New Orleans/FL Trip (Day 43) - Elk City, Oklahoma – Las Cruces, NM

The weather didn’t cooperate and we left under rainy skies with a forecast of more to come. A storm had come down through the night and dumped a fair amount of snow in the area east of Albuquerque. The New Mexico road conditions web site was reporting packed snow and icy road conditions on I-40 east of Albuquerque for the rest of the day and the NWS radar showed a small, but fairly strong system moving east. So, we decided to push west as far as Amarillo, then SW towards Las Cruces, NM (near El Paso).

The roads were good (not Interstate, but 4-lane divided U.S. highways). It continued to rain and we even had a few snow showers at 6500 feet as we crossed the mountains south of Roswell, NM. We passed through Ruidoso Downs, the site of a famous quarter horse race track and resort in the mountains. There is a Museum of the West there which we didn’t have time to stop and see – maybe on the next trip. After a long downhill ride from Ruidoso we arrived under clearing skies at an RV Park in Las Cruces, NM near I-10.

Before arriving at Las Cruces, we also stopped at the White Sands National Monument in the desert east of Las Cruces. We wished we had more time to visit, but got a brief look at the impressive white gypsum sand dunes and a tour of the small NPS museum at the Visitors Center. The White Sands area is also home to the U.S. Army Missile Test Range and the Trinity Site, the site of the first atomic bomb test.






It was a long day, but hopefully all the weather is behind us and we have clear sailing ahead.