January 23, 2013 Out of New Mexico and into Texas

We left Queen Creek, Arizona on Monday morning, heading towards South Carolina.  As we drove east on I-10 we saw about 20 billboards for “The Thing”.   We aren’t on a tight schedule and admission is just $1, so what the heck, we stopped.  It's a pretty good tourist trap, as tourist traps go.  It’s got a big gift shop, a little restaurant, and a very friendly lady who took our money and directed us to the path out back to “The Thing”.  They want to make sure you get your dollar’s worth so they have a big, strange assortment of oddities on view, like a 1937 Rolls Royce that “was believed to have been used by Adolph Hitler...the thing is, it can’t be proved.”  That pretty much sums up all the displays.  There's a lot of random stuff:  French lithographs, old sewing machines, and an old bedroom set where people throw change on the mattress for good luck.  In the last building is “The Thing”.  Back in 1950 when they opened the attraction it may not have been perfectly clear what this was, but it’s obviously an old mummy of a woman and child, with a conical straw hat placed modestly over her midriff.  

Well, we got our $1 worth, so no complaints.  Back on the road!  Originally we planned to stay in Deming but Randy found that Faywood Hot Springs were open so we went there instead.  It is literally out in the middle of nowhere.  The road is rough and hard to follow.  Scruffy trees grow far too close, threatening to scratch the RV.  The sites were uneven gravel and very dusty.  Dust was everywhere.  But . . . they had hot springs!   They had several sets of 3 concrete troughs with warm, hot and hottest water.  I liked hot but Randy went right to the hottest. 

If there was anything else in the area we might have stayed another day.  But there’s not, and sooner or later you have to get out of the water, so Tuesday we drove back to Deming.  At Deming we bought 79 gallons of diesel fuel at $3.69 a gallon, and it's a sad day when that is considered a good price.  We dropped the RV at the Escapee park and drove the Jeep about 31 miles south to the border.  Just the other side is the small Mexican town of Palomas.  The host at the Escapee park said that this town was nothing compared to Los Algodones, which surprised us because Los Algadones is just 3 blocks wide and 2 blocks long.  But when we got to Palomas, we understood that he meant it’s nearly as touristy as Los Algodones.  It looks like a pretty normal little town, with just a few stores catering to US tourists.  

The main tourist store is the Pink Store (Los Algodones has the Purple Store, so why not?).  It sells everything - silver jewelry, painted pottery, ceramic plaques - everything.  The Mexican lady who opens the door is so tiny that I paid her to let me take her picture.  I am such a tourist!

We had lunch at the Pink Store.  I had some fine beef fajitas, and I was happy to learn that they do not put ANY tomatoes in their guacamole.  They also have the prettiest washbasins I've ever seen in a bathroom.

And I love this little group of statues, but I didn't buy them.  I think they work best as a group and I don't have a place for all of them.

Today we drove to Fort Stockton.  It’s a really straight shot east on I-10, but a lot of the roads out of New Mexico and into Texas are being worked on.  Over half the road is blocked off by concrete barriers for miles and miles.  It makes a long, boring drive into a long, tense drive.  But there wasn’t anything between Deming and Fort Stockton that we wanted to see, so we just kept going.  We had breakfast at Fork in the Road but just snacked in the afternoon.  This is what lunchtime looks like in the RV:

And that was followed by miles and miles of driving.  It just wore poor Shorty out.