On and On into Texas

We stayed one night with the Escapees in their park in Yuma and took advantage of their pool due to the 80 degree temperatures, then moved on to the Elks Lodge in Casa Grande where we caught up with Paul and Karen before moving further East again.

I-10 gets pretty boring and we pressed on to Deming with a night in another Escapees Park there before settling down for 4 nights in Alamogordo’s Elks Lodge. We originally scheduled 3 but the weather forecast for Sunday wasn’t good so we stayed where we were.

White Sands Missile Range developed most of the USA's

Missile Systems

Nike Ajax was the US's air defense in the early 60's

A day at the Space History Museum and laundry led to a day in Las Cruces and a very pleasant visit to Mesilla Historic Town which was bypassed by the railroads but still managed to live on and preserve it’s heritage.

The Basilica San Albino in Mesilla

The interior of the Double Eagle Restaurant Mesilla

Double Eagle Dining Room

Billy the Kid, Kit Carson, Pancho Villa all came to Mesilla.

A major stop on the cattle trails, Mesilla was bypassed by the railroad.

On the way back we stopped at White Sands National Monument, This is a very picturesque area of rolling white sand. It’s white because it’s gypsum sand (What makes plaster white). The locals get to sled down the dunes with sleds they can buy right there at the gift shop! The sand is so white it almost looks like they are sledding on snow, except that it’s 75 degrees out! A big rainstorm the night before had erased all the previous footprints in the sand so it looked very dramatic seeing footprints going up the dunes and straight lines coming down. It wouldn’t have taken much to get me on a sled!

Miles and miles of white sand dunes

Sand Sledding

The Elks 1897 lodge is a fresh looking, friendly place and the RV park holds about 16 rigs with full hookups. Everyone there was friendly and nice and we spent far more time eating, drinking and chatting than we had intended to. Ah well, maybe we can diet next week!

As we were leaving we met Juliet who had pulled in the night before, she’s a full timer, an Escapee and a Blogger. Read her blog at http://tailsfromtheroad.com. She’s heading west and we’re heading east so it was just a brief encounter before we headed out on Rt 82 towards Cloudcroft NM.

Rt 82 really surprised us as we climbed out of the desert and up into A SKI AREA! There was even snow still on the ground under the many pine trees. A really scenic route that we’d highly recommend if you’re in the Alamogordo area and in no rush. No pictures unfortunately as I was busy driving.

Soon we were back in fairly flat semi desert again through the busy oil wells of eastern New Mexico and west Texas on and on, the agriculture took over from oil and cotton fields changed to cattle grazing then to wheat growing by the square mile. All on good roads and absolutely not a single mile of Interstate in 800 miles.

If I haven’t mentioned it before let me say now that I detest Interstates. For most of my life I would pound down them to get to a destination in the shortest time, then back to get home again. Now that we don’t have to be anywhere anytime soon it’s so enjoyable to set the cruise on 60mph and watch the scenery go by, stop when we feel like it, picnic at some convenient spot and set up camp in the early afternoon.

Stops at Hobbs NM and Snyder TX got us to Wichita Falls TX just south of the Oklahoma State Line and North of Fort Worth. We had rain off and on for the past 2 days and the coach and car are filthy. The weather forecast is for more at the weekend and thunderstorms Sunday. So we’ve chickened out and decided to stay at the Elks Lodge here until Monday (5 nights).

It’s a great lodge, so warm and welcoming, and the food is amazing! Ribs last night and Burgers tonight. We had promised ourselves to eat less and try to lose some of the weight we gained over the winter. Looks like it won’t happen this week!

First things on our agenda? Laundry then sight seeing.