Day Three: To Las Cruces

Pretty straightforward day and an excellent campground in LC!

 Headed for Texas Canyon - nope!  Not in Texas!  But I guess a bunch of Texans lived there during the late 1800s, thus the name...  I love it for the rocks!  : )

 And you probably can't see the cutest feature of this rock pile.  I didn't see it either at first!  It wasn't until I looked at the photo later, and zoomed-in, that I could see the details...

Graffiti, but kinda cute graffiti!

 The Texas Canyon rest stop...  Pretty fall color tree!

 The dogs love to serve as greeters at the rest stops!

 My other view - the rear view.  Pretty cute, eh?!  She reminds me of a bat.

 Scratty walking the line at another rest stop.

 And then?  We're one more state down!  Out of AZ and into NM!

And we land!  We have always stayed at the KOA in Las Cruces, but I'd heard good things about this other place and was worried about the uphill entrance and kind of tight inner roads at the KOA, so we stayed at the Hacienda RV Resort instead.  So glad!!  

 Easy entrance/exit, super giant space (for not that much extra $$), very nicely done lobby/gift shop/hang-out space/laundry room, and...

 SUPER-DUPER dog park area!!!!!!!!!!!

And boy, did our doggies need that!!!  After the long driving days and no good dog park stops, they took full advantage of this place!  It was set up kind of differently, like a dry moat around part of the campground!  But that works!  Plenty of space to stretch one's legs!

  

  

 That evening, we went into the Old Mesilla section (again!  First Mesilla), had a great dinner at the VERY popular Andele restaurant, and visited the old plaza and Basilica of San Albino.  Was very convenient/short drive from the campground.

 So, after a very nice night in Las Cruces, we prepare to do it again tomorrow... 

Act Two: Scene One

So, for our second act, we will...leave!

We took 5 days to get to our new home, including one layover day in AZ.  Nov. 30th to Dec. 4th.

The trip over was an adventure in itself.  Fortunately, it mostly went uneventfully - with the exception of one day, which ended OK but was a little rough and VERY long due to weather.  I was also a little nervous in the beginning, because I didn't know how it would go getting into sites at campgrounds.  I did my best to assure the places and sites would work for us, but you never really know till you get there...  With the motorhome and the trailer, we were VERY long and big, and unlike when towing the truck, we could not really unhook the trailer easily.  And if Bill got stuck somehow, and got into a predicament that he couldn't deal with with the trailer attached, and couldn't back out well enough, it would be ROYAL PAIN to undo!!!  We'd have to unhook the trailer, remove that hitch assembly from the RV, unload the motorcycle and bike from the truck, put the correct trailer hitch on the truck, get the truck and trailer attached, move the trailer, and then do it all over again in reverse!!!!!!!!!!  And we did have some trouble at the very first campground (Picacho Peak - wouldn't necessarily recommend if you have our situation - they have poor management and the guy "helping us into our site" didn't!).  But other than that, we did OK.

 So this is my view for the whole trip...  As the saying goes, if you're not the lead dog, the scenery never changes...!  It was a little sad for me, leaving my beloved Ramona hills.  Mt. Woodson - one of my standard destinations - is the rounded peak on the right.

 Mt. W...

Of course, I only got a few hikes posted on this blog, but if you want to see more photos of the neat Ramona hills, you can go here:  Hikes With Zou!

 Once we got through the horrible morning traffic heading out of Ramona (despite getting a VERY early start...), we headed east on the 8 freeway.  Here we're going through one of my favorite parts, sort of in the Jacumba (don't pronounce the "j" - substitute an "h" instead!) area.  It is loaded with boulders!!

Just acres and acres of rocky hills!

 And down into the desert...

 More rocky hills below.  You can just barely make out the freeway (center left) winding its way through the bottom...

 A rest stop.  Fortunately, there's room for all of us (in the truck portion, of course)!

 Then through the Imperial Sand Dunes (aka, Glamis).  We once flew over this area in the helicopter (many years ago now!) and got some pretty neat images, like this one below:

 First hurdle/state boundary crossed!

 OK...anyone know what the heck this is?  We passed several of them in a row.  

 Love the saguaros of the Tucson area!!  For more of these wonderful desert "trees" you can check this stuff out:  Saguaro photos and a couple more here:  More saguaros and AZ desert shots

 On our layover day in the Tucson/Casa Grande area, we visited our sweet friends, Ede (as in Edie) and Bob.  We met them in Colorado, where we share our summer campground, so for that season, we are neighbors!  Ede is an extremely gifted crafter, specializing (at least currently, and as far as I know) in quilts - although I'm sure she's been into many things and very competent at all, no doubt!!  Here she is, creating!

 And here's Bill holding their newest cutie pie!  Yoda!  Why is he named Yoda?  

Weeeeellllllll........

Nah, he really looks like this!  He does have that smushed cat face, but he's awful cute in his own way.   He's got a terrific personality - is fun, smart, super sweet - and has a wonderful-feeling, smooth-coated little body.

 Ede and Bob.  Bob has a quick wit hilarious sense of humor and keeps me in stitches!!  He's very into radio-controlled planes and is one of Bill's flying buddies in Colorado.

 Next stop was to visit Joe, the guy whose house we bought!  He had built the TX house with forever in mind, but it was not to be.  His allergies made life too much of a misery there.  But fortunately, he has found a new love - AZ!  He found a great little house in a fantastic part of Tucson.  It's in a sort of saguaro forest with the mountains practically right beside him!  Mountains?  Yup, Mt. Lemmon!  Even gets snow and has skiing!  We visited there on our first outing in the Tour (Mt. Lemmon).

 Joe and his new home. 

 Joe took us to lunch at a really nice nearby restaurant ...

 that has great food AND awesome views of Mt. Lemmon!!

 Joe and Bill.  Like Bill says, we got a new house and a new friend!!  : )

 And then, just enough time left...to visit the urgent care...!  This is really a photo of Mt. Lemmon.  All of these photos are with the point and shoot, and most of them are from a moving vehicle!  So the quality is obviously going to be pretty poor!  But these mountains are so neat - definitely need further exploring...and photographing!!!  

And that building you see in the bottom left corner?  Yeah, that's the urgent care we went to.  And why did we go?  Well, I had been having a weird problem that started the second evening of our shed move, about six days earlier.  My eyes, and the skin around my eyes, was very itchy.  My eyes were also irritated and watering constantly.  It was extremely aggravating and Benadryl was no help other than knocking me out!  And it was NOT getting better!  I wasn't blistering, but otherwise it reminded me of when I'd somehow get in contact with poison oak (usually from petting dogs that got into it!).  My body would have a run-away histamine reaction that would not be controlled by anything other than prednisone.  No matter what I tried, it would get worse and worse till I finally ended up with a Medrol pack and perhaps an injection!  Fortunately, the doctor at this urgent care agreed with me and prescribed the steroids, and a little over a week later, I was pretty much back to normal!  The only thing I can figure is that I actually did get a dilute dose of poison oak!  There was one thing in the shed that no doubt had old (several years old!) poison oak oils on it - the chaps Bill used when cutting firewood with the chainsaw...  I must have come in contact with them (although I'm sure that if I did, I tried to do it carefully or not at all!?!) and then somehow rubbed my face.  And yes, that's all it would take...  I am extremely reactive to that nasty stuff!!!!!!!!!

 The Arizona deserts have some wonderful skies and are known for their sunrises and sunsets.  I wasn't out at the right times for the pretty pinks, but I had to at least grab a couple shots on our way out...

The peak our campground was named after.

Now onto Day 3...