It’s that time of year again – time for my family’s semi-annual 4th of July gathering.  This year we all met up at my family’s 40 acres in the mountains of northern New Mexico.  It’s the rainy season and everything was unusually green and absolutely lovely.

My brother playing with his new compound bow.  It has a 70 lb draw and I could not pull it, try as I might.  More incentive to get serious about weightlifting at the gym, I suppose!

My granddad – 80 yrs old and still shooting straight!

Everyone was out sighting their rifles for their upcoming hunting trip in October.  Thankfully, no one was actually hunting this weekend and I won’t be there in October (it’s not my favorite activity.)

My older brother, laughing at something my middle brother said.

I rented a wide-angle lens specifically for this trip and it was certainly worth it.  Just look at all this gorgeous scenery!

It’s monsoon season in New Mexico and the hike we took was right after a 2 hour thunderstorm and right before sunset, so the lighting was spectacular.

My poor baby brother – every time we saw another hill, I immediately exclaimed that I wanted to summit it! This was the biggest one we went up, and we got up the rocks on the top as well (the hard way, of course! Found a much easier way to descend.)

A ridge that runs along the edges of our property.  (Though I’m not sure who it belongs to – either New Mexico itself or another branch of my family.)

My dad took us on a tour of the property (which belonged to his grandfather, and then my mom’s dad before passing on to my parents) and this stake on our land is from 1915!

The sunset was amazing.  In the distance, if you look very closely, you can see a giant mountain.

 And finally, my dad took us to some Native American ruins on our property.  We’re not sure what they were for, but they’re pretty damn cool.