from Texas to New Mexico

510 miles more done today and we experienced all possible kinds of landscape. Starting with sort of greenish desert, through real dusty desert to mountains, beautiful forests and green fields - all in one state. New Mexico is called this way for a reason. Here, Spanish seems to be the first language. Again there were quite a few inspection checkpoints for ID control on the freeway.

hardcore driver

El Paso - freeway in US, foothill buildings in Mexico

We made a mistake and missed the tourist information center so we didn't really know if there was anything interesting in the state of New Mexico. We just kept stopping whenever we felt like without any particular plan. We will prepare better for tomorrow.

We accidentally stopped in one rest area that turned out to be the last one at Rio Grande river. Years back the settlers used to give their horses a rest and accumulate water supplies for the long travel north. It is hard to imagine how that was possible in this very hostile environment.

last friendly stop

New Mexico flag

We decided to keep on driving to Raton, NM, a town close to Colorado border. Most of the town and street names are really Spanish and hard to pronounce but this town name beats them all:

Truth of Consequences ...

a very lonely VOR in the middle of nowhere

The Cumulonimbus cloud in the background was supposed to be the motto of this pic but Ziggy just couldn't help himself and pulled out the flag he got from the Aussie team in Uvalde and positioned himself in the middle of the picture.

a drastic landscape change

We watched a documentary about hotels some time ago. It turned out that the dirtiest and most bacteria affected item in a hotel room is the TV remote. This is the first time I see somebody took care of this issue. We are extremely positively surprised with the Best Western hotel in Raton, NM:

OK, enough of writing and time to go on a food search. First I have to let the male finish his real Mexican treat though. He deserved it after so many hours of exhausting co-driver duties and I'm working on one as well.

The plan for tomorrow is the famous skiing mecca - Aspen, CO.