Las Cruces, New Mexico

After a great evening socializing with our neighbors at the Red Barn RV Park in Roswell, NM, we crashed in anticipation of a travel day today.  Bill and Jo are based in Texas and are traveling around the country as the spirit moves them. Bill is retired Air Force and Jo is a retired computer expert.  They're traveling in a 1993 Foretravel Unihome that looks like it just rolled off the assembly line! Stored indoors it's entire life, the decals are pristine and the fiberglass shines like the sun. What a wonderful couple with lots of great stories! We hope to see them again one day.

We left Roswell at about 10:30, knowing that the trip to Las Cruces is only about 197 miles. Highway 70 takes a traveler through some beautiful country as it climbs out of the valley that Roswell is in, and climbs into the tail of the Rockies, through Tinnie, Hondo, into Ruidoso, Bent and Tularosa. Cresting Apache Pass at 7,950 feet, the highway drops gently into Alamogordo. Past Alamogordo, with its atomic history, the highway crosses the White Sands Missle Range as straight as an arrow. A bit of a hill just east of Las Cruces got us into St. Augustine Pass and over at 5719 feet and then we dropped into Las Cruces.

Just to re-interate, when I say that the road is straight, I mean straight:

White Sands National Monument is just off the highway.

And more straight:

We're just staying one night in Las Cruces, due to travel constraints that require us to be in Southern California in a few days. One of the reasons that we're staying here after a short travel day is that when we were here early in 2013, we had dinner at a wonderful restaurant named the Double Eagle. Two separate restaurants occupy the building, one with New Mexican food, and the other is a steakhouse. We ate the most wonderful New Mexican food that we've ever had, and so while we're in the area, we just HAD to stop in again! The entrance is rather nondescript, but the interior is done in the old spanish style with a central courtyard.

And the food! Chili Relleno's, enchiladas, tacos, and of course, rice and beans, sent us into a frenzy! We vowed that we would take half home for lunch tomorrow, but that somehow didn't happen. Oh, and then a lemon "cloud" dessert with Raspberry Sorbet finished us off….

A walk around the Old Mesilla Square after dinner seemed to be in order. We again marveled at the old mission dating back hundreds of years,

The weather this evening is spectacular, about 65 deg, with no wind, so there were several people out walking in the square.  We chatted a bit with a couple from Winnipeg, Canada, who are just finishing up a three week trip to the US. Nice people, with a plump Westie dog that loved to lick toes!

Back in camp, we're going to settle in for a bit of TV so that dinner can go directly to those parts of our bodies that need it the least, and then totter off to bed. It's looking like tomorrow will be a long travel day, so wish us luck!