Another Fourth, Pretty Much Thwarted

It's been rainy these past couple days, monsoon season has come early. We were both off on Friday for the holiday, a good thing since a pretty big thunderstorm or two came through in the early hours of the morning. Cheyenne's not a big fan of the loud sounds outside; but she was particularly agitated, it was stuffy once we closed off all the windows … suffice it to say, none of got sleep for a couple hours there, so it was welcome when she let us sleep in late. That did mean a more whirlwind, shorter chore day to be ready for Jon and Suzanne's visit for dinner. The sky had cleared by late afternoon … and actually was bright and sunny and humid, so we couldn't sit outside. But it was an awful lot of fun.

Saturday, again, began kind of rainy. The clouds were welcome, though, because our plan was to bypass the usual Fourth of July hike for a walk downtown to Pancakes on the Plaza. We went by Tarts' Treats, just reviewed in the New Mexican, which sounded promising and has a patio that it's not known if dogs are specifically prohibited from … but they were closed for the holiday. We grabbed some bagels for the walk and continued on.

We quickly found Stacy (as Rula) at the KSFR booth they were broadcasting live from for the morning. We got to say our hellos … and then were kicked out, because dogs aren't allowed on the Plaza for the event. Sure, in retrospect, it kinda makes sense … but this is Santa Fe. And I still haven't seen anything stating that … but, anyway, grumpy, we walked off home (I mean, we all walked off home, I was grumpy).

Helped clarify the plans for the afternoon, though. The Greyhound group was due to be at El Rancho de las Golondrinas for the Santa Fe Wine Festival. It was kind of a last-minute thing, so it wasn't clear how much participation there would be. We headed over, noting the stormclouds over the mountains, found our way in through the confused security guard telling us we couldn't bring our dog, to the group's area. Turns out, plenty of the usual suspects made it.



We all sorted it out, hung out for a while, got some lunch from Whole Hog and got to see Dave and Shelby at their now-ubiquitous gelato operation. Those clouds rolled in, providing some much-needed relief from the sun. Around the time that we confirmed we could walk Cheyenne around the place and started to take her down to the acequia, the thunder started. So she just wanted to go … unclear where, but just not here. Eh, the downpour started soon after anyway.



The group decided that was the time to pack up, for those of us who weren't as prepared as Pearl, that meant waiting out the storm. Which we tired of, and during a moment when it seemed it was lessening (but soon [but too late] became clear it wasn't) had me dashing through the rain and into the mud parking lot to retrieve the car to bring it around front among the crowd who also had the same idea and lifting the dog into the backseat because she was having none of this going out in the rain (thanks guy with the umbrella who gave us some added protection) and on our sodden way home.

Where there was some time to recover.



Rain cleared enough to fire up the grill for dinner. Cheyenne was really awfully good with all the fireworks pounding in the distance and the firecrackers in the neighborhood; when we tried to take a break from the evening's Doctor Who viewing to walk up the hill and see if we could catch any fireworks, Cheyenne made it clear that the fireworks were OK only as long as she was inside and they were outside.

This morning, she pretty much slept through the thunderstorm, while I was awake, watching her.

More sleeping in, a longish walk that took us to the (new to us) Torreon Park. Sunday kinda devolved into other things that needed to be done, but that also included some late-day garlic harvesting.