26 March 2014
Caballo Lake State Park to Las Cruces, NM
60 miles (Total Miles = 792)

“The only thing I could hear above the wind was you girls,” is the greeting we receive from Paul this morning. In our defense, it was a major emergency situation. Not only was the gusting wind doubling our tent over onto our heads, but while implementing our emergency plan (re-stake the tent in the pitch dark, flip thermarests around to allow for feet, rather than heads, to be smothered, and general worrying out loud if we should be concerned), another emergency was created – that of a large, ugly (is there any other kind) spider in our tent. “Paul!”, we holler, “Spider!” we scream, but that really wasn’t necessary as a few shrieks later, in a blur of white molded plastic, Gina has successfully slayed the dragon with the tent mallet from our previous emergency. Another good reason for sleeping with a hammer in your tent.

Tonight we are hunkered down in our KOA Cozy Cabin and we are indeed cozy. We have asked Candy to join us for we know that with the wind still howling out there, she’ll go set up camp in the bathroom again and we can’t let her do that.

It was a lovely ride to Las Cruces today. Headwinds at times but we fueled our way through them by stuffing ourselves with second breakfast burritos at the Pepper Pot in Hatch, NM, the chile capitol of the world. If we’d still been hungry and the season were right, we could have chased down those burritos with roadside pecans, our route taking us through mile after mile after mile of pecan orchards. However, if one was to believe the signs, even a little roadside sampling could have landed us in jail, so maybe it was good that they weren’t in season (we know how Gina likes to eat).