Population: 111,385 Elevation: 3,900'
That was the worst travel day of the entire 3 year trip.
Don't get me wrong. Las Cruces is a pretty city as viewed from the RV park.
Here are some pictures of the surrounding mountains.
The trip getting here was a mess.
We were supposed to leave on Friday, but a snowstorm rolled in.
We didn't want to travel in the snow. It was supposed to be a blizzard around Van Horn. Based on the roadside snow we saw, it was a blizzard. Anyway, we left on Saturday morning and the weather was predicted to be clear and windy. Guess what, it was really windy.
We made it past all the snow when it got windy. The wind was blowing the trailer around and I had to drive slower than usual. I noticed something flopping around at the bottom of the trailer, so I pulled off at the next truck stop.
A gust of wind went under the trailer and blew one of my side panels out. It broke all the screws holding the bottom side on. I got a couple of bungie cords and strapped it on so it wouldn't blow all the way off. It didn't stop it from flopping, but it is still on the trailer. I went in the truck stop and tried to clean up. Did I mention that the parking lot was gravel and full of puddles? When I walked back to the truck, I saw something hanging down under the trailer. One of the plastic panels underneath the trailer had come off too. I had to crawl under the trailer and try to screw it back on.
After we left the truck stop, I stopped at the next rest area (about 10 miles down the highway) just to see if things were staying on. They weren't. The side panel was still on. The underneath panel was even worse than it was before. Now 2 panels were hanging down and scraping the ground. I took both panels off and used even more bungie cords to strap in all the wires and hoses that are under there. I put the panels in a storage bays under the trailer.
As we got closer to El Paso, the wind calmed down.
We got in to Las Cruses over an hour later than we expected to. Because of the wind and going up hill most of the way, I got 7.1mpg for that leg of the trip. That is the lowest of the entire 3 year trip.
On Sunday, I fixed the side panel with metal screws and wire. It won't hold forever, but it should hold until we get to Yuma. I started to work on the underneath panels but found some more damage. When the plastic panel came off, it broke the fresh water tank drain valve. I need to fix that when we get Yuma too.
House News:
No updates.
Beer News:
We went to a brewery for the first time in months. We went to High Desert Brewing Co which is the second oldest craft brewery in New Mexico. I had an IPA and an Octoberfest while Jan had a wheat beer. Jan couldn't finish her second glass so I dumped the last of my Octoberfest into her wheat and had an Octoberwheat. It wasn't bad.
We were hungry so we ordered a nachos. They asked if we wanted chilies on top but we said no. They added jalapeños anyway. Jan couldn't eat the nachos, only the chips with just cheese. We forgot that New Mexico is the chili pepper capital of the world. Everything has chilis and is hot. We looked over the menu again and only about a third of the items did not have chilis on them. Jan ended up with a pretzel without cheese dip because the cheese dip was hotter than the nachos, according to the waitress.
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