Socorro, NM

October 14, 2010

First time to Socorro! We had a very good Mexican dinner, cruised town a bit, and we will be on our way in the a.m. This is a mail stop, we haven't been any place for very long recently, so we picked a place we thought we might be a week down the road. This decision got us off of I-40 and on to US -60. We have seen much new terrain today, mostly high desert, but some variety made the drive interesting. We cruised through towns like: Quemoda, Pie Town, Datil, and Magdaline. Each had a similar look only varying in size from small to extremely, did-we-miss-it, small. We did stop in Pie Town and had our first ever $5 slice of pie, a la mode will be $2.50 extra! They did have some interesting combinations, Peanut Butter Pecan almost tempted me, but we went for All American Apple and Triple Berry. Both were tasty.

We slowed down, but did not stop, as we passed the Very Large Array. This set of satellite dishes was built for the purpose of catching signals from outer space. In anticipation of arrival, we talked about documentaries we've seen on the topic and even the movie with Jodie Foster playing the lady who got the whole project underway. Titles on that one escaped the memory, but we had the gist. In fact, we knew enough to feel justified to keep on rolling. Point: it's pretty cool to see and I'm sure the info/visitor center has a lot to offer, like the title of the movie!

The last week did not go quite as planned. We spent a wonderful day and evening in Alpine with the Rutherford's and not only enjoyed that, Russell got bitten by the "real estate bug." The scenery is so beautiful in Alpine, though, I think most anyone would be stricken the same way. We went to Show Low to chase down one property and checked into the local state park for 1 night. That was on Tuesday, we actually left today, Thursday. The park is really nice! We were camped right next to the lake and enjoyed entertainment by ducks, geese, and kids. Sunsets were pretty cool too! The town has a lot to offer as well. Nice people and more real estate opportunities. But we are the proverbial "tire kickers" and left empty handed.

Tomorrow we head back to Albequerque, NM. We were there just over night last year. We will stay about a week this time. We even plan to check the weather to see if it is not too late for a trip to Sante Fe. We are definitely FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS! We want nothing to do with bad weather of any kind. We met people today who were caught in a hail storm near Mesa Verde, AZ. Their coach was really a mess with thousands of dollars of repairs to be done.