New Mexico, Meeting old friends and new ones!

We left the Guadalupe Mountains with a bit of reluctance as we both really enjoyed our hikes in the mountains of west Texas. But as with anything in life all good things must come to an end but it certainly doesn’t mean that things can’t be better down the road. We were on the road by 9:30 am (easier to do with the time change to Mountain Standard Time) and it was a mostly uneventful drive.

We chose to go around El Paso on the loop 375 that goes across the Franklin Mountains and other than a bit of construction and a few steep inclines it was most likely an improvement over going through the middle of the city. Next up was the border of New Mexico where we also picked up some brisk sideways winds but we were able to fight through them as we headed towards Las Cruces. Once we got to Las Cruces we pulled into Hacienda RV park. A little pricier than we would like but for an addition $5.00 per day they will let us store our motorhome on the same site as we are on for a week. We had barely pulled into our site and Sharon was outside doing some of the hookups when she heard her name called… Who could that be???

Lo and behold right next to our rig was none other than the very clean and shiny rig of that blogging traveling threesome of Catherine, Jo Beth, and Grace (Check out their blog R-V Crazy Travel Journal). A crazy small world we RV’ers live in and we are certainly glad that fate smiled upon us that day so that we were able to meet and greet the three of them. Even though we would only be neighbors for a bit more than half a day we had a great time chatting and swapping war stories over a bit of vino. This made for a great welcome to New Mexico.

But our purpose in Las Cruces was two fold as we wanted to find a place to leave our rig for a week while we made a road trip up Interstate 25 to Albuquerque to visit one of Sharon’s best friends and we also wanted to stop by and see a very dear friend of mine that works at New Mexico State.

Off we went to search for my friend (top photo). This fellow was one of my professors while in college and I took a several graduate classes with him including Terrestrial Ecosystems and Aquatic Entomology. He later became my friend as I assisted him in leading his field trips in Terrestrial Ecosystems. In exchange I got to learn even more and best of  all I got to spend a week in Big Bend National Park each spring.

We had a blast reconnecting and reminiscing about past times. We did much of this at the De La Vega’s Pecan Grille and Brewery in Las Cruces where we had a sampler flight of the 16 beers on tap. One that really stood out was the Green Chili Lager…. dang yummy beer I might say.

What a great start on our trip to New Mexico where we were not only able to meet with some very dear old friends but also to meet some new friends at the same time. How lucky we are to be able to do what we are doing at this stage in our lives…