The Horse Trail

It's been a fun day so far.  We got up bright and early and went on a two hour horseback riding trail.  Everyone in our family got to ride a horse.  Dad got a funny-looking gray-speckled horse named Chief.  Mom got a pretty white horse named Silver.  I got a dark brown horse named Busta Move.  Amy got a chestnut horse named Tater Tot.  Luke got a dun-colored horse named... Elvis.  I know!  Elvis!  I was incredibly jealous at first, Elvis being my favorite person in the universe and all, but Elvis the horse turned out to be slow, grumpy, and old, so after seeing his temperament, I wasn't jealous after all.

I never knew that New Mexico was pretty, but it is.  We rode along canyons and the base of the mountain.  Everything was red and purple and blue, as if it was painted right onto a canvas.  It was beautiful.  The weather was perfect as well.  We plodded along and talked and laughed and enjoyed ourselves.

At one point, a paint horse in our group got spooked and bucked off its passenger, a sweet girl with cerebral palsy.  She was okay- she wasn't even really frightened- but I felt bad for her.  Who expects to go on a slow, safe trail ride and get bucked onto the rocky canyon floor?

For lunch, my family ate beside the pool again.  If you ever check out the Tamaya resort, the nachos with queso are very tasty.  Don't leave without trying them out.

All five of us swam.  Tamaya has three different pools, but the most popular one has a water slide.  It's enclosed, so when you slide down, everything is pitch black.  You lose your sense of direction completely.  You feel yourself veering to the left and to the right and up and down. It's a little frightening.  And then suddenly, you drop down and see a shimmer of light.  And then whoosh!  You fall smack into the salt water of the pool.

After going down the slide a hundred times and relaxing in one of the hot tubs, we moved to the funny-shaped kid pool.  It's long, thin, curved, and three feet deep.  Originally, we thought it was a lazy river.  It wasn't, but it's perfect for races and games.

We finally returned to our hotel room to rest.  Mom checked her phone- we have very little reception, but occasionally a message gets through- to discover with a shock that my Naana fell this morning and broke her knee cap in four places.  We're currently all waiting in the room while Mom maneuvers herself onto the edge of the balcony, trying desperately to keep enough signal to talk to her mom on the phone and make sure that everything is okay.  I can hear Mom's side of the conversation.  Things don't seem great.  Naana is going to have to have surgery.  My aunt Denise is on her way to Amarillo to take care of her until we go back.  Our family friends are being great and taking care of our grandparents while we're gone.

We may end up returning home early.  The disappointment of that fact is dimmed with worry.  I think we all just want to make sure that Naana is okay.  I'll write more later.