Off Road Trip to Cloudcroft, NM

While Jill and Avery were in DFW this weekend, I decided to run off to the mountains for one last camping trip before it got too cold. I left Friday afternoon after many unforeseen delays and ended up arriving about 930pm. I met my good friend Jaime Swift there and since he lives in Las Cruces, he had camp selected and set up when I arrived after dark. I hate setting up camp after dark, so this was a great blessing.


We stayed up visiting too late, but woke up Saturday morning and hit the trails after a great breakfast burrito warmed over the fire. (Thanks Ginger!) I brought Moose (my Honda 200 dirt bike) on the back of the Land Rover and Jaime brought his Honda 300 4-wheeler behind the Land Cruiser FJ-80.

Jaime and I had a great day riding trails all around the Sacramento Ranger District, primarily around the Lucas Canyon area. There are some fantastic OHV trails out there and we had a blast riding, resting, enjoying the scenery and catching up on our visiting while stopped.

Moose performed great and I took great pride in my $300 ride as we meandered around the mountain. Jaime's ATV did great as well and we enjoyed comparing the vastly different riding experiences these two very different machines had to offer.


This was also the Land Rover's maiden voyage after receiving an Old Man Emu suspension upgrade and 32" BFG Mud-Terrain tires. It performed great even at altitude and we spent Sunday morning exploring the 4x4 roads of the area on the west side of the wilderness overlooking the spectacular drops down to White Sands Missile Range. I look forward to many more trips in the Rover and figured out several more ways to improve it for future overland travel and camping. This is meant to be a budget off-roader, so those improvements may come slowly.


It was great to be in the mountain wilderness once again and I look forward to next spring when I get to go again!

The 1412 Ebeling House

One of the biggest activities that has consumed most of our extra time lately has been the purchase and renovation of our house in Plainview. It is a great house over looking the draw out west of Plainview, but needed some updating as seen in the 'before' pictures below.

The bathrooms, laundry room and kitchen have a fantastic pink and baby blue square linoleum pattern. Maybe we'll just keep that....don'thinkso!

My favorite feature of the house is the vaulted ceiling in the living room combined with the huge windows on both sides and the skylights. It doesn't feel like being inside at all!

Now the Plainview is officially "wet", I guess we could put the wet bar to use. Or not. It's got to go.

The now INFAMOUS octagonal gazebo kitchen. This is the weirdest kitchen we've ever seen! It's full of odd angles, horrible countertops, useless drawers and dangling cabinets. The upper cabinets have to go immediately - the rest of the kitchen will follow as we can afford it!

Can you say "browngold" ? Avery's bathroom will be lightened by painting all the woodwork white, removing the wallpaper and eventually replacing the countertop.

And finally, the office. Avery got to have a little fun during the repainting process!