Day 58: Long drive to Las Cruces, NM

Friday, May 31, 2019:

So Fred woke up after a restless night’s sleep with a couple of bug bites. Immediately, I thought of Nadine’s horror story about waking up in the middle of the night when she first moved to Texas. She awoke to the sensation of something stinging her. She flipped on the light just in time to see a scorpion in her bed. The scorpion was able to sting her two more times before she could jump out of bed! What an evil little scorpion!🦂 That’s absolutely the stuff of nightmares right there.

So naturally, I began thinking a Texas scorpion had stowed-away in our bed. I stripped the bed and shook out all the linen today but I didn’t find anything.

I had a great night’s sleep, completely unaware of Fred’s restlessness. Fred told me this morning that he had kept a little secret from me. I would have been wide awake all night worrying had he told me… Apparently, we were under a tornado watch all night. He saw the warning on the TV while I was writing the blog and then didn’t tell me. There have been some really massive tornadoes hitting the area lately so it would have scared the crap out of me.

I am glad he didn’t tell me. I would not have slept at all. And nothing happened, so it all worked out.

He got up early and parakeeted me. I didn’t wake up until an hour and a half later. We had our normal breakfast and then Fred took a shower. It’s Friday so he called and chatted with his mom for a little while.

Because we stretched our morning out and pushed it to the posted checkout time (11am), I knew Fred would need a rest soon. I was thinking we could leave the Jeep unhooked and just drive the Jeep and the RV separately over to the nearby Walmart. That way we would charge the battery in the Jeep and I could do a little shopping while Fred took a rest. I figured we could hook up the Jeep after I shopped. Then we would be ready to drive for quite a while.

That’s not how the morning worked out. I followed Fred in the Jeep to the next exit which was also the Love’s Travel Plaza/Carl’s Jr Restaurant. Since it was after 11am, I was already hungry for lunch. I was going to go in and grab us some burgers while Fred gassed up the RV. A bus full of teenagers swarmed the the Carl’s Jr. like bees returning to the hive. That’s just our luck. So that really slowed us down.

I braved the line and grabbed us two burgers and a salad. By then Fred was ready to just hook up the Jeep and drive. He said he felt good and didn’t want a nap. So we hooked it up and hit the road.

The burgers were nasty and cold. Road food sucks some days. I ate half the salad and then stood beside Fred and fed him the other half while he drove. He was really set on putting in some good mileage today. We laughed that I was turning into a mother figure and was even making the crazy faces that moms make when they feed babies.

After our lunch, we did put in some miles. I kept looking for another Walmart or a Costco. I wanted to be able to walk around somewhere air-conditioning while Fred took his rest. That way I could stretch my legs and keep us supplied with water and fresh produce. Google recommended a few nowhere near the freeway, even one Costco in Mexico!! Google has no brains!

So long story short, there wasn’t another good shopping spot until we hit El Pass and that is not a place conducive to drive an RV. It was about 3pm while we were there and traffic was a mess. El Paso is a mangled madhouse of traffic and power lines. You can tell it’s nasty hot outside because you can see the sizzle in the air. Everything was congested and the freeway on & off ramps were complicated to use. We decided not to stop there.

I could tell driving in conditions like that was stressful for Fred and very draining. He kept saying he, “Felt fine.”

It was only another hour to Las Cruces and there was a Walmart there. It defeated the point of having somewhere comfortable to walk around while Fred napped but at least I could grab some apples and bananas.

We ended up stopping for a rest at a roadside reststop. I walked outside for a bit but it was hot and dry and my skin turned into crusty ash the instant I opened the RV door. My body likes the humid climates better apparently. Even my allergies started acting up here.

Fred has been breathing better though in this dry air. His cough got a lot better as soon as we hit the dry air. So that’s a great thing!

Somewhere between Kent, TX and Sierra Blanca, TX We hit a time change again, back to Mountain time. We stopped to rest near Kent, and I could have sworn my phone said it was 130 pm. But after we left the rest stop, the GPS said it was 1230pm. so it took me another 20 minutes to figure out if I was crazy, or we had passed through a time change. Good news, I’m not crazy. And Fred’s nap was free today because we gained an hour. 😁

The temperature increased from 80 degrees to 87 degrees too almost magically when we hit the time change. My body is definitely screaming now, “Turn around! Go back to Florida!”

We saw our first billboard for, ” The Thing,” just over the New Mexico / Texas border. Only 230 miles to go to exit #322 in Arizona. I love it.

We will see more signs like this sprinkled every few miles, counting down the distance remaining to “The Thing.” Fred has never been. It was a place my family stopped every year when we drove I-10 on summer road trips when I was young.

Fred pre-selected the Hacienda RV Resort in Las Cruces, New Mexico, while we ate breakfast this morning. So I called them to see if they had a spot for us tonight. Making phone calls in a moving RV is still incredibly frustrating for me. The bouncing and the rattling and the wind noise is REALLY frazzles my nerves. I got it done though and we had a destination.

When we got into Las Cruces, I unhooked the Jeep and Fred took a little rest. I drove over to the Walmart for a walk and some supplies. I got back around 5:30pm and we headed over to a nearby taco spot for dinner.

Their tacos were interesting. We got a 10 taco plate to share and it came all dissected. You had to assemble them yourself and that made a mess. I kept dropping my precious chicken pieces on the floor. It was sad.

We got a half a rotisserie chicken to go so we would have some food for tomorrow’s lunch and then headed back to the RV.
The time change and the drive through El Paso made us both pretty tired so we went to bed early and fell asleep quickly… I was even too tired to remember about the scorpion!🦂

Next stop… Tombstone, AZ!