A very Happy New Year to y'all and may 2014 be a great one!

We never make it until midnight but we celebrated the next morning with 'oliebollen' a dutch treat for the Old/New Year. 

Traditionally you start baking these on the morning of the 31st and just keep baking and eating them way into the 1st until you don't want to see another one for a whole year, but we only made one batch on New Year's Day.

For some reason they came out better than ever this year!

Somewhere during the holidays we took another trip into the National Park. 

This time we drove over the (Chisos) mountains and into what they call the the Chisos Basin.

A scenic, winding road rises over two thousand feet above the desert floor.

And down again into the erosion-formed basin area.

Within the Chiso Basin is a visitor center, campground, a lodge with a restaurant and store and miles of hiking trails.

After the very short, but pretty, 'Window View Trail',

 ... we decided to hike the (also short) 2 mile Chisos Basin 'Loop Trail'.

                                                                                    

We liked the (moderate) hike that winds you around the basin in about an hour and gives nice views of the surrounding mountain peaks.

            

After a short lunch break we drove back up the Basin Road to the same Pass where we had come over this morning and where the trail head for the Lost Mine Trail is located.

                       

  

                               

We didn't hike the whole trail (4.8 mile) but went up about a mile where you have a great view to the southeast.

                     

Although we are in (Mtn) Lion and Bear country we didn't see any. I'm never quite sure if I should be happy about that because I'd really love to see them but preferably from a distance, thank you very much!

                                   

Nothing much is flowering at the moment, especially not at these higher elevations, but there's always something pretty to find if you take the time to look around you:

James has been putzing around the RV a little. 

He laid some flagstones, which you can find around here 'in the wild' almost everywhere you look, to widen the path up to the front door. 

When it rains it drains towards this area and turns it into mud which you than proceed to track into the RV. Not nice. 

So, ... problem solved.

While he was at it, and with a lot of stones left over, he also built us a nice fire pit!




And since we've got a nice, large open area next to us, we paced out an area and put stakes down for playing/throwing horseshoes.


                                         




After this we build a nice fire and grilled some hot dogs and I took some great pictures of that but cowboy James managed to delete all of those from the camera before I downloaded them!
Ugghh! Sometimes ......!