Left Las Cruces

The last day or so of our stay in Las Cruces we spent tooling around town and seeing the sites. Las Cruces isn’t a huge place, so it didn’t take very long. I did find a Chocolate shop that sells chocolate covered, sugared ginger…mmmm! It’s really good. Of course, if you’re not fond of ginger you’d probably not like it much. On Monday the 26th, we played a round of Glow Golf. They don’t allow you to take pictures, so I have none to share. It was really a lot of fun; the only lighting in the place is black light. The holes are lined with reflective material and the walls are painted with reflective paint in a jungle motif, well…a neon jungle motif. To get the ball to glow you have to pass it through a light box every so often. It was a good time, Bill beat me by 3 strokes, but we were both well over par for the course. We also saw a coffee shop called The Bean, for those of you who know us, you’ll understand why that’s kind of funny.

Tuesday the 27th we left Las Cruces, NM bound for Benson, AZ. Leaving Las Cruces was bittersweet. One the one hand, there isn't much in Las Cruces to keep ya there, but it was really peaceful and we actually had time to relax and swim in the pool almost everyday.

We arrived in Benson early afternoon and proceeded to have a crappy day of trying to set up in 95+-degree heat just to find out we were really not even a little bit level (low on one side by about 3-4 inches). Bill had to go find more leveling blocks at a local RV place, then came back and we had to rehitch, unhook, and resituate onto the leveling blocks. By the time we were done we were hot, sweaty and irritable. We took a drive just to get out of the RV and into the AC in the truck (since we had been driving for several hours the RV was hot and we had to give it a chance for the AC to catch up). We drove out to Sierra Vista for a quick driving tour of where Bill used to live and for him to see how much has changed. Sierra Vista has apparently grown a lot since he was last there about 12-13 years ago. After that we drove through Tombstone and walked really quickly through, most everything was already closed but what a cool place. We are going back today and I’m pretty excited about it. It’s wonderful how they’ve kept that part of town the way it was in the 1800’s. I’ll write more about it after we get back from there today. Although this post may not even go up until tonight..so…whatever! The first night we stayed here Bill had a rough night. There is a set of tracks that runs right next to the park we ware staying in and the first night the BNSF ran by every 20min and blew it’s horns. Bill only got about 3 hours of sleep, which made him less than fun to be around yesterday. We spent yesterday cleaning the RV, putting stuff away and washing the outside of it. Bill slept a little better last night, so here’s hoping we’ll have a good day.

Hugs~
;-)K

White Sands National Monument

Friday, September 23rd (holy crap I can’t believe it’s already the end of September), Bill and I drove out to White Sands National Monument http://www.nps.gov/whsa/home.htm. Hi’iaka had a blast in the powdery white sand. This place is amazing. The white sand is gypsum and only exists at 6 places on earth. Gypsum dissolves in water and therefore usually doesn’t survive on the surface of the earth; White Sands National Monument is the largest deposit of white gypsum sand in the world. It’s incredible to drive through this park in an AC truck, the sand looks like snow. There is even a part of the road that is covered in compacted sand and looks like snow and ice, like it should be slippery. Then you get out of the truck into 95-degree heat and remember that you’re in the desert. It was so bright that I couldn’t take my sunglasses off, I tried once and almost burnt the retinas out of my eyeballs, it was almost painful, it was SO bright. The total size of the white sand dunes (not just the monument) is 275 square miles, that’s a lot of white sand. The sand is much softer than I would have expected it to be, it’s not really abrasive, it’s far more like powder than actual sand, but larger grained than powder. The dunes aren’t stationary, they move up to 10-13 feet a year. The plants have adapted to this ‘rapid growth and movement’. Some of the plants will grow fast enough to keep their leaves above the dune, then when the dune move on the roots will hold some sand in place and build towers. It’s an incredible place; there is some wild life that has adapted to this area. Lizards that would normally be gray in color have turned white over the decades of evolution. Same with snakes, bugs, and birds. It’s truly amazing the way nature adapts and endures.

Hugs
;-)K

PS - my internal clock is having a hard time believing that it's already Fall...it's 95 freaking degrees here....that's NOT Fall weather!! Bill keeps telling me it's almost time to decorate for Halloween...I just look at him and say, it's 95 freaking degrees out...it's NOT Fall.