On the road: Alamogordo, NM, to San Angelo, TX

Friday, October 17, 2014

Today is the last day of our trip. We rose early, had a good breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express in  Alamogordo where we were staying, and hit the road.

There are more direct ways to get from Alamogordo to San Angelo than the route we selected, but we were scouting around for a good way to pull a trailer, a route with good overnight stops.

Alamogordo, NM, to San Angelo, TX. 421 miles via Roswell, NM

We headed north for about 10 or so miles along US 54/70 to Tularosa, a quaint little village of cottonwoods and adobe architecture. US 70 then veers east, and we followed it into the Sacremento Mountains onto the Mescalero Reservation. This was a beautiful stretch of highway, all 4-lane. It wound up into the cool, pine covered mountains before arriving in the resort town of Ruidoso. This area is home to at least two of the southern most ski resorts in the country: Ski Apache and Ski Cloudcroft. As we passed through, I couldn't help thinking that it wouldn't be long before these mountains would be covered in snow.

At Ruidoso, we picked up the Rio Ruidoso, and the highway followed it down the valley as we were now descending. Little farms dotted the valley along the river. In the old days, such farms provided hay and produce much needed in this area by the army located at nearby Fort Stanton as well as by other citizens.

As we headed east, the mountains became hills and the hills eventually smoothed off, and we found ourselves once again on the level plains, returning to Roswell, where we had been almost 2 weeks before. We quickly passed through Roswell, continuing east. At the rest area about 20 miles east of town, we stopped for a break and to switch drivers, then hit the road again.

We began calling our daughter, making plans to meet her and the boys for a mid-afternoon lunch (for us) when we passed through Big Spring. It was about 2:15 or so when we pulled into our meeting place. Courtney came along soon after with two of her little monsters in tow, Camden and Jensen. The oldest monster, Xander, was in school terrorizing his teachers, so we missed him. But we had a nice visit with his siblings and mother.

Courtney soon had to leave to pick up Xander from school, so we said our goodbyes and Donna and I hit the road for the final 80 miles.

We had a good trip, but we were, of course, glad to get him.