New Mexico to Arizona

 

We were able to get an early departure from Elephant Butte Lake State Park.  This had us out on the highway by 7: 30 in the morning, and we had just over 300 miles to go. 

We drove down through the town of Hatch, NM, the home of the Green Chili Festival.  The town, while small, had good vibes and it will be on our ‘return to check it out’ list of towns.   We were a bit early to get a green chili burger, but the breakfast burrito was pretty darn good!

 

One of the very noticeable things along the highways we’ve traveled is the billboards!  There are dozens and dozens of them.   I’ve taken shots out the window of many, too, too many to put on the blog.  Small Burma shave signs these are not! There have been areas where all you can see along the highway are a couple of miles of billboards, usually down both sides of the road.

We’d being seeing billboards for The Thing way back in Colorado, and Texas!   I have to say we were not tempted to stop and find out what the “Thing” is!  In case you’re wondering, what ever it is, is attached to a food/gas/touristy shop in the middle of nowhere!  Maybe we’ll go back when the ‘All new Museum Soon’ has been completed…. Or not!

 

Along the way there have been many long, straight roads.  This one had some scary signs!  If I recall correctly, it’s about a 20-mile straight stretch across an alkali desert.  It was sunny and, lucky for us, wind free on the day we traveled.

 

We passed some outcroppings that reminded us of Baja, and the mile markers confirmed that we weren’t too far away. 

 

The one area in Texas canyon really made us think of Cataviña, a great place to explore, especially with all of the balanced rocks we saw from the highway! We’ll have to go back and delve into this one.
 

We pulled into our site at Desert Trails RV park in SE Tucson about 1:30. After a walk around the park to choose our new site, we backed Eagles Nest in, unpacked a bit, pulled out the lawn chairs and poured ourselves a landing rum!  

I’ll post photos of our campsite soon.