Later Wednesday

Well, we had quite an interesting and unexpected day! We stalled around a while this morning, waiting for a restaurant that Connie had enjoyed previously to open at 11:00 am. Tomastita's, which is in an old Santa Fe Railroad building. Anyhow, we had a really great meal there, so that was very worthwhile.

Our travel motto is always "probably," or "maybe," etc. Plans are subject to change at any moment. We had had difficulty figuring out where we would go, but looking at a map, decided on Roswell NM, solely on the basis of the flying saucer stories that abound there. That meant going south--but not farther west--so it isn't really taking us a lot farther from home, as continuing on to LA would.

However, our thought was readily out-bid by the suggestion from Paul (Connie's oldest) that Roswell wasn't that exciting a destination. He suggested, instead, White Sands--which I know of mostly as a missile testing ground.

It is interesting how this trip thus got a technological bent. The motel we stayed in at S.F. was very near the house where Paul (a physicist) and family lived in when he worked at Los Alamos. Connie and I both felt that White Sands was right on, in part because it would appeal to Connie's husband, Jim, and to my father, both engineers.

So we set off to the south, but took the "scenic route" for quite a ways, which had a fascinating landscape. Then we went a bit west to the Interstate--and its 75 mph speed limit, and its rest areas with "rattlesnake danger" signs posted! ;)

Now we are in Truth or Consequences, NM. Driving through town quickly, it is another example of how the development at the junction of the interstate has badly hurt the older businesses along the former main highway. And really much against our own preference, we too ended up at a Comfort Inn near the off-ramp. But we are going to go into town for a dinner at one of the "older" restaurants.

Connie and I have both been so impressed by the scenes that have passed our window. Everything in S.F. is built of adobe. All the houses, the buildings, are so different from our midwestern world.




And the high desert (is that the right word?) landscape of NM is also so unlike anything that we know.



The other striking thing is how vast the distances are. You can drive so far without seeing any evidence of human activity, let alone a gas station or restaurant.

Anyhow, we are having fun. Now this is seeming like a trip into Oklahoma, New Mexico, and part of Texas as much as a Route 66 trip. But we did cover more than half of the mother road, and with luck, will get a chance to do the other half sometime in the future.