Ahhhh. After our day of adventure at White Sands we woke up in Las Cruces, a good sized town and home to New Mexico State University, and were very pleased to discover a coffee roasters just a few miles away. Dad was in the truck in a flash and quickly brought back some delicious espresso from Picacho roasters.
After cafinating and breakfast we hit the road again, heading toward Arizona. We might have a new challenger for straightest road. Here is what the view looked like for most of the day.
While Dad was busy not paying attention at all to the road, he was taking in all of the signs. Two stood out.
The first was "Watch for Animals, Next 114 miles." This one was perplexing for multiple reasons. Firstly. What happens in 115 miles? Do animals cease to exist? How did they figure that exactly 114 miles was the danger area? On top of that, why not put up a few signs? Surely someone who enters the road a few miles up from the sign wants to know about the dangerous animals. Perhaps it was a money saving decision. Government only had enough budget for one sign.
The second sign was "Roadside table, 1 mile." Dad had never seen a sign on a highway advertising a table. Sure enough, one more mile and there was a table. This one kind of made sense, people like tables, but we were hard pressed to see how having only a mile's warning would be very helpful, especially when there wasn't anywhere to buy food within 30 miles in either direction. The one person a year who is actively looking for a place to sit down and have a meal on that road is probably very happy for that sign.
Driving overall has mostly been uneventful. We've had two windy days, but both times haven't been toon bad. One day the wind was at our backs. This resulted in about twice the mpgs we normally get. The second time the wind was blowing across the road. This resulted in about 2/3 our normal mileage. 7 miles per gallon is not fun, but at least has I'm Arizona and New Mexico is averaging around 3.20 a gallon.
We overnighted at the Desert Oasis RV park just outside of Bisbee mostly by chance, as our first choice in Bisbee was booked solid. It was a fortunate turn of events as they had a very nice clubhouse where we washed two loads of laundry and Remy played pool with Dad for several hours. The table was a converted pay table with most of the innards exposed so Remy could see all of the different places the balls could go. Very neat.
While waiting for our takeout at the Thirsty Lizard (lots of good restaurant names in the desert), Mom got a tip about visiting the White Water Draw for early morning bird watching. We hit the hay early in order to prepare for our crack of dawn wakeup!
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