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A Week Ago Today

After our amazing hike to the Top of Texas, we headed down to our friends in El Paso.
This marks the first time we retraced our steps.

Last time we visited, as fate would have it one of our hosts got horribly ill on our arrival, hopefully we wouldn't cause a relapse.

We didn't, thank God and our friend was back to his charming self (with this blog I always am wondering about whose name and or pictures to include so pardon my oddness of not using names at times)

Upon our arrival we were whisked away to a triple art opening at El Paso University which was cool, but not as cool the former speak-easy bar we were off to next.
Back in the days of the Prohibition,( you remember that remarkable failure, no ?...I guess neither does everyone opposed to legalizing marijuana. Different times, different issues,.... not so many, really.)
Anyway, Hollywood movie stars would arrive at this wonderful spot in New Mexico on its private runway. It looks much like it would have back in the day, except for the cityscape that was built up all around it. That and some other things, but it retained much of its original charm and was ultra hip and cool.

We had dinner at another lovely El Paso dig which boasted a wide selection of beers. And then off to bed, for we had a long day ahead of us on Friday.

Back to Hatch

We had a lovely brekfast, (I finally got the juevos rancheros I had been searching for) at a local joint amidst cotton fields and then headed north to Alburquerque and hot air balloons, but not before a quick trip through memory lane.

Last time we were in Hatch, New Mexico was on a Sunday at around 5 am, the weekend after their big annual celebration. Then it looked like, well a small tourist trap the weekend after its big annual celebration.

Now however, the mess had been cleaned up, the posters had been stowed away and it returned to its semi-quiet stature of being an off the main drag tourist trap. During the day all the shops were open and the wonderful aroma of roasted peppers floated through the entire town. There all things of chili, everywhere. What a difference it makes to visit a place when it's open.



Hatch, New Mexico Chile Capital of the World



I especially liked the added effect that drying the chili's on the roof had.



Fields of fire




This looked very much like one of the installation pieces we saw the night before at the art opening, a piece called "Snagged".

Don't know how I really felt about the piece itself, but it did spark several conversations on cotton and its place in the Rio Grande Valley and how legalizing marijuana would be the best thing that could happen to Ciuad Juarez, El Paso's sister city in Mexico, juat across the River and also currently the most dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere.

So perhaps it reached its goal, at least in part.