Mama meets the Mesa

My mom's been down here off and on for the past couple of weeks, making use of her hospice skills and taking care of family. She's been spending most of her time on the hill in Mr. Baca's house, but we managed to steal her away for a while today and introduced her to both the Pathfinder and the mesa. She's very lucky to get to meet both of them in one day! When it was time to get suited up, I handed her both layers of a Columbia jacket. She looked a little bit puzzled, but put them on anyway. We then pulled our hair back, pulled on our grubby shoes, and loaded into the beast. It was an exciting day for me as well, as I took my first trip in the back seat. A bit more scary, I think. The jagged metal, left behind from the Pathfinder's rear-end plastic surgery, looming just above my skull, did make me a tiny bit nervous from time to time.

We took our usual lap around the mesa, up to the campsite, and into the open fields. We raced through puddles...all the while we were smiling and giggling. Well, the girls probably did a bit more giggling than Keith, but just a little more! My mom also added some pretty amazing sound effects, just to keep things that much more interesting. I wounder what kinds of screams and sounds she would make on a roller coaster? Interesting... K definitely gave us our money's worth and took us up this really, really steep hill. Going up, it seemed like we were facing imminent death, but I guess we made it, so perhaps that assumption was wrong! When we made it to the top, we could pretty much see the entire mesa. Beautiful! We even managed to pick a few pinon nuts since they're finally in season. Pretty tasty, but a lot of messy, sappy, sticky work to get to the little buggers! Too much to keep my interest for too long anyway.

After we made it back down the hill, we followed another road for a while. I think we were lost, but K won't quite admit it. At one point, we were way back in the tress, climbing a rocky hill, and we definitely smelled men's cologne. Strong cologne. I'm hoping that some drunk teenagers dropped a bottle of it there not too long ago, but I couldn't help but wonder if there was a good-smelling, yet incredibly deadly axe murder lurking back there waiting for us! Yikes! We ended up turning around that hightailing it out of there since it was starting to cool off and getting dark.

We arrived home just as the sun was creeping down behind the mountains, tucking itself in for the night. My mom had a great time, as well as a great hairdo at this point, and made sure that we took pictures before we went inside. Here they are. Mama meets the mesa=good times!