A TOUCH OF CHRISTMAS IN APACHE PASS

MONDAY MARCH 3/08

Brrrrrrrrrr, it was a cold start to the day with the temps in the mid 20's this morning. I was glad I had packed up & got the rig ready for traveling yesterday afternoon. We rolled out of our Elephant Butte Paseo Del Rio site about 8:25. We highly recommend this place. Very quiet, scenic with animals & birds along the bank of the Rio Grande. The washrooms & spacious showers are wheelchair accessible as well. We will come here again if we're ever in the area & it's only $8 a night. No electricity or water on site.
Stopped at the bigger Elephant Butte State Park just down the road & emptied our tanks & took on fresh water. Breakfast at McDonald's & we were on our way. Bye bye Truth or Consequences & thanks to Becky & Norm for a good week.

We had a nice northeast tailwind all the way down to Las Cruces before heading east & then northeast in the direction of Alamogordo. Tricky crosswinds kept us on our toes as we headed up through White Sands & Alamogordo. Stayed on highway 70 to the scenic little town of Tularosa & then headed east over the Sacramento mountains through the Apache Pass. We had seen a big mountain from a long way off with a lot of snow on it & as we climbed higher in the Apache pass we were close to that mountain passing it just to the south. Highway was bare & dry but there was snow on the ground all around us & at that elevation with the snow on the pine trees it reminded me of Christmas. Kind of a warm fuzzy feeling as I hummed Christmas carols to myself, thoroughly enjoying the picture post card winter scenes going by. Kelly took some pictures as we slipped over the summit of Apache pass & began the descent to Roswell. OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/ This #70 four lane highway is a great stretch of road going through the mountains between Tularosa to the west & Roswell to the east. Steepest grade was only a gentle short lived number 5 & there was very little traffic on it. Will definitely use this road again if we're ever traveling in this area.
We dropped out of the mountains onto the vast flat prairies about 3:30 & rolled into Roswell about half an hour later.

Roswell was a big surprise to me. For some reason I had thought it was just a small dusty little old western town with ticky tacky green Martian billboards all over the place. Couldn't have been further from the truth. Roswell is a sprawling ciy & even has a couple small skyscrapers downtown. It's really spread out & is right up to snuff with all the big box stores, etc. A very modern city indeed. Found a Wal-Mart in the north end so pulled in to see if we could stay for the night in the parking lot. It's always good to ask because some Wal-Marts allow RVers & some don't. This one did:)) There is a Starbucks here so as soon as I'm finished typing this we're going to walk over there in hopes they have Wifi. If they do, I'll upload the blog & web album. If not, I'll just have to wait & see where we are to-morrow night. We'll leave here in the morning & head northeast up to Amarillo & pick up I-40 heading east. That is of course, if we don't get beamed up out of the parking lot in the night by an alien spaceship. Afterall, this is Roswell, New Mexico:))

7:15 p.m. Awwwwww nuts!! Starbucks doesn' have Wifi so they sent us over to McDonalds but they didn't have Wifi either:((
I wonder if that spaceship to-night will have Wifi...........Hmmmmm!!

Tuesday March 4....This email is coming to you from a McDonald's in Brownfield, Texas:))