Into the land of enchantment

December 6, 2021

Las Cruces to Las Vegas, NM

This morning dawned cold and very windy! You could barely see the mountains east of the valley because of all of the dust that was blown into the area. That was too bad as I was hoping to see a pretty sunrise.

We were up early and on the road by 9:30. This time angling east and north along Highway 70 on our continuing journey toward Denver.

The road was recently paved and had a wide shoulder. Although it was a 4-lane, it had less traffic than the interstate and would make a good bike route if you didn't mind some climbing right out of Las Cruces.

We made a couple of stops today which helped break up the monotony of the desert scenery.

The first was at White Sands NM. We had never been there before so decided to drive into the dunes for a few miles to check it out. It was amazing how white the sand was and also how fine grained it was - almost like sugar. After a quick stop in the visitor's center, we continued on down the road.

For miles and miles, we had seen billboards advertising this pistachio place north of Alamogordo that supposedly had the 'World's Largest Pistachio'. Ok, this we had to see!

We pulled over at a pistachio store and farm to check things out. Well, it wasn't the correct place for the giant pistachio (that was a little further up the road), but we were able to get free samples of their pistachios.

Don ended up buying some green chili/garlic pistachios! He likes hot but I don't so went into the wine room to sample a couple of their NM wines. They didn't have any that were sweet enough for me, so I ended up not buying anything.

We just drove by the giant pistachio without stopping at the gift shop that was there. It was pretty stupid looking.

The rest of the day was just a long, long drive as we headed for Las Vegas, NM. It was quite windy most of the time and cold outside. I'm going to have to dig out my turtleneck top and long underwear when we get to our camp site!

At least the scenery was varied today as we climbed in elevation out of the flat stark desert into rolling hills covered with junipers. We've never been on this road before so it was interesting to see the area.

By 4:30 we were pulling into the KOA near Las Vegas. I couldn't believe how cold it was outside! The temperature tonight is supposed to drop into the 20's so the clerk recommended we use a heated water line to hook up the trailer. We got one of those last year, so were good to go on that.

Don had just enough time to get things hooked up before the sun went down. I was thankful our furnace was working as we needed it as soon as we arrived!

The rest of the evening was very quiet. We're kind of out in the boonies so had very little TV reception. A good time to relax/read a book and get ready for another day of travel tomorrow.

Check out the shoulder on Highway 70 east of Las Cruces - it's wide enough for a car!

Looks like snow doesn't it - but it's not. Just the white, white sand at White Sand NM.

I spotted this neat tumbleweed snowman at White Sands. I saw on the news that both Chandler and Las Cruces had tumbleweed Christmas trees. Guess you use whatever materials are at hand!

The 'world's largest pistachio'. Kind of hokey if you ask me, but there you go.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	1
Comment on this entry	Comment	0