Where are we?

On Monday morning we traveled south to Amarillo and looped around it, not through town.  As a result, we didn’t see much more than truck stops.  Across the Texas panhandle the main things to see are the huge beef feedlots.  As we were crossing the border into New Mexico, we had a phone call with our NOMADS friends in Montana.  We first met them at a project in Arizona last winter and we dropped in at their house last August.  They will soon be leaving home, heading back to Arizona as well.  We will be sure to catch up with them again soon somewhere in the Phoenix area. Since Sunday was a long day we had a short Monday stopping at Clovis, the first large town into New Mexico. We did a little shopping and just relaxed.

Yesterday, Tuesday, the scenery of eastern New Mexico seemed a lot like western Texas, with straight and flat roads, but soon changed into higher plains and we began seeing some actual mountains.  A few already had a white dusting of snow on them.  We skipped on the Billy-the-Kid museum near Fort Sumner, but had lunch and a history lesson at the same time when we pulled into Mountainair where the visitors center for Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument is based.  We left the high plains (>6600 ft) and dropped into the Rio Grande valley and actually drove on a freeway for awhile (I-25).  We spent the night at a nice little RV park in Socorro, New Mexico.

Our daytimes have been pleasant with partly cloudy skies and temps in the high 50’s to low 60’s; good for driving.  Nighttimes have been very quiet and cool, with temps near freezing.  Yesterday we made sure we had a full water tank and empty holding tanks overnight.  This was a good thing since there was a hard freeze here overnight.  By the time we get to Phoenix, temps should be in the 70’s.