After leaving Roswell, we headed to Phoenix to visit Jenny's grandparents who are on their annual leave from the Ohio snow tundra! We drove through the mountains in New Mexico and saw our first snow capped mountains. We broke up the longish drive with lunch at an overpriced diner stlye Denny's(that was kind of dirty) and then Missy got sucked into some roadside pottery/souvenir shops. Our final destination for the day was to be White Sands National Park. We did make it there but it was too late to start the hiking that we wanted to do. We agreed that we will hit this place on the way back as it looked very cool! There are some old rocket testing fields nearby too that look like a good place to stop.
We descended out of the mountains into the lights of Las Cruces, New Mexico, spread out in the valley. We found a library in Las Cruces and checked e-mail and worked on the website for a couple hours. These librarians get our vote, along with New Orleans Public Library, for most helpful (well, except for the one in New Orleans who called us 'tacky', but that's another story!). We even got invited out for pizza by the woman who ran the computer lab. We declined, though, because we were going to pull another all-night drive. Didn't see anything of Arizona since it was dark, but we did stop at a rest stop just so we could stare at the sky for awhile. The stars out here are incredible. It's so dark (so few urban areas) you can see ten times as many stars as at home. We ended up doing another couple hour nap at a truck stop, then rolled into Phoenix in the morning.
We were greeted by showers, laundry, and a table full of food. The energetic grandparents then suggested that we go to White Tank Mountain Park for a look at the finest Sauguaro cacti in Phoenix.
