Start from 20 curated places around Ruidoso, NM, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Wendell's
The upscale dining room at the Inn of the Mountain Gods resort, with hand-cut steaks, seafood, and a wall of windows over the lake to Sierra Blanca. The special-occasion dinner with the best view in the area.
Cornerstone Bakery Cafe
A beloved Midtown breakfast-and-lunch bakery turning out pastries, big breakfasts, eggs Benedict, and made-from-scratch breads to a line out the door on weekends. The town's go-to morning institution.
Trails & outdoors
Grindstone Lake Trails
A network of moderate loops around a small mountain reservoir just above town, popular for hiking and mountain biking through pine and juniper with lake and Sierra Blanca views. The most accessible real trail system in Ruidoso.
Cedar Creek Trails
A forest trail system in the Lincoln National Forest just north of Midtown, following a creek through ponderosa with moderate climbs and picnic spots. A quick way to get into the pines straight from the village.
Things to do
Ski Apache
The Mescalero Apache-owned resort high on Sierra Blanca, with winter skiing and snowboarding and a summer season of mountain biking, hiking, and New Mexico's only eight-person gondola. The year-round mountain-adventure anchor.
Ruidoso Downs Race Track & Casino
The historic quarter-horse track east of town, home to the All American Futurity, long billed as the world's richest quarter-horse race, plus a casino. Summer race weekends are the town's signature spectacle.
Landmarks & sights
Midtown Ruidoso
The walkable Sudderth Drive core of the village, a few blocks of galleries, candy shops, outfitters, and restaurants under the pines that fill with visitors escaping the desert heat. The social heart of this mountain resort town.
Free Spirits at Noisy Water
A monumental open-air sculpture of eight life-and-a-half-size galloping horses, billed as the largest equine sculpture group in the world, set on a hillside at Ruidoso Downs. Free to walk up to, and a striking nod to the town's quarter-horse-racing heritage.