October 9--Dancing Cranes B&B--Jim and Jana's

We set out early in the cool of the morning just before dawn. It is pretty cool when the GPS screen on the Goldwing switches automatically at dawn from the night screen to the daytime screen. We had set our GPS for a “short-cut” to San Antonio, NM to avoid El Paso and 150 extra miles. Little did Steve realize that there are 4 San Antonio, NM towns in the GPS! By the time we realized it, it cost us most of the time and mileage savings we had planned on.

We stopped in Pecos, NM (I think) for gas and had some great chili pepper/choriso egg burritos for a snack from the gas convenience store. Too bad we didn’t have more because they were terrific!

We met a 73 year old judge (and former cop!) in Vaughn, NM. He was riding a 400 cc scooter back to his home in Texas. He’s had a lot of ‘rides’ including a K1200RS which he had just sold after getting a ticket and fine from a local cop and a friend of his, the local judge! He still has two BMW motorcycles in his garage but, since he was diagnosed with diabetes a couple of years ago, he likes to ride the scooter which doesn’t require a lot of strength to balance. What a character and genuinely interesting man!

It was a long day and Kathy was very sore! Before heading to Jim and Jana’s, we had a bite to eat and a beer at the brew pub in Soccoro to kill the pain!

Stayed at Jim & Jana’s Dancing Cranes B&B 505-517-9273 outside of San Antonio, NM (the one in Soccoro county). Wow, what a great place! They have put in a new pond since we were there last and Jim has been working on planting lots of high country plants and trees. He put three cat tails in early in the spring around the pond, and now it is almost completely lined with cattails! The garage building is in the middle of remodeling. A third of it will become another B&B room large enough for 3-4 people to use, and the rest will become the new Dancing Crane store. Jim showed off all the plantings, and we had a great visit talking about politics, life and our families. Jana, as always, served up a great meal and we consumed several bottles of Costco red wine. The king bed was fabulous, and we slept like logs!

Jim introduced me to the Agastache bush which is a fabulous hummingbird attractor. I brought the catalog home to shop from this winter and will see where I can put two or three.

Tomorrow (Friday) we are headed for Durango to spend the evening with Jamie before heading home. We’ve been watching the forecast in Bountiful, and it looks like it could be nasty on the weekend, so we want to try to get home as early as we can on Saturday.