This could be since we had an 8-week break, but we’re back in Chicago and enjoying the winter season here. Humboldt Park lagoon has been ranging from frozen to half frozen, and people and water birds are venturing out on it. Some people even cleared of a section for hockey (not shown – will try to get a pic with game going on!) We ordered dinner from Orkenoy last night (thanks for the gift card and recommendation, Sarah!) and it was not only delicious it was a very cozy winter meal! They feature Nordic-inspired cooking, and who knows better how…

Sorry for the out of order posts here! One last New Mexico post before we drive home. Toward the end of our trip, we explored a bit more in Fort Bayard with Miles and this time found the dragonfly petroglyph! I really couldn’t leave a thread like that hanging!

We’ve mentioned the university near here, and one morning John and I took a walk on the campus. There are some really cool murals and buildings there. The university emphasizes the outdoor recreation students can get here, as seen on the banner below showing a student with a crossbow! I’ve been collecting more photos that show the town itself. We are really becoming very fond of Silver City! There are a lot of different house styles and honestly I’m not showing some of the architecture that isn’t unique to the area. The vernacular style here is small buildings with a…

We are staying very close to the Boston Hill Open Space, and end up walking or cycling (John) there almost every day. It’s a recreation area at an old mining site that was run by the Massachusetts Mining Company, thus the name which otherwise seems very out of place in the southwest! We consider it to be like our Humboldt Park of Silver City – always a pleasure to visit and somehow never gets old. Having said that, it’s undeniable that the scenery is much more rugged and spectacular than Humboldt Park’s bucolic urban oasis geography. We are getting pretty…

This post is mainly for Rory and Maddie, as we’ve had a lot of creature reports building up, so we figured it was time to tell the whole story! First up, we’ve finally started seeing a lot of Javalinas a little pig-like creature that is native to the area, and yesterday we saw three little javalinas near where we live. They’re hard to photograph as they’re very well camouflaged, so here’s a photo we grabbed from online: Not too long after, but what did we see sneaking around the house, but a wolf! We were able to take a blurry…

Today John and I drove Liam and Kat to Las Cruces so they could get a rental car for their drive back to Chicago, and we drove on another hour to visit White Sands National Park. Here’s a map so you can get a sense of the locations and distances. The red pin is White Sands. First, safe drive, Liam and Kat! Second, White Sands really lived up to its name. Driving there, we saw a band of white stand on the horizon. Once we turned into the park, it was pure white snow-like sand everywhere! Emphasis on the snow-like…

Merry Christmas! It’s a little over an hour left in Central time so with any luck I’ll get this posted on Christmas itself 🙂 We had a lovely Christmas today with a leisurely morning and then a zoom with Nana and Grandpa in KC and Debbie, Jeff and Maddie in Chicago. As usual, there’s always someone missing from a zoom photo, busy day! John, Miles and I went out for a quick walk at Boston Hill and Liam and Kat stayed back and made some really delicious potato pancakes that we enjoyed when we got back. Then we had a…

Miles, Liam and Kat arrived earlier this week, and fell into our schedule of a combination of working remotely and visiting local favorite outdoor spots. First favorite outdoor spot, especially on a 60 degree and sunny afternoon, the patio! Another favorite spot, Boston Hill. Nana ordered cookies for us from our local favorite, Diane’s Bakery. Yummm! Thanks, Nana! We are enjoying a new board game called Poetry for Neanderthals. It comes with an inflatable club for enforcing the rules. Readers may recognize a few of these next spots from previous day trips, but we also drove out to the Cliff…

To start off with a few celebrations, and to put some people in here before we go back to empty vistas and rocks, back in November we had a lovely zoom Thanksgiving! We were able to find a time that worked for Nana and Grandpa in Kansas City, Liam and Kat and Debbie, Jeff and Maddie in Chicago, Miles in Portland, and us in Silver City. We had a good time catching up then played a little game where we submitted anonymous answers in advance saying what each of us was grateful for, and we read them out and guessed…

After our first few trips to the Gila National Forest, we feared that our blog would be full of endless vistas of empty landscapes framed by desert mountains! But never fear! On our last few trips we discovered a whole new side of Gila National Forest, lots of narrow canyons and one ghost town! Last weekend, we went on a hike that was actually very close to the cliff dwellings of our first trip, but very different, exploring the “Middle Fork” trail. It started out pastoral enough, on a lovely trail through the forest near a dry river bed. But…