Day 09 - Mayhill, NM - Tucson, AZ

Here it is Monday, May 30, the day we are to leave Kathy and Vernon's home in Robin Hood Park near Mayhill, New Mexico. Our destination for today is Tucson, Arizona.

Since we had loaded most of our things into Wilma (our Honda Odyssey) the evening before, we didn't have to get up too early. We set the alarm for 6:30 AM. However, both of us woke up prior to the alarm going off (it's a senior thing). After a nice breakfast of yummy oatmeal and toast, we loaded up the rest of our belongings and set off for Tucson. We pulled out of Vernon and Kathy's driveway at about 7:25 AM.

We needed to fill up with gas fairly soon as Wilma's tank was getting pretty low. We had wanted to go all the way to Alamogordo before filling up as gas would be cheaper. But we did not want to take a chance of running out of gas. So we filled up in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Sure enough gas was $.10 per gallon higher in Cloudcroft than it was in Alamogordo. Oh, well.

On the way to Alamogordo we stopped alongside the road and took some photographs of the White Sands. John had hallucinated that he saw a Starbucks in Alamogordo so we drove through town on the business route. But alas, there was no Starbucks to be seen. Next stop was Las Cruces, New Mexico where there was a Starbucks. Between Alamogordo and Las Cruces. We noticed that even on the "backwoods" highways, New Mexico provides Rest Areas! There were several of them and they each consisted of a gravel parking area and two porta-potties. Seriously!

John used the Wi-Fi at Starbucks in Las Cruces to find a motel for this evening. As we headed west on Interstate 10, we stopped at Butterfield Stage which is still in New Mexico. In New Mexico you can buy some nice fireworks.

A bit further west on Interstate 10 we came Lordsburg. Here we stopped at McDonald's and got some lunch. We ate our lunch in the car under the shade of a tree. It was just too hot to leave Fannie in the car while we went inside. While stopped for lunch Linda called the Comfort Inn & Suites in Tucson that John had identified on the Internet earlier in the day. She made reservations for us.

While we were in Lordsburg we drove south to find the Shakespeare Ghost Town Linda had noticed in her road atlas. This was about 4 or 5 miles south of Lordsburg. We pulled up to the entrance of the Shakespeare Ghost Town only to find that you had to be a prearranged tour in order to visit the Shakespeare Ghost Town. It seems that they should have put that information on one of the earlier signs we saw about 5 miles or so back up the road.

We arrived at our motel at just about 3:00 PM in the afternoon. Our room in Tucson is really nice. It is a corner suite and has its own fenced in patio. The patio is a gravel area and Fannie can go there to do her business.
After unloading most of our belongings. We set up the computers and finally were able to reconnect to cyberspace. We found an IHOP not too far away and went there for dinner about 6:00 PM. Both of us decided we would have BFD (breakfast for dinner). Our meals were both tasty and filling.
After stopping by a Walgreen's for Linda to get some drugs, we got back to the motel about 8:00 PM and unloaded the rest of the things we needed for our stay.

Tomorrow we will be going to the Saguaro National Park and maybe some other interesting places in or around Tucson.

For today's photo gallery click here.

Videos:
Shakespeare Ghost Town a Road to Disappointment