Hmm, Nope, You Ain't Shittin Me!

The old cemetery on the way into Lincoln

Up in Lincoln yesterday and the snow started. After we hung out there for few hours with our friends, Linda and Boyd from Montana, we headed up to Capitan and had a late lunch at the Smokey Bear Restaurant. I highly recommend the green chile stew. My bowl had at least 10 pounds of beef in it, and the fresh flour tortillas were awesome!

Capitan is a really small town between Lincoln and Ruidoso. While we were sitting in the restaurant, a working cowboy stumbled in for a quick bite before disappearing back out into the blowing snow. Other than that, we had the town pretty much to ourselves. Capitan is where the real Smokey Bear cub was found orphaned, clinging to a tree branch, a bit singed after a forest fire had passes through in the early '50s. When he died in the '70s, they buried him near the spot they had found him. They have a museum dedicated to him here, too. RIP, Smokey, a true national treasure!

So, it has been snowing here in Roswell since yesterday. It is minus 5 C., and we've got about 5 inches with more to come. Sheesh!

Welcome to where?

This boy is the only one happy about the weather!

Hey, Mike, recognize this pavilion -- sort of?

Truck is froze

RVs are froze

Birds are huddled in trees unhappily

Usually the sound of them merrily singing fills the campground, but not today :(

Indirect Redirection and Lincoln Revisited

Mike just sent us his blog link, Indirect Redirection. Check it: http://indirectredirection.com/

We took a road trip up to Lincoln today. We went there last year (check the separate blog page on the right for photos and write up on that visit). It was lightly snowing there today and just above freezing. I love visiting this area in the dead of winter because there are only maybe one or two other visitors there and only a couple of vehicles to be seen, so it was easy to put yourself back in time to the late 1800s and the Lincoln Wars era.

We visited the old Murphy Store/Courthouse where Billy Bonney (Kid) was held in an upstairs room in leg irons and made his famous escape by shooting two of his jailors.

Recent luminal tests show a huge amount of blood on the floor at the top of the inside staircase and trailing down the steps, marking the area where one of the jailers, JW Bell, was shot by Bonney and died a few steps out into the backyard.

On my first visit there I felt a huge wall of energy hit me, not at the top of the stairs, but actually farther down the upstairs hall, as soon as I started to enter into the room that was used as an armory during that time, and the room that, by some accounts, Kid apparently broke into and took the gun to shoot Bell with. The same thick and heavy energy was still present on this trip as well, and only in that room. This building was also used as a school in later years, so I don't know where this energy is emulating from, but the siolitary window looks directly down on the spot where Bell is said to have died. New Mexico is truly a most interesting state.

Above: View out the window of the armory room

The bench in the upstairs courtroom

Standing in the armory room, looking across hall into courtroom

An old adobe house with a billion windows

The safe downstairs in the old Murphy store/courthouse

Can't seem 'em, but there's caves up there

A couple of old rifles, Apache Winchester on the right

Shackles Kid escaped in, later cut off in Las Cruces, NM

Walls used to make a small room where the two windows are, and that's where Kid was being held in the courthouse

Above:  Top rifle is the 1878 Winchester that belonged to Bill Bonney (Kid). It was confiscated by Pat Garrett following Billy's death

Below that is Bob Olinger's 10-gauge Whitney shotgun (Serial #903) that Kid killed him with on April 28, 1881

Above: Looking straight out of armory room window

Above: Another shot of the upstairs area where Kid was held