I was awake pretty early this morning to finish packing and get on the road. Nick was a little slower moving, but he was moving. Then we got a text from Kim that they overslept, so we dragged our feet a bit and eventually headed out sometime between 8 and 8:30. We checked out and hit the road to National Park Site number 4 of the trip.
I would absolutely recommend Inn of the Governors. Location is very convenient. Price is reasonable for the area, particularly when you factor in all the credits, the free parking, and…location. It’s an older inn, but very well maintained, clean and comfortable.
Anyway…the drive to Pecos National Historical Park took about half an hour and was pretty straightforward. Kim and John ended up about half an hour behind us, so we explored the visitors center to kill time until they got there. The visitors center was VERY well done here. Once Kim and John arrived, we headed out on the trail. It’s a pretty easy walk around this park, through the pueblo and ruins. This was all pretty interesting and it was a beautiful day. Pecos National Historical Park was definitely worth the stop.
After we finished at Pecos National Historical Park, we hopped in the car for the 200 mile drive straight (and I do mean STRAIGHT) down 285 to Roswell, because wouldn’t you know it, you have to literally drive through Roswell to get to our real next destination.
It was an uneventful approximately 3 hour drive. Nick slept most of the way. The road was straight, and it was basically nothingness the entire way. Speed limits were 75 most of the way, and with roads that straight I may have periodically hit a speed that is definitely not legal in NH, but was a non-issue in this part of New Mexico.
Shortly before we reached Roswell, I woke Nick up to figure out where we were eating lunch. He looked at TripAdvisor and picked…exactly the place I’d been planning on us eating before his stomach issues had popped up: La Sierra Mesquite BBQ. So that’s where we went.
La Sierra appeared to be in a former Sonic type building. It smelled amazing walking in. Nick got some platter of food that definitely involved brisket. I had a baked potato that had cheese, butter, bacon bits, and pulled pork on it. Mine was delicious and the pulled pork was cooked perfectly. Nick, of course, said his brisket was dry and decided it was time to stop ordering brisket in this state. But overall he seemed to enjoy his meal. Or, at least, he ate a fair amount of it.
Lunch consumed, we headed into Roswell. Our first stop was the visitor center for pamphlets and the requisite picture, since Nick had worn his space shirt today.
Then it was off to the International UFO Museum and Research Center, because did you even go to Roswell if you didn’t go here?! Kim and John joined us shortly after we got here, and we wandered. It was a lot to take in. And a lot of head scratching, with some hokey photo opps, which you know we were there for.
Once we’d had our fill of UFO theories, we wandered down the block for a few more pictures. This town went all in on aliens.
Then it was time to hop in the car for the last leg of driving for the day. I’d love to say that the last 75 miles to the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Carlsbad (that’s NM) was uneventful, but…we’d been receiving lots of dust storm warnings while at the UFO Museum and…they turned out to be accurate. I will say that it is significantly easier to drive in a dust storm than in a snow squall, although, the same rules of the road definitely apply. But, there were definitely several white knuckle moments, and I was glad I’d be turning in the rental car during the early morning hours while it was still dark out, because red sand, and black rental car. It wasn’t a dust storm for the entire drive, but there were several along the way. They were pretty fascinating. But they weren’t enjoyable.
Thankfully we made it safely to our next hotel. Nick and I unloaded the luggage and headed inside. I’d gotten this room on a free night certificate (#cardperks), so we were paying $0 to stay here. At check-in, the girl told me we’d gotten an upgrade. So, free night and free upgrade (which was a perk of pushing a couple buttons the year before to get double night credits towards status. Take the two minutes to look at your rewards program offers folks.
We headed upstairs and easily found our room. It was a pretty standard but nice (and clean) oversized Fairfield room.
After settling in, we headed back to the rental car to get a few groceries, passing Kim and John at the check-in desk (and proving to the girl working there that we were in fact related to the other people with our same last name). I think they’d gotten ice cream or something before leaving Roswell.
We ventured over to Walmart, which was…pretty typical Walmart. The next couple days we would be in really rural areas, so we got stuff for sandwiches, as well as some ice packs and a lunch box, because you know that even with a large selection of fabric lunch boxes and coolers, I’d forgotten to pack one of those. We debated getting something to pop in the microwave in the room for dinner, but Nick shot that down, saying we could just go out to eat if we got hungry.
So we headed back to the hotel with our sandwich stuff. And pretty soon I was hungry but Nick wasn’t. SHOCKER haha. So… I had ham and cheese roll ups in a disposable paper cup for dinner!
I spent the evening re-organizing luggage since this room had lots of space to do so, and then called it a fairly early night. We have a big national parks day ahead of us tomorrow.
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