Raton Pass and Cool Air

At Raton Pass RV Park, Raton, New Mexico...

After an uneventful drive from Amarillo, we pulled into this park at the top of Raton Pass; it was formerly named the Cedar Rail Park and Café. The owners certainly picked a scenic place for the park, carved out of the side of a mountain and sporting views like this:

Equally impressive as the view from the park was the reading on Phannie's outside air temperature gauge. Since one of the benefits of fleeing Texas for northern climes was the anticipation of cooler surroundings, I kept a close eye on this dial as we slowly climbed through New Mexico to the nearly 8,000 feet elevation at Raton Pass. Leaving Amarillo, the gauge read 95 degrees; when we pulled into our space at Raton Pass, it read 71 degrees. Now that's what I'm talking about! I could hardly wait to open the door and take a deep breath of the cool mountain air, and it was just as refreshing as I had imagined.

As we were setting up for the night, I noticed that one of Phannie's motorized MCD shades would not descend to cover the cockpit passenger window. I diagnosed it as a weak battery in the controller, so we took off to downtown Raton to pick up one of the little wafer batteries. I usually keep a good supply of batteries on board, but I didn't have one of those. We picked up an extra as a spare, along with some grocery items, and made our way back uphill to our campground.

We decided to eat dinner at the small café that shared space with the campground office. The draw for the place was supposed to be home-cooked food, but it disappointed, I'm afraid. The chicken was dry, the potato salad had way too much mayo, and the green chile sauce was a gelatinous blob that was downright scary.  Don't bother.

When we came through here the last time, we had a wonderful meal at El Matador in downtown Raton and possibly the best green chile sauce ever. I wish we had not tried something new this time.

Tomorrow we will have a fairly short leg to Colorado Springs, where we will be staying for a few days to visit friends before continuing into Utah and points north.

Still obsessed by the novelty of the cool air here on the mountain, I thought I would check the outside temperature again just before bedtime:

Pretty cool, huh?  (Sorry)

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.