Notes From The Road

Here, have a sunset at Lea Lake in Bottomless Lakes.

• Joy Division was definitely some good road music for my recent tour of the Southwest.
• The UFO Museum in Roswell is a big deal though mercifully cheap. There was a busload of very dirty, smelly and shabbily dressed people arriving at the same time we were leaving. They were speaking a language that sounded vaguely like Italian but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.
• There were people there literally from around the world.
• "There is a sucker born every minute" as ole David Hannum would say.
• I know- you have always heard it was P.T. Barnum. It was probably Hannum but most definitely wasn't Barnum.

  

  In Roswell it is all aliens all the time. Even Motel 6 gets in on the act.

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  From our bathroom door in the Motel 6 in Roswell. Gawd, that place was nasty.

  
  

  

  Somebody at Motel 6 was having a bad day.

  

  Somebody at Motel 6 was having a bad life.

  

  Two fellow travelers at Motel 6. She looked happy and cheerful. He looked like he was whipped and could fall over dead from beat-down.

  
  
• It was the small differences across the board in New Mexico I found interesting- things like the use of white corn instead of yellow for tortillas and chips. 
• Maybe it is service fatigue since it is a tourist trap but we ate out nearly every meal and never fast food and everywhere we went the service was awful. The only place the service was OK was an expensive-ish steak house.
• The mosquitoes were unbelievable. The lady who ran the visitors center in Artesia told me she had lived there 15 years and had never seen anything like it. We went out for an evening stroll... yeah- that lasted about 5 minutes. I'm not kidding. They were all over us like a cheap suit. Off! did not deter them in the least. I know that everything that lives in the desert has to make the most of extra water when it comes but holy smokes.

  

  This corpse is nothing- it was only the first picture of those devils I came to- plenty of times I smashed 5 in one swipe.

• Artesia has some awesome statues scattered around town to view and good food. Stay at the Heritage Inn. It is a quiet, gorgeous place for 130 bucks a night. It is cleaner and cheaper than anything decent in Roswell or Carlsbad and right in the middle of each. If money is no object stay at the Hampton if your going to be in Carlsbad. 
  
  
  
  
• For all my travels- I cannot believe I waited this long to explore NM.
• Although some rent we saw multiple Europeans in their personal camping rigs. They have them shipped over in containers and then hit the parks in our Southwest. I knew it was a thing as there is always stories about their adventures in travel or outdoor magazines and RV travel TV shows. One of our fellow travelers was a cool guy named Martin. He said pretty often he would see a European person who had rented an RV standing beside a dump station holding a hose looking bewildered so he would help them out.