Welcome to our 50th Anniversary road trip....

After we had an awesome breakfast at our motel we loaded up the car and discovered I had left the sunroof open all night!  I guess I was really focused on the cookies!  Other than wondering most of the morning what kind of creeping/slithering beast had entered our little sealed metal tube on wheels over night through the open roof hatch….the morning drive went well.  We continued on I-10 into New Mexico and Las Cruces.  There we would take Rt. 70 through White Sands National Monument, past Holloman AFB (home of the 49th FW) and into Alamogordo.  We joined Rt. 54 in the city and promptly got lost.  There was a lot of construction and the traffic was slow and narrow.  We decided to backtrack for a while, the GPS was going crazy but we finally got back on course.  Then it was time for lunch so we decided to find something local instead of National chain fare.

I knew we had stumbled onto something….special when, after we parked, I noticed a fence in front of me with goats on the other side!  The old west restaurant had a petting zoo!  We walked inside and discovered it was a biker bar/restaurant….hmmmm  We took a table so I could have my back to the wall and reviewed the menu.  I forgot what we ate but it was pretty good….I’m sure glad goat wasn’t on the menu.

We found our way back to Rt. 54/70 and drove north to Tularosa where Rt. 70 broke off and we stayed on Rt. 54 N for 165 miles to Santa Rosa and our night’s motel.  Along the way we saw a lot of wild antelope roaming in the vast landscape.  Coming up from the south we passed many abandoned businesses on Rt. 54….it was actually kind of spooky.  But when we got closer to I-40 it began to be more populated.  As we were unloading the car for the night I noticed a hot rod on a very high sign post….it would be our first stop tomorrow on the way out of town.  But tonight I would be the laundry lady's bodyguard.  Since we had accumulated enough dirty clothing to start our own Goodwill, we decided tonight was the night to change them from being carried in plastic trash bags to being back in the suitcases!  We also discovered that the laundry area was hidden off the main hallway so Mr. Ruger and I kept Linda company while she performed her magic; turning dirty clothes to clean clothes.  We traveled 520 miles today….tomorrow would be more!