We’re now in Tucson, Arizona, having finally reached a warm spot, just in time for Christmas!  It’s a stunning background with enormous Saguaro cacti, more on that soon …

We want to take a moment to celebrate this holiday and thank all of our friends and readers for sharing our journey.  We hope you are having a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season.

These photos are from the “Luminaria Beach Walk” in Elephant Butte State Park by the town of Truth or Consequences (look it up), New Mexico.  I happened to read about this event while we were in the town of San Antonio, New Mexico, about an hour away.

I love luminarias (sometimes called faroles), and this sounded like a unique event and an opportunity to see the largest reservoir in New Mexico.  So we drove down to check it out that evening.

As we approached the state park, we started to see the luminarias, literally thousands of them, lining the park roads and every walkway, impossible to convey by photograph, but just beautiful.

Once at the park, there were food booths (all free … just neighbors sharing holiday cheer), decorated vehicles, hayrides for the kids, and huge bonfires everywhere.  This event benefited the Make a Wish Foundation, and each booth was accepting donations for the organization.  There was lots of great food, the folks here obviously all worked really hard to cook all of the homemade goodies.

We walked around, sampled the great food, watched a beautiful boat parade, went right up to a hot air balloon whose owners were lifting kids up onto the basket for photographs and sampled more food.

The people of Truth or Consequences (referred to as T or C by locals) really know how to put on a great event, impressive.   And it truly exemplified the spirit of Christmas, which is about giving and sharing.

May you experience the joy of giving today and always.

~ Brenda