Bullet Holes and Mountain Slopes

To begin our trip to New Mexico we left on a Thursday right after the boys got home from school and drove about half the distance and found a hotel. Then on Friday morning we got up early and headed off. Around lunchtime we rolled into the little town of Cimarron, New Mexico. A little town with a big history. Cimarron is the home of the St. James Hotel a stopping place for some of the most legendary figures of the Wild West.

 Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Jesse James, Bat Masterson, Bill Cody, Governor (and author) Lew Wallace were just some of the famous customers of the hotel.

The hotel featured about three rooms furnished the way they would have been in the 1800's when these men would have stayed. I just love that bed. Fancy! 

 I like the idea of a fireplace in your hotel room. Why can't the Best Western do that?

 But the real story of the St. James Hotel is the bar where you can still see the bullet holes left by numerous gunfights in the tin ceiling. There were probably a dozen all together. My boys just thought that was amazing!  By the looks of the bullet holes I'm betting that pretty stained glass window probably isn't original!

The hotel is still a hotel and you can still rent a room for the night but be warned! The St. James is supposedly haunted by the men murdered there. A list of the gunfights were listed on the back of the hotel's restaurant's menu. Yep, the Wild West was really wild as the St. James history proves.

As much as we would have liked to stick around the St. James looking for ghosts, our goal was Taos so we hit the road again for a couple more hours and after checking into our hotel and asking some of the locals we found the perfect spot to go sledding in the Carson National Forest. Oh, I think these pics speak for themselves and explain just how much fun we had, no ski tickets, no crowds just lots of fast and bumpy fun.

 Yap

Yip

This is only half the hill we slid down!

Oh, and we adults didn't hold back either! My sister Officer.

Yahoo and I...of course she had enough when she realized she couldn't walk by herself in all that snow and I wouldn't let her go down on the sled by herself. She's a bit stubborn.

My brother in law Marvel Man..

...and DR. You know, I think there are times, like these, when this vacation was a lot more fun for the adults than for the kids! Who says you have to go to ski resort to have fun in the snow?