On the road in Texas

On Wednesday, we left Carlsbad and crossed the state line into Texas...

I thought I'd be snapping a photo of a big sign saying something like "Welcome to Texas, the Lone Star State" or some such thing, but obviously that was not the case.  It was small, short, and to the point.  Driving south we passed through Pecos. Apparently they are the home of the world's first rodeo.  The town itself looked really run down. Horrible in fact. 

The countryside is dotted with these oil derricks. Oil is big business in West Texas.  I must admit I found myself singing the Clampett's theme song in my head, over and over....   Come and listen to a story bout a man named Jed, a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed, Then one day he was shootin' at some food, and up through the ground came a bubblin' crude... OIL that is, BLACK GOLD, Texas Tea... 

I love windmills, especially working windmills, so you may see more of them as we go along.  :)

Sometimes there are strange formations in nature.  This hill was one of them. What it may resemble, I'll leave to your imagination!

Here's the travelin' duo, headed down the road, enjoying the ride!

They are accompanied by their traveling buddy with two feet on the scratching post, looking to see what's coming his way. Jinx no longer rides in his crate while the motor home is in motion. He's pretty darn relaxed about it and normally sleeps on a dinette seat.  Occasionally he'll venture up front to see where we're headed :)

I'm not sure, but this is probably the first time I've ever seen a speed limit sign for 80 mph. They don't differentiate for cars and trucks, either. Just a green light to drive 80 if you'd like!  We go at a much slower pace, about 60 mph. 

Really?  A town called "Welfare"? In Texas? Hmmmm

Here's our coach, set up in one of our Texas overnights. It was a nice park in Fort Stockton.

After a long day on the road, the driver may possibly enjoy an adult beverage. 

As the sun starts to set, the driver may be be seen offering cat treats to a certain member of the family.

The "first mate" says, "goodnight from somewhere in Texas".

"See y'all next time!" says Jinx the RV cat!!

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

We spent Monday driving south to Carlsbad, New Mexico.  It was a short drive of about 65 miles to our campground for two nights, the Carlsbad KOA. 

After setting up camp, we drove the 13 miles into the town of Carlsbad for some much needed groceries and etc. We also scouted out the cheapest -- but most accessible -- gas station that sold diesel.  We knew we needed to gas up the motor home on the way out of town, but when you're towing a vehicle and are about 54 feet long (in total), you must also have accessibility! After accomplishing these tasks, we returned to the campsite and made dinner. John barbecued us a couple of steaks and they were suburb! 

  

 I sauteed some potatoes, onions, and mushrooms together, AND steamed some asparagus.  It was a fantastic dinner! :)  Some nights we eat well, and others we just have what John calls "pickies" - cheese, crackers, etc.  One night I made him his favorite - Shepherds Pie... that was the day he worked so hard on the shower!  He deserved a special treat!  How did I get on the subject of food?  Well, time to move off that topic and on to our next day in Carlsbad. 

Tuesday morning it was off to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Here is a photo of Suz and the White Knight. The WK is above the National Park Service "shield". :-)  The name of the park is sort of cut off, but blame that on John-- the not-always-awesome photographer. Yeah, the wind was blowing like crazy!

I knew there would be some hiking involved, but I desperately wanted to see the cave, so I was determined to be able to hike it! Luckily, there is an elevator that takes you down 75 stories deep into the cave.  The "Big Room" has a mostly flat 1.2 mile hike through and around it. Here is a series of photos from inside the cavern.... the first one shows our "White Knight". :) Yep, he went down into the cave as well! 

Here's one of John inside the cave:

We learned all about stalagmites and stalactites, "curtains", and "popcorn". It was all unbelievably fascinating!

Here a stalactite (from above) and a stalagmite (from below) about to meet. When they finally meet, the formation is then called "a Column".

The next photo shows "popcorn". 

It was coolish (54 degrees or so) and somewhat humid down in the cave. The humidity was actually wonderful as we have been exposed to the coldest, DRIEST air I can ever remember. We are both drying up like a couple of prunes, but that's a subject for a different blog post! 

Once we resurfaced, we had lunch and then stepped outside to this view:

That's Texas in the distance.  Our next "port of call" so to speak....  Frankly, we are amazed at the vastness of this huge country. John says that you have to drive it to actually get a true feel for how large it really is.  

Next time we blog, we'll be talking to y'all from the great state of Texas! Believe it or not, we've only ever been to Texas airports (Dallas and Houston). Time for us to explore this massive state!!

Roswell, New Mexico

January 12 was the day we decided to visit the UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell New Mexico. When in Roswell, it's the thing to do! There was a lot I didn't know about "the incident" which happened in July 1947. Before we get into that, I have to share the McDonald's sign we drove past in Roswell... I thought it was pretty cute.

Upon entering the museum, we began reading all the information they had on the walls, which was displayed in a timeline. It would take ALL DAY to read all the info they had, so I'll just share a few snippets of it.  In a nutshell, a rancher who was out checking his livestock, came across some strange debris in the field. 

He then went and told the county sheriff about it.

Here's the report of it in the local paper, dated July 8, 1947.

q

The US government got involved since there was an Army Air Base near Roswell at the time. As the story goes, the government was successfully able to cover this incident up by saying it was a weather balloon that crashed into the farmer's field.  Here's an account from one of the men stationed at the base.  There actually were a lot of signed affidavits by people that were involved in this "incident" and all said that there was a government cover up. Some people swore they saw a "flying disc" and others reported that they saw the debris from the crash and alien-looking small bodies.  I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

This next picture we call "Spot the Alien"!  

These were props from a movie entitled "Roswell" that came out in the 1990's.

After the UFO museum (which also included an interesting exhibit on Area 51 in Nevada), we came back down to earth and visited a historical home in town.  We didn't get any photos, but it was restored to it's original condition, circa 1912.  I know this doesn't sound too old to many folks... but New Mexico wasn't even declared a state until 1912, so this was in the "babyhood" of New Mexico.

While we were out an about in Roswell, we stopped at no less than three hardware stores, trying to find parts to repair the leaking shower.  John was unable to find the exact things he needed, but the resourceful fellow that he is, he managed to get some bits and pieces that he felt might work. Here he is working AGAIN on the shower.  

Here are some of the tools that were critical in the shower repair. 

I should have included in the previous "tool" photo, a golf club.  Yes, a golf club.  At one point, when an essential piece of pipe dropped behind the shower wall, a golf club was needed to get it out!! I am happy to report that after four days, several trips to hardware stores, blood, sweat, and tears (on my part, at the thought of having to shower in campground showers for the rest of this trip), John was successful!  Our shower is up and running again!!! YAHOOOOO!  I have to give kudos to my persistent and determined husband, and not once did I hear any bad words during the struggle.  He never ceases to amaze me :-)

As far as Jinx the RV cat, well.... we have given him one treatment of the lime/sulphur "horse dip". He didn't mind a bit, but OMG, that stuff reeks to high heavens! We were told to treat him twice a week for 8 weeks. So far, he is still occasionally scratching, but I don't think that any additional fur has fallen out.  We'll keep the kitty updates coming! 

In our next post we'll see where the "White Knight" ends up next!!  As a hint: He likes National Parks :)

Las Cruces to Roswell New Mexico

Saturday morning January 11th, we packed up, left Las Cruces, and headed northeast towards Roswell New Mexico.  This is one of the places that John simply didn't want to miss... guess we've heard about UFO's all our life and it was time to check out the area in person! We left Las Cruces with the shower still "out of order" - a bit of a frustration to be sure! 

The landscape northeast of Las Cruces is pretty much like the landscape west of it - a lot of nothingness.  This time we'll show our definition of said "nothingness"... I call this photo "long lonesome highway".

About 50 miles along the way we came across the White Sands National Monument.  They weren't kidding when they call it "white sands".  People come here to sled and snowboard down the sand. Here's the best photo I could get of the dunes. No, that is definitely NOT snow.

We drove through the little town of Alamogordo, where pistachio farming is big - literally!

Then it was up a mountain - and we had no idea how high we were going to end up!  When we saw snow by the road, we knew we were really climbing!

We were shocked when we reached the top and saw this sign:

Then we were treated to this view - just like the views near our home:

Before too long we were headed down the long lonesome highway again... and here's our driver at the wheel :)

As we were pulling into Roswell, we saw a couple of cute aliens that I just had to share here.

Then we made our way to the Red Barn RV Park where we hooked up and Suz settled in to watch the BIG Seahawk playoff football game. John on the other hand, unhooked our tow vehicle (known as a "toad" in the RV world) and headed into town to find a Home Depot. There have been very few things John cannot fix... and at this point, there is still hope in my heart for the leaky shower to be repaired!  The conclusion to the shower story and our visit to the UFO museum will be in our next post as this one is getting a bit long!!  We appreciate all of you following along on our journey! 

Tucson to Las Cruces

On Thursday the 9th, we left Tucson headed east with our destination as Las Cruces New Mexico.  Neither one of us had ever set foot in New Mexico before, so we were rather looking forward to it.  Along the way, in Eastern Arizona, the scenery was ever so blah! It was too blah to bore our readers with even one photo of it! So we won't. There was only one spot with some rather interesting looking rock formations, so I did snap a pic of them.

Then it was on to Las Cruces. It took us about 5 hours to drive the 262 miles. After miles and miles of total blahsville, we finally saw our destination in view.

Once there, we set up at a nice in-town RV park called "Sunny Acres". They had everything we needed, including plenty of TV channels and decent internet. Maybe I should rephrase that to say: "They had everything we WANTED", not needed.  Originally we thought we'd stay just one night here, but then we decided it would be nice to take part of a day and explore the area. We were glad we decided to stay.  Las Cruces (meaning "the crosses") is a nice, moderate sized town of about 95,000.  We went to a historic area nearby called Mesilla.  Love this photo of all the dried chiles!!

A very lovely statue, set outside the Catholic Church in Mesilla.  

We stopped by a winery tasting room too.  Who knew they grew grapes/made wine in New Mexico?  We sure didn't. Had fun in the tasting room where I found the cutest Gingerbread Man - music box at 75% off!!  We also bought a bag of roasted pistachios that are farm grown nearby.  Of course we did some wine tasting!

Then we left Mesilla and drove around the area a bit - hoping to get a good photo of the beautiful mountains. On the way, we passed a school yard where the kids were playing what I initially thought was Lacrosse.  John literally turned the car around to have another look... they weren't playing Lacrosse - they were playing Cricket!  CRICKET??  I quickly snapped a photo and hoped no one would think we were stalking the school kids.

We did manage to get fairly close to the mountains and got one more pic.

I should title this section: "Keepin' it Real".  Things are not always hunky-dory on an RV trip...  it's not all blue skies and perfect roads.  Nope, we have issues, just like at home.  Here are the "issues" for this week:  

The shower started leaking.  John took it apart and finally figured just where the leaker was.  As luck would have it, we didn't have the proper part to fix it - I mean, who carries plumbing parts with them??  It was too late in the day to find any parts in Las Cruces, so the shower has gone dry.  Here's John doing some diagnosing.

Then there was Jinx the RV cat.  During the past 5 days or so, we'd noticed that he had begun losing fur around his left ear. See photo below....

Poor Jinx!  Now Jinx had never EVER lost any fur on any part of his body before and the nurse in me tried to diagnose the cat.  My thought was that maybe he had ear mites which caused him to scratch the fur off.  We called the Banfield Pet Hospital in Las Cruces (where Jinx has his own "wellness" policy!) and made an appointment. Banfield has pet hospitals all over the US and his health records easily transfer from one to the next. We took Jinx in for his late afternoon appointment.  Jinx yowled all the way.... he does SO well in the motor home and SO poorly in the car!  After a thorough exam, the vet said he did not know for sure what could be causing Jinx's alopecia, but that it most definitely is NOT ear mites....so much for my veterinary skills. They did a fungal culture which will take ten days for results, and sent us home with some medicine to put on his skin. Some sort of lime "dip" that the vet admitted was made for horses.  Hmmmm.  Guess there must be lots of horses with hair-loss problems in Las Cruces.  Here's Jinx sitting in one of his favorite spots - John's seat at the dinette.  See, you can't even tell that he has "unidentified alopecia" (his official diagnosis). 

So much for our adventures in Las Cruces.  More next time with updates on both the shower and the cat... plus, what we hope will be an "out of this world" experience in Roswell New Mexico. :-)  Hope you'll stay tuned!