Saturday, October 20, through Thursday, October 25, 2012:  Six Days in New Mexico:
On Saturday, we made the 160-mile trek to Las Cruces, New Mexico---on I-10, roughly 40 miles West of El Paso.  We are staying at the Hacienda RV Resort. 

It's a near-new, beautiful place, with excellent facilities (pool, jacuzzi, clubhouse, showers, etc.)  We don't typically use the facilities, except a dog run, but it's nice to have the option.  One special touch here is that they groom each site by dragging a mesh screen over the gravel as soon as a site is vacated.  The effect is that each site looks as nice as a freshly groomed baseball infield. 

Saturday night, we met Peter and Esthela Rothe for dinner at the St. Clair Winery & Bistro in Las Cruces. 

Becky met Peter in 1997 when they were jointly working on a job search, and, as with everyone she meets, Becky has stayed in touch ever since.  We last saw them in 1998, just before we moved to Denver. They are an interesting couple, and we had a lot of fun reliving the past 14 years.

And the restaurant was very nice---good food, nice wait staff, great ambience.  I returned Sunday morning to buy three bottles of its wine.  The place is owned by a winery (the largest in New Mexico) located in nearby Deming.  Where we ate is called a “winery & bistro,” but there is just a bistro there.  The company has two more bistros---in Albuquerque and Farmington.

Sunday morning, Becky went on a 12-mile bike ride across Las Cruces. 

While she was on her ride, I took my rear wheel to the only local bike shop open on Sunday to get a new tire and tube due to a blowout that occurred a few days ago without my knowing it.  Just as I returned, I received a call from Becky to the effect that she had just had a flat tire.  I picked her up and we returned to the bike shop to get her tire fixed.  In addition to a new tube, she bought a new shirt, of course.

Monday morning, we took a short 3-mile bike ride to see if we could do it without getting a flat tire, and we succeeded.  The destination was the post office in nearby Mesilla.  That small town was settled in 1848, following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican-American War, and the surrounding area ultimately became Las Cruces.  Mesilla continues in operation today, with a few homes, some stores and restaurants, and a lot of historical buildings.  It's quite cute.

We had lunch in Mesilla at a Thai Restaurant, and Becky then went on a 9-mile ride to work it off.

Monday night was the final candidate debate before the November election, and I couldn’t be happier that it will finally be over.  We don‘t watch the debates; we wait for the post-debate pundits to analyze them.  It‘s less stressful that way.  I’m so tired of it all, that I almost don’t care who wins.

Tuesday, we made the 109-mile move to Silver City, our last New Mexico destination.  It’s about 35 miles off the beaten path (the “beaten path” is I-10), northeast of Lordsburg. 
We stopped at the Visitor Center, then took a short tour of Silver City before settling in for the night.  It is an old and apparently somewhat static city of about 11,000 people.  It's the county seat of Grant County, and it has a beautiful old courthouse.

We are staying at the Rose Valley RV Ranch, a nice, fairly new place, designed to look very western.  It has one especially nice touch---the side-by-side sites are screened from one another so you can sit in your patio and be relatively private.

C

There's not much we want to do here in spite of the glorious things they pitched at the Visitor Center.  On Wednesday, Becky took a bike ride around town, and we hit the local Walmart for some food items.  On Thursday, Becky went to Glenwood (about 50 miles away) to visit Sue Boles and John Gilmer, former co-workers at the North Rim.  The principal reason we came to Silver City was so Becky could visit them.  I stayed back to deal with Ramsey, and read.  It's very relaxing here at the ranch.

So went our exciting six days in New Mexico.