Carrizozo / Pino Family Ranch / July 2-4, 2016

Over the July 4th holidays, Raphael and I joined the "Pino Family and Friends Reunion" for the fourth time in five years. Their generous hospitality and welcoming nature has made us feel like part of the extended family. These are friends we've come to know and love. We relate and connect on many levels. It was a relaxing and fun couple of days.

Approaching the ranch house.

The ranch house.

Paul Pino, his siblings, cousins, and their families congregate from all over the country to reconnect with song and dance and lots of food, under the windy cloudless skies of the southwestern desert.
Below: In the shadow of Carrizo Mountain.

Forty plus individuals made their way to the ranch this year. A number of us stayed on the ranch, pitching tents or crowding into the already crowded ranch house. Others stayed in motel rooms in town; still others drove through staying for a meal and a couple hours of catching up on family news.

The ranch house patio.

Inside the ranch house kitchen.

We pitched our tent between two trailers and in the spot that had just been vacated by a nonvenomous bull snake. It was futile to put up the portable gazebo over our tent that we lugged along with hopes of being shaded from the fierce summer sun; the winds that blow intermittently would have picked it right up along with the tumbleweeds and tossed it helter skelter. We did string up a tarp above the tent as best we could for afternoon naps, but had to take it down in the middle of the second night for the winds thunderously whipped it around, it was impossible to sleep.

Everyone contributes to the communal meals. There is an abundance of enchiladas, tortillas, beans, chilli, chips, queso to name a few. I understand the day before we arrived, a pig was cooked and baked in coals in a pit. We took our juicer and made fresh carrot-apple-celery-ginger-lime drinks for everyone. I also took oatmeal cookies and fixings for a fruit crumble that we baked in the solar oven.

Below Raphael is making a shrimp appetizer--per kindness of Costco.