Grace O’Malley’s Irish Pub in Ruidoso, NM

It seems like a long time ago that we were in Ruidoso, NM. My previous post was from a 3 1/2 hour slice of time on Memorial Day afternoon as Barb and I walk up Sudderth Drive. This post is from an even narrower slice of time – about one hour – during the next afternoon.

The day after Memorial Day, I spent the morning still reading, marking, and highlighting, the owner’s manual for the Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera that I had been in possession of for less than a week. For lunch, we went to a casino/resort owned and operated by the Apache tribe, known as The Inn of the Mountain Gods.

We rarely gamble, and were not interested in doing so that afternoon, so we just walked around the facility taking lots of photos – both inside and outside this beautiful facility.

After a couple of hours, we headed back into Ruidoso, which was only about 5 miles down the easy-to-drive 2 lane road. Since the afternoon was still relatively young, we decided to stop at Grace O’ Malley’s Irish Pub that had been so busy the previous afternoon.

The place was pretty much empty at 2:45 PM, so we had our pick of which bar stools we wanted to sit on. I made sure that we were on the side of the bar that was nearest to the large windows on the street side of the building.

For those that know me, I rarely drink beer anymore, but all of the hard alcohol staring me in the face just didn’t seem inviting at all at this time of day. So we asked the bartender what local beers he could recommend to us. Barb settled on a light colored beer that had been brewed with hatch chili peppers, and I settled on a Fat Tire from Colorado (close enough to New Mexico for me).

While we were getting settled in to our spot, I just started playing with my new camera.

Barb was sitting to my right, and these beer taps were just to my left.

With the mixed lighting situation (window light and tungsten lights), I reminded myself to get a photo of my ColorChecker Passport so that I could make sure I could color-correct all of the photos from this visit later in Lightroom, if needed.

So we  sat there talking and playing with the new Olympus camera.

The timestamp on the next photo tells me that I drink this much beer in 17 minutes:

About this time, we started talking to the bartender – he was only “kinda busy”, and he knew that we were tourists in his town. Here he is making some mixture of two different beers, and is known as a “Back and Tan”. He explained to us that this beer concoction had to be made from two specific types of beer. I forget the first one, but the second one had to be Guiness Stout, as it would float on top of the first one (if he didn’t pour it too fast).

We were getting relaxed from the beer, and it was very pleasant inside this Irish Pub.

After 45 minutes, we had finished our beers, and decided that it was time to head on out. When we got outside, I wanted to get a couple of photos of the outside of the pub. The first photo was the opening photo to this post, and the second one I took had the moon in it!

So there you have a few photos taken within a one hour slice of time. What perfect way to spend time on a vacation!

One thought on “Grace O’Malley’s Irish Pub in Ruidoso, NM”

  1. The second shot – that’s a lotta liquor! I tend to take shots like that myself when I find an abundance of it. The interiors here are very nice – the kind of place I would love to visit. Those are some awesome taps too!

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