Dead silence!

We finally were able to leave outta AJ Monday afternoon! I did our packing up over 3 days, which for us worked well trying to remember everything that needed to be done! The last thing to be done was to secure the awning!

Let me preface this by saying that back in September, the young man we bought our rig from showed us how to use it! When we got to AJ in November, all we could remember was to flip a couple of things and pull a black strap with the long thingy! But there was NO black strap! So we found a gentleman by the name of Blacky to come out to repair! He was awesome and realized quickly we were total newbies at this.. He explained that because of the high winds we had experienced on our trip down, the black strap had gotten wound inside the awning! He proceeded to manually unwind and then showed us how to set up. Only charged us $20!

Fast forward 7 months and we could remember we had to loosen some thingys and hang on to the black strap with the long doohickey and its supposed to go up! After much a do we got it almost in and then SNAP..both sides broke!

Ugh..but luckily Jer had saved Blacky's no and called..he was there in a half hour, remembered us, had lots of laughs and got us fixed up..showed us how to secure for strong winds too! But the best thing...he gave us this:

We got on the road about 12:30pm and headed out on 60 and then to 70.. Beautiful road through Indian reservation and mountains..we hit high winds tho and decided to stop at a Pilot truck stop for the night in Lordsburg, NM, which was next to a UP railroad track. That ran trains blaring horns. Every. 10. Minutes. All. Night. Long!!

Needless to say we were up early, got dressed, and got our coffee and got on the road east quickly! We did see these Border Patrol guys having a coffee break! Pretty cool job I think!

Took I 10 east and then continued on 70 through Las Cruces.  After Las Cruces 70 heads through a military missle range..not a big deal, except for the signs that occasionally they are testing??? But all traffic was stopped for this checkpoint. All they asked me was if I was a citizen and they asked Jer if anyone else was in there? Oh and what kind of gas mileage he got?!

We then turned south on 54. We are now at Oliver Lee State Park! It is wonderfully quiet, at the base of the Sacramento mtns. Our view from our rig, front and back!

After we rested for a bit, we decided to head to White Sands Natl monument. Used our senior pass and got in free! Yay! Had a ball playing in the dunes! Bailey acted like it was snow and dug and snow plowed with her nose through!