Las Cruces, Day Three

Um, ooops, I kind of forgot about Day Three! I guess I better just go ahead and wrap it up.

That morning we actually slept in! Until 8:30! It was awesome. We never sleep in. At home, the cats make it near impossible to sleep past 6:00am and well, there's just always so much to do. So we get up early. So sleeping until 8:30 was a nice treat. And after we got up, we still had quite the leisurely morning. Ate a little food from the hotel breakfast bar and basically just sat around trying to decide what to do that day. Stay in Las Cruces another day? Go to Silver City? Stay the night in Truth or Consequences? Head back home? We just couldn't make a decision.

In the end, I nixed staying in Las Cruces for another day as I thought we would end up getting bored. There's not a whole lot to do there. I mean, we could have found something to do, but two days and nights seemed like enough. We decided to head back north, stop in T or C for lunch and maybe stay the night there if it felt like the thing to do. We loaded up the car, made a quick stop at the used bookstore so Will could look for something, another quick stop at the Goodwill and then we hit the road. Oh yeah, we made a quick stop at the Sands Motel as well so I could take some photos of the sign. I love old motel signs. (Doesn't everyone?)



We hit T or C around lunch time and drove through town, checking things out. We saw a couple of thrift stores that we wanted to check out and some other random shops that looked interesting. It seemed like we could probably entertain ourselves for awhile. And there were plenty of motels with vacancies, although none of the spa motels had openings. (People go to T or C for the hot springs.) We circled back around the main part of town, found a place to park and walked over to the Happy Belly Deli for lunch. I had the best chicken salad sandwich that I have ever had in my life. Seriously. It was that good. I don't know what was different about it, but it was amazing. It made for very happy lunching.

After lunch, we hit the first thrift store. It had a lot of potential, but in the end, we didn't buy anything. They had a file cabinet drawer full of old cameras, some Polaroid, but they were all of the plastic variety that I either already have or don't need. I also spotted an old Canon AE-1 which I would love to have, but it was 50 bucks and not in the best shape. I probably would have taken it for 20 bucks. Besides, I really don't need another old SLR camera. I love my Pentax K1000 so much. We hit a few antique shops, full of pretty awesome stuff, but oh my god, so expensive! I don't know how they sell anything to anyone. Anyway, it was fun walking around. We were still on the fence about what we should do. Another night away from home would have been nice, but we decided we'd had our fill of T or C. So we headed back to the highway, making a stop at one more thrift store. You could barely walk around the place and the woman in charge were not very nice so we didn't stay long.

Back on the road, we started heading into stormy weather. The wind was insane. INSANE. I don't know if I've ever been through such wind before. I was actually kind of afraid. But nothing bad happened, of course. We hit some rain, but nothing too crazy. As we approached Albuquerque, we kept hearing about all this crazy snow in Santa Fe and the roads being a mess. That made me nervous as well, but when we hit the Santa Fe area, it is totally dry. No snow. No icy roads. It was kind of bizarre that they talked it up so much on the radio when nothing was really happening. I guess maybe it had snowed earlier in the day.

So we made it home, safe and sound and happy to see the kitties. They were quite happy to see us. They don't like being on their own so much. No one here to open the door for them every ten minutes or tell them how handsome they are.

Anyway, it was a fun trip. I'm glad we got to do it as now I have no idea when we'll get away again! Might not be until the fall.