Located on the southwestern shore of Elephant Butte Reservoir, Elephant Butte offers residents and visitors mild sunny winters, hot summers moderated by afternoon thunderstorms or lake breezes, and practically perfect weather in the spring and fall. Elephant Butte State Park is the state's largest park, with camping, boating, and fishing on the 43 mile long reservoir. Three marinas, numerous marine service and storage facilities along with restaurants, a golf course and lodging facilities serve the many folks who use the lake.

The blue skies over Elephant Butte Lake will be dotted with CFO's (colorful flying objects) during the weekend of April 21-22, 2001. Hot air balloons and kites will soar into the sky early Saturday morning, weather permitting, and will repeat their colorful performance early Sunday morning.

"Hi, how's the weather? It's snowing? Oh, too bad. We just got back from the lake!" That's my usual telephone conversation with relatives from the north on winter weekends. In its quieter months, Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico's largest lake, offers solitude and clarity that summer users will never know. The bright, clear sun, the mirrored lake surface, the warm, still air, describe many days throughout the winter months.

Is windsurfing a popular sport in this desert land of ours? Travel only as far as Caballo Lake on any breezy day and you can witness a dozen or more windsurfers (also known as boardsailors), sporting wide smiles on their wind-blown faces, as they glide seemingly effortlessly over the white capped waters.

Christmas was coming to Kingston. The Christmas spirit was in the air. Every burro that came into town over mountain trails packed a Christmas tree, a big bunch of mistletoe, or a branch of red berries. A little of the evergreen went to decorate Mrs. O'Boyle's cabin where the Catholics of Kingston would gather on Christmas afternoon to celebrate the birth of Christ; some of the holiday green went to brighten up the eleven saloons of the town; but most of it went to adorn Pretty Sam's new dance hall, the Casino.

Built in the 1880's, the Barber Shop Café offered customers a bath, shave and haircut until about fifty years ago. The building is preserved much as it was—the original mirror still spans the width of the café with a sign stating "Baths 25 cents." Nowadays, instead of shaves, baths and haircuts, the Barber Shop Café now serves customers the best food for miles around.

The "Jewel of the Rio Grande," or Truth or Consequences, is bordered by the San Andres and Black Range Mountains on I-25 between Las Cruces and Albuquerque. It claims its fair share of snowbirds who flock there to enjoy mild winters, lakes and mountains, hot mineral springs, golfing, the El Camino Real Historic Trail, Geronimo Springs Museum and the Auto Museum. T or C was chartered in 1916 as Hot Springs. In 1950, it became Truth or Consequences in response to Ralph Edwards' request that a town in America take on the television game show's namesake. Edwards still makes an appearance every May to celebrate the change.

Caballo is a town of people who want to live by Caballo Lake and Caballo Lake State Park, too few to warrant a population figure on New Mexico maps. Easily reached on N.M. 90, it sits approximately three miles east of Interstate 25, 15 miles south of Truth or Consequences. Named for the mountains and the likeness of a horse's head on the north end, it is home to year-round residents, snow birds, and the merchants who serve them.. The very curvy sixteen mile stretch of N.M. 90/152 from Caballo to Hillsboro rises from the Rio Grande Valley to over 5,180 feet in the Black Range mountains. The Box Canyon on this road was used by Apaches to hide and wait for freighters and stage coaches. Flash floods were so dangerous that businessmen in Hillsboro and Kingston strung telegraph wires between the two towns to warn travelers on the highway.

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, universally called T or C, is the third name for that city. When it was first settled it was called Palomas Springs, so named because of the large number of doves (palomas) residing in the cottonwood trees along the Rio Grande. In the early 1800s the area west of the river was considered a neutral place where all Indian tribes could bring their sick or wounded to soak in the healing springs. At that time, the springs were actually mud bogs. The original springs are located next to the Geronimo Springs Museum, named for the famed Apache leader who visited. Bath houses are located in several places within the community for those who want to test the healing waters now.

For most, Labor Day weekend in Hillsboro means Apple Festival - apple pie, arts, crafts, antiques and three days of fun on the banks of the Percha River. But for some like Sue Bason of Sue's Antiques and Bonnie Guess of Kingston's Camp Shiloh, the weekend also carries memories of a roaring wall of water - "like a freight train" - that hit town at midnight on Saturday during the 1972 Apple Festival. The deadly flood killed four, washed away seven businesses, destroyed 13 homes, damaged countless others, left behind $750,000 in loss and damages, and, as Sue dryly puts it, "ended the festival right then that year."