Alma’s place is quite a few miles outside of Las Vegas, and 5 miles up a dirt road from Sapello. We navigated it easily since it was dry, with only the last half mile or so questionably wet, muddy, and some snow in the shadows. Definitely not the place to just pop out and pick up a few groceries. Trips to town have to be planned for! We brought a pizza to bake and some salad, and Alma opened a huge bottle of wine that we drank down to the last drop! Conversation came easy, and we really enjoyed hearing some of Alma’s stories about family, friends, and history.
We made some tentative plans for sightseeing the next day, but that was highly weather dependent, as the forecast for that night was snow!
It was a good thing that we made our plans tentative, for the next morning, we awoke to several inches of snow on the ground, and more coming down by the minute. After touching base with Alma and calling off the sightseeing (driving, even 4 wheel drive on Alma’s road would NOT have been fun!), we had breakfast and watched the snow come down.
When the snow let up, we took a little tour around the historic downtown plaza, trying not to slip on ice or get too wet. We visited a cute large gift shop (Art & Stone) on the plaza that is filled with many artisan’s works, from pottery to painting, and Adam fell in love with a wind-chime (it’s now his Xmas present). We looked around for quite a while, and then walked down the historic Bridge Street district and did more window shopping before returning to the hotel to read for a bit. The wood smoke from all the fireplaces in town started bothering Adam, so he lay down for a bit as well. We went out again for lunch at Plaza Burger- very good home style burgers, but the owner will talk your ear off. We got to hear about all the movies that get made in Las Vegas (No Country for Old Men, etc.) while we enjoyed our ribbon fries (a style of french frys that is almost a potato chip!)
We went into a hardware store in search of replacement parts for Alma’s bathroom fan, and found something that looked like it would work. We got absorbed in a movie and on the computer that evening, and the snow started to melt.
We drove out around Sapello to some of the little towns like Ledoux and Rociata, and to a little town north of Sapello called Mora (berry in Spanish). There we had lunch at Crystal’s café, offering authentic New Mexican style Mexican food. Adam and I both had the combo plate- he ordered his was verde and mine “Christmas” (verde & rojo, green and red). The chile rellanos were crunchy and awesome! And the enchilada and tamales were good too! We never got to the tacos, which got left in Alma’s fridge (hope they were good!). They also served us with sopapilla, kinda like an Indian fry bread, and it was delicious! We ate as much as we could, with honey, and just stuffed ourselves silly! Definitely highly recommended!
A little more driving tour of the local little towns, and we headed back to Alma’s to take care of that troublesome bathroom fan (which works nicely now), and we headed over to Alma’s neighbor’s house for wine and finger food. Martha and John made some awesome foods, which was saying something since we were still stuffed from lunch. Half a jalapeño, stuffed with cream cheese and apricot spread or peanut butter and baked, deviled eggs, excellent homemade guacamole, shrimp with Cuban ketchup, grapes, and other tasty snacks accompanied the wine. Their house is a beautiful passive solar design, with wood and hand plastered accents. Martha and John are great to talk with, and we enjoyed hearing about their lives and how they and Alma have such history!
[Note: pictures coming later, when Alma doesn't have to download them over her little-itty-bitty dialup modem]
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