Muy Ruidoso

We celebrated Thanksgiving in Abq, and then headed south to Ruidoso, so named for the 'noisy river' that runs through town. Apparently, there's a nice path along the river near the downtown area, but we jumped over fallen trees and scrambled up rocks without seeing a paved trail.

We ate at Le Bistro, a nice Frensch restaurant that disturbed me by hanging hundreds of empty wine bottles from the ceiling, Hall of Flame burgers, and the pizza place in the middle of downtown. Interestingly, all restaurants were quite full on Saturday for lunch but were nearly empty for dinner on Fri and Sat night. We can't understand where the people go/went.
We took a short hike on Saturday morning near Cedar Creek, but turned around as the trail started to disappear.

The Ruidoso area is most famous because Billy the Kid hustled cattle in the area. His exploits began by joining a new general store owner in the area who tried to break the monopoly of the existing general store that supplied Fort Sumner. Go government-enabled-monopolistic-capitalism!

On Sunday morning, we hiked in the White Mountain area. The campground at the trailhead was was closed so we had to park a 1/2 mile from the Bluefront trailhead. We're pretty sure that not a single person was on the trail besides us all day.

Fantastic views from near the top.

Two thumbs up for Ruidoso. And we didn't even visit the horse race track, fancy casino, and ski areas.