Odometer: 27,130

After two long and exhausting days, getting up this morning is not easy. But we both slept well and are ready for another visit to the White Sand Dunes – today with almost blue skies and sunshine!

We arrive at the White Sands National Monument before 10am and there are not that many people yet. Today we park the car only a few miles from the park entrance and walk from there. We leave our shoes in the car and head off barefoot with some water and both cameras into the dunes. We soon realize how warm/hot it actually already is – the sweat is running down our foreheads and even Marco soon asks me for the baseball cap. We walk on until we see a tree on top of one of the dunes. There we take a break, have some water and rest a bit in the shade before heading back. In the end we have been walking for about 1.5 hours, before we are back and can enjoy an ice cold drink from our ice chest and turn on the air conditioning in the car. The band I had around my head is soaking wet. It must have been the humidity from the rain last night that made us sweat so much.

Enjoying the nice cool breeze in the car we drive further south west to Las Cruces which is only about 50 miles. While having an iced latte at Mc Donald’s we check the hotels in town and first chose the America’s Best Value Inn. So far we have been positively surprised by the appearance of Las Cruces, but driving to this hotel we are passing some less favorable neighborhoods. It is only about 2pm when we arrive at the motel and we are greeted by an Asian lady, a well educated woman who has seen the world and somehow ended up with this Motel here in Las Cruces. This is one of the first places that has some real character. She has lots of different chili plants in pots and old sinks on the property, the rooms are clean and neat and therefore we don’t see a need to check any other places and stay.

We take a nap and before dinner (at the Golden Corral) we take a short detour to the Rio Grande.

Las Cruces is the biggest exporter of chillies – they also grow a lot of onions an cabbage here. The climate is ideal and with the Rio Grande they also have plenty of water.