Hubbard Museum of the American West

Thursday, 30 July 2015
Deer Crossing RV Park — San Patricio, New Mexico
Temps: Hi 84F (29C) / Lo 62F (17C)

We’ve been planning to visit the Hubbard Museum of the American West since arriving here.  But we were waiting to do it on a really hot or rainy day.  We had such days in recent weeks, however, we decided to delay our visit until after my new camera arrived.  That happened on Monday; the museum is closed Tuesday and Wednesday … bringing us to today!

You see, traveling overseas with DSLR equipment is getting to be more of a pain in the you know what than it used to be.  Not only is the weight of the camera and the lenses an issue while wandering around to see the sights, but it’s also a problem on airlines, which are paying closer attention than ever to the weight of carry-on bags.  We almost got into trouble on the way back from New Zealand when the flight out of Auckland had a carry-on restriction of 22 pounds (10 kg).  My equipment far exceeds that!  Crazy, I know ;-)  Mui got us through by hefting the bag like it was empty and the agent believed him without weighing the bag.  Had he asked us to put the bag on the scale, my goose would have been cooked to a crisp!

Anyway, with Mui’s encouragement, I recently started looking at alternatives to my Canon DSLR.  Don’t get me wrong, no camera can match what a DSLR can do, but considering my photos are mostly for publication in the blog, and I do little more than look at them on occasion in my online galleries, we figured I could find a reasonable alternative.  And I think I have.

Anne Stradling — a lifelong collector
Blaze — Trail … Alfred G Haigh (1920)

All this to say that the photos in this post were taken with the FujiFilm X-T10, a recent — like May 2015 recent — entrant into the mirrorless camera market.  Its newness not withstanding, there are already very happy users out there and I am leaning towards being one of them even though my “testing phase” still has a few weeks to go before I have to make a final decision — thanks to B&H’s 30-day return policy.

OK — so let’s move on to our morning at the museum and the pictures I took.

Out and About in Ruidoso Downs and Ruidoso

Sunday, 19 July 2015
Deer Crossing RV Park — San Patricio, New Mexico
Temps: Hi 90F (32C) / Lo 67F (17C)

After taking care of a few things at home, we set off this morning to pick the brains of the people who man the visitor center Mui spotted when he drove into Ruidoso a few days ago.

We didn’t make much headway before we made our first stop.

Spotting a cute little church right after we passed the sign for Glencoe, another small community along Hwy 70, we flipped a u-ey so I could take a quick shot of St Anne’s Chapel.  Dating back to the 1930’s, it is the founding Episcopal church in Lincoln County.

Services were just ending, and one of the congregants said I was welcome to enter the church and take photographs.  There were still too many people inside, so I thanked him and said I’d stop by another time.  As the only church in the area open 24 hours a day, I should be able to find a more suitable time to take pictures of the interior sometime before we leave.