Rainy Day Today

I don’t remember having such a quiet day. The weather stunk. It was foggy, drizzly and then down right rainy almost all day. To top it off, the temps didn’t get out of the 40’s.. Now that is unacceptable to us. I am so glad that we did our drive yesterday.

This morning we hung around until about 10:00am and then decided it wasn’t going to get any better so we put on heavy sweat shirts under jackets and went to see the Historic Downtown Raton. Our first stop was at the Visitors Bureau. We had thought we would drive to the town of Cimarron, a place that is famous for the Philmont Scout Ranch and the James Hotel. The Philmont Scout Ranch has more than 18,000 Boy Scouts and their families come annually to learn to become the best Boy Scout there is. The visitor center told us that they do not give tours until after Memorial Day and that the James Hotel is closed for renovation. Well, that took care of that.

All over New Mexico there are celebrations of Cinco de Mayo and Raton was having their Cinco de Mayo Fiesta at the park downtown. We were told that there would be music, food and venders selling their wares so we headed out to check it out.

We had a Downtown Walking Tour pamphlet but with the weather the way it was we turned that into a driving tour. We started out at the old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Depot where once 60 or more trains came through daily. The railroad decided to locate its repair shop at the southern base of the Raton Pass. The hard haul over the pass warranted rest and recovery for both men and machines. The year was 1880.. Today it is still used by Amtrak and is still a beautiful station. The Depot as well as the Wells Fargo Express Company next door are constructed in the Spanish Mission Revival style. Across the street from these buildings were at one time merchandise buildings, banks, hotels , saloons, and even a Coors Brewing Warehouse. Today they are mostly antique stores with a couple of art gallery’s mixed in.

The next street is today’s downtown area. Here you can find shopping, banks, movie houses, theater and a place that we checked out, a bakery/coffee shop/café. We warmed up with coffee and donuts that were delicious.

Next we wandered over to the Park for the Fiesta. These poor venders were set up in the rain and looked like they were frozen. It was still early and I’m sure there were other’s that came later but we did not find anything that interested us. They had a carnival area set up for the kids but I’m not sure how active it was due to the bad weather. We felt so sorry for them.

We were home before lunch and have spent the rest of the day in front of the fireplace just reading or watching TV.

I managed to make a nice dinner on the George Foreman since we didn’t want to grill outside and I made enough chicken to have leftovers for another day.

Tomorrow we will leave New Mexico and plan on staying in Colorado Springs for a few days. Come back for that. Later……….

May 2, 2009

Show all 6 photos