White Sands, Picnic Breakfast and the Red Streak

Since it was around 50 to 55 years ago, I can only remember a few incidents of different trips we took. I remember waking up from my snuggly nap place in the back of the car, and saying "why are we parked in all of this snow". We were in White Sands, New Mexico and everywhere you looked it was white as if it were snow. Kathy, Michelle and I treated it like snow too. We ran to the top of one of the many hills of sand, and slid down it leaving a streak print all the way down. That was a lot of fun.

I can remember us traveling down the road and then stopping at a rest area. Dad and mom would get out the ice chest and coleman stove and they would cook us a meal. The one I remember the most was bacon and pancakes, makes my mouth water just thinking about it. Everything alwys smells and tastes so good when it is cooked outside.

One time we had stopped in a picnic area of one of the state parks to have some lunch. We had the ice chest out and were eating sandwiches. Once we were finished eating, we were just relaxing and us girls of course were playing around. Then we saw them, a couple small deer at the edge of the picnic area. One started coming toward me. At first I thought it was cute, but it kept coming closer and closer, and I kept stepping back. I turned around and took off running down the drive, toward the car where my daddy was putting up the ice chest, with that little deer running after me. When I reached dad and ran in behind him, my hero remember, the deer just stopped and casually walked off into the woods. Mom always liked to tell this story. She said "I turned tail and run, and all they could see was a red streak". She was referring to the red jacket I had on. The little deer just thought I had something to give him to eat. I would well imagine that he got fed a lot there by that picnic area.