The best things in life. Monday, May 31, Memorial Day Outing. Dan and I got up this morning and, after a stop at Krispy Kreme, we headed down to the Quarai ruins, north of Mountainair. This was Dan's first time to see Quarai, although I had been there before and even blogged about it , as some of you might remember.
Today's weather was wonderful, with warm temperatures and clear blue skies. The drive down was nice. This is what the countryside looks like for most of this drive, once you leave I On the way, I was telling Dan that one thing I liked about going to the ruins was that it's off the radar for tourists, so it's usually quite deserted, but I didn't think about it being a holiday. When we got there, there were lots of cars and a bus already parked near the visitor's center.
As we walked up to the Mission, we heard what we thought was a public speaker, of some sort, inside the ruins. As we got closer, we discovered that there was a Catholic mass being conducted inside.
Not wanting to disturb them, we left the ruins and walked the path that leads to a beautiful, shady picnic area. I'm not sure what was growing along that path, but something was giving off a wonderful, sweet aroma. It might have been these pretty blossoms that we kept seeing. Some sort of wild rose? When we got to the picnic area we sat down and ate the lunch that we'd brought. Our picnic table was under some huge, old trees, and looked out to this sunny meadow.
The shade and a light breeze made the temperature pleasantly comfortable. About the time we were finished with our lunch, the mass let out and the people came streaming over to the picnic area, with their box lunches. We decided to trade places with them, so we gave up our picnic table and headed back to the ruins.
