When we checked out, I let the hotel know that there was a distinct odor of sewage whenever we turned on the sink in the room. The manager was very nice and apologetic. In fact she told me that it took her a long time to even brush her teeth with any New Mexico water. That’s not encouraging for our next week and a half.
We got on the road and headed for our next destination: Roswell. Home of the infamous UFO crash landing back in the late 40’s. Or was it early 50’s? I had around August of ‘53 in my head. At least that’s what they told me after the crash before the little earth beings showed up. You know … Now that I think about it, I suppose it’s possible that Mgrdfchll accidentally- or on purpose - hit the “New Date” button and sent us into the future. Or the past. But you know … We were here for a while before we figured out how to inhabit the bodies of human beings. That August 1953 date could be a body inhabitation - er - in human terms - a “birth celebration.” No matter. I felt a sense of guarded excitement at returning to our crash site. And, no, I wasn’t worried hangout being recognized. The disguise has served me well over these last 70
Plus years.
After the reunion of sorts in Roswell, we headed on over to Alamogordo to see the world’s largest pistachio. It was about the size of a two or three story building. Big. Inside the gift shop they had all sorts of flavored pistachios. The place smelled weird to me. We did get some pistachio ice cream, though. Not bad. Chris loved it. She wants Blue Bell to come out with a pistachio flavor to put in her rotation. Go for it.
Next stop was just down the road at a place we have been to before. White Sands National Park. Chris needed to grab a stamp for her book. We did try to make our way to one of the driving places. Sadly, the road to most of the park was closed. The only parking site open was at “The Nature Trail.” Nope. I learned my lesson so-called nature trails are code named to hide evil intent. We passed. Oh, but the highlight of the day was at the White Sands Visitor Center. Parked out front was a really old station wagon. The kind they use in all the movies (well, at least the Clark Griswald movies). It even had luggage all strapped down on top. I wasn’t the only one taking pictures, either.
The final leg of our journey was to get us to a place called Silver City. And the only route was right through the middle of the White Sands Missile Range. Fortunately, they were testing on our drive through. Actually, the freeway was set to be shut down today for some missile testing. Just missed us.
Somewhere between Las Cruces and Deming we were stopped (along with everyone else) at a border patrol checkpoint. They just wanted to tell us to have a good afternoon. Strange.
Speaking of strange … we made it to our hotel in Silver City. Comfort Inn, so we expected certain amenities. Like a luggage cart. Or maybe an elevator. Nope. We had to haul our stuff from the car all the way up the stairs. Not fun. The place was old, so things were run down, but we can live with that. At least it was clean. And no extraneous bugs.
Our strangest adventure of all came at supper. The first place we tried had no place to park. We punted and decided to settle for Denney’s. Hey. It’s been a long time since I had Moons Over My Hammy. How hard could it be?
Yep. We should have known something was wrong. There was one server and one cook and one guy who came in and left then came back and left again. The food took forever to come. Actually not that unusual for Denney’s, but at least this one had an excuse. Little did we know poor staffing was not the only thing going on.
Later on, while we were eating, two police officers came in. They wore bulletproof vest emblazoned on back with the words “Fugitive Apprehension Until.” They spoke with the server, then left. She immediately ran to a back window and looked out. When we checked out I asked if the cops caught whoever they were looking for. She told us it one of their managers! What a night for her. Pretty good story for us. Someday I’ll have to embellish it.
1 Samuel 2:2 says, No one is holy like the Lord! There is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.
Father, thank you for the chance to taste something new yesterday. It’s developing into an all-senses vacation. Amen.
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