen, and it's also online here.

So like I said, my mixer and I had words with these pretzels. The recipe asks you to beat the dough for 10 minutes with a paddle attachment. Holla, my little sunbeam mixer does not have a paddle attachment. So I attempted to mix the dough for ten minutes with regular beaters. Dear lord, y'all. My mixer and I battled it out. It was trying real hard to jump of the counter/spin the bowl off into my face. All the dough would wrap around one beater at a time and then the whole thing would be off balance and would attempt to take off into orbit. I punched the mixer, not intentionally (although I wanted to), more than once. It was rough and required far more physical exertion than I usually like to experience while baking. BUT, it worked. And these pretzels are amazing.

They are the perfect texture of chewy and fluffy and crisp and soft. The chocolate, salt, sugar ratio is perfect so I don't even mind that they look like dog poos. I love these pretzels and have been eating them in pairs because one just isn't enough. Aside from the mixer wrestling match (one day I will own a Kitchen Aide stand mixer), they were really lots of fun to make. Especially rolling them out and forming them. The dough is so stretchable and pliable and awesome. And I mean, pretzels! They're so cute! Now that I know I can make pretzels at home, I feel my life has changed for the better. I foresee more pretzels in my future.