NEW MEXICO TO TUCSON (395 miles)

We haven’t been taking advantage of the whole day to travel, we’ve been pretty lazy, waking up with just in time to get ready and get out of the hotel room before check out, having a bite to eat, sometimes sight-seeing before taking off, so by the time we end up on the road, a lot of times it’s been past noon. I know…we could’ve been there by now but I’m having a hard time waking up early, I feel like we’re not getting enough sleep!

So after we left the hotel room, we looked for a place to eat and found this micro brewery in Socorro (Socorro Springs Restaurant & Brewery), D-LICIOUS! Yummerssss! We had a beer, got some to go, had a nice burger and left (way too much food). That beer was just so so so…good. We stopped at this gas station in the middle of nowhere, I don’t remember anything being around it. Anyway, we park to get some gas and it was UNBELIEVABLY windy…I mean. WINDY. I really felt I was going to fly away. So we go in to get some water and pay for the gas and I ended up talking to this little old lady. She worked there and was kind enough to get me some coffee and chat with me for a few minutes. She moved to Arizona from Texas, I don’t remember why, but she says there are days the wind is much worse. I can’t imagine that. She was really sweet, I would think she should be at home sewing or something. We left.

After an extremely frustrating day, we decided to cut our trip short and stay to rest in a hotel right off the highway. We only had  little less than 200 miles to Tucson. We were supposed to be there Friday night to meet our friends and spend the night there and all of Saturday….BUT the wind….was unbearable, we were both pretty tired, it had been a long day and the speed was not getting faster. So we continued Saturday morning and got to our friend’s finally, a little past 12. Before we got to Tucson we saw a billboard that said “Come see the ‘Thing’!” like…don’t you wanna know what it is? I really could care less, I just wanted to get there, but Ryan……RYAN really wanted to know what this “Thing” was so…we got off the highway to go check it out…and it was nothing.

First of all, it was in a gas station, truck stop kinda-one. You go in and you gotta pay a buck to get in, so we did……and it’s just a “tour” of old crap they have from way back I think they claim 1800s or so, some things maybe even way back to 1600s. I have my doubts on the authenticity of these things, I think some are pretty obvious they’re that old but some…I highly doubt it. The worse one was this mummy they had in this glass case, but it was one, laying in hay, and two it had no description or nothing, it looked really fake and umm…shouldn’t this be in a museum or something?!?! does anyone know about this place? OH, and all the stuff they had behind glass cases, like guns, pottery, old machinery, etc……hadn’t been cleaned or dusted seems like SINCE the 1800s. It was dumb but fun, there were some interesting things in there but I think they’re just making money this way, there’s no real “Thing” it’s all about everything like: “this car was the “thing” in the 20s” or this gun was the “thing” that was used back in the…” so we killed about an hour looking at this stuff, the funniest part is that the trail goes behind the gas station around this tiny little neighborhood so you’re practically walking behind people’s backyards. Terrible.

We really enjoyed staying with our friends and it was nice to finally introduce them to Ryan and finally meet their youngest. They’re great. While we went out to get a few things at the store, the turtle disappeared for about 30 minutes, she had escaped out of the tub I had put her in. I thought it would be nice to put her outside and let her sunbathe….I even put a big rock so she can climb to….I guess she was fed up and jumped out. Marci found her eventually, thank goodness. Flounder cannot be replaced.

They made a nice dinner for us, killer guac, had some nice beers and talked for a while. listened to some music and Joe made us a nice goodbye breakfast the next morn.

We left them Sunday morning and headed to downtown to check out the shops and restaurants. We walked around for a little bit, took some pics, bought some souvenirs, had a smoothie, enjoyed some real heat and took off to Sedona!

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