Ten whole days in Las Cruces, New Mexico! We arrived at the superbly welcoming Las Cruces KOA Journey campground full of enthusiasm for the billion things we had planned, using the city as our base; a list so long that sane people would have taken a month to complete it. But not us! We were ready to pack it in tight and see absolutely everything! YAY!!
Idiots.
We know better, too. For decades we’ve been admonishing excited visitors to Orlando who think they can do it all in two weeks. But this isn’t Orlando, and we’re professionals. Right?
Normally we stay home on our arrival day because breaking camp, traveling in Fati, and setting up again can be taxing, and we like to start fresh. This time, we headed straight to the adorable town of Old Mesilla, not far from our campground, for its Mexican and Billy the Kid history, and its central plaza decorated for Christmas.
Everything about the tiny burg surrounded by pecan groves worked for us. Cute little one-off shops, strings of red chilis strung along the walkways, and the county courthouse (now a gift shop) in which Billy the Kid was sentenced to hang by his neck until dead for the crime of murder. He escaped, of course, and went into hiding before being shot to death at the age of 22.
Ever-aware of not adding any more weight to Fati than absolutely necessary, we broke our “don’t buy anything frivolous” rule and purchased two gorgeous woven placemats with the kind of bright, geometric patterns so prevalent in New Mexico. We use them every day, and they only added a few ounces of weight. We put on more than that just in belly bloat during the hot summer months, so this wouldn’t even register for Fati.
A take-away dinner from La Posta gave us our first taste of New Mexico, with tacos for Susan and Posole stew for Simon. And we’re here to say, that slightly spicy, hearty-flavored stew was the kind of “gimmie more” soup we both love!
We scarfed our food down and didn’t remember to take photos until it was half gone.
After a blissfully quiet sleep with none of the all-night-long train noise we’d had over the past week, we made White Sands National Park and the nearby town of Alamogordo our first full day’s excursion. We didn’t know what to expect from White Sands, but we didn’t expect the park’s 25-square-miles of dunes to be so completely like a wintery snowscape that we literally had to remind our brains it was pulverized gypsum crystals, not snow, a task made harder by all the people sledding down the slopes (albeit in bare feet and shorts!).
Now, Ruthie hates sand. You know that if you read our Michigan blogs. But this? She LOVED it. She went prancing and dancing and hopping all over the place, full of puppy energy and joy! We continue to wonder if she was a Midwestern dog that got lost from her family while they were on vacation in Florida, and that she was fooled by the familiarity of a snowy landscape.
From there we went to Alamogordo, where a giant pistachio convinced us to buy a few packets of the real thing, locally grown…
…then we headed up through Lincoln National Forest to Cloudcroft, a place so mountain village-y and so cold it felt like a winter’s day in the Colorado Rockys. Here, Ruthie got to walk on her first patch of real snow (that we know of), and she seemed to enjoy it.
El Paso, Texas, our next day’s destination in Nippy (we’d only be able to drive though it in Fati on our way south), should be an entire blog. It’s iconic. Everyone knows the name. It’s filled with Spanish missions and great Mexican food, and we set off from Las Cruces with visions of authentic cuisine and spectacular history on our minds. But that’s not what we found.
We’re certain we didn’t get the best out of El Paso. Everything felt a little bit “off.” It didn’t help that the Visitor Center was located in an area that was entirely boarded up and abandoned, and the center itself had long since skipped town, too.
We tried. We really did. But, for whatever reason, we kept running into closures and locked doors. Need the restroom? Forget it. They’re all locked unless you buy something. We did find a nice market near the Old Town that opened their restroom doors for us, and we were told there is a problem with people experiencing homelessness that has caused local businesses to make the decision to lock up.
And then there’s that big whompin’ border wall that commands attention no matter where you are in town. It’s like a lurking presence. We bounce back and forth between understanding the necessity and being horrified by the inhumanity of it all.
The big red X across the border in Juarez is a sculpture that represents the blending of Spanish and Aztec cultures.
To lift our spirits again, we took to the Billy the Kid Scenic Byway the next morning, hot on the heels of the infamous outlaw. Our launching point was Smokey Bear Historical Park, the burial site of the little bear who was rescued after a deadly blaze and became the nation’s advocate for preventing forest fires.
A cute museum told his tale, and honors the country’s longest running advertising campaign (say it with me: “Only YOU can prevent forest fires!”).
Next up was Lincoln, where Billy the Kid was jailed for murdering a sheriff, and he then shot and killed two deputies while escaping. The tiny burg has hardly changed at all since the 1880s.
Mule deer (or, they might be elk; we never can tell) are all over this town, which added to the yesteryear Wild West feel of the place.
The mountainous drive itself was just stunning, and again, it reminded us how little we know about this country. We didn’t expect such enormous mountains in New Mexico.
But we weren’t done yet. We had two nights booked at a hotel in Santa Fe for a trip in Nippy that would also include Albuquerque and Taos. But we’ll cover that part of our journey in another blog.
Roswell and Carlsbad Caverns were also on our must-do list while in Las Cruces, but as we returned to Fati from Santa Fe we came to an energy-crashing halt. We just couldn’t add another 500 miles to our touring, not to mention having to leave Ruthie in a rented crate while we did a cave tour. It was a bridge too far.
We consoled ourselves by remembering our time in Postojna Cave Park in Slovenia, a spectacular, other-worldly experience during which we were taken “behind-the-scenes” to a pitch-black area where the blind, pure-white, salamander-like Olm (Proteus anguinus) lives. Unbelievable luck allowed us to see this magnificent creature, which lives to 100 years old and only needs to eat every couple of years. We’re not sure anything could top that cave adventure, so that’s the sentiment we stuck with when dropping Carlsbad Caverns from our journey.
And Roswell? One too many people told us it’s entirely skippable. Two people mentioned issues with crimes against automobiles. We really wanted to go anyway. But we’d been talking about having unfinished business in New Mexico, and we’re sure another visit to the state – next time for longer – is on the cards in the future.
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