Day 3 Thursday 21st August (Las Cruces NM)

 Maritta off to work today and after some excitement when our new GPS took us into some obscure part of Las Cruces when we discovered the touch screen will give you a new location and take you there rather than where you really want to go - we eventually found the right place.

I went for an explore and to practice driving on the "wrong" side of the road, I'm getting better slowly.  Maritta was told today that the reason that US drive on the other side is because they wanted to get up the Brits noses.  The Brits chose to drive on the left as this dates back to times when knights gousted with their armourments in their right hand and rode on the left side of their opponents.   

I managed to miss a turn onto the freeway, .....twice, and had to go around in a big circle, eventually found the Las Cruces outlook, a very nice truck parking spot on the edge of the Mesilla valley looking down on Las Cruces.  Fabulous.....

Roadrunner at Los Cruces Overlook (sculpture)

View down into the Mesilla valley from Las Cruces Overlook

Valley floor is very flat, flood plain for the Rio Grande I suppose, with quite stark mountains dotted around its edge.  Quite stunning.

 

Panorama from Las Cruces Overlook

Quiet afternoon relaxing before I brave the Las Cruces traffic and pick Maritta up, actually its not to bad fortunately, but there are some odd road rules like intersections with four stop signs, everyone stops and then you take turns to cross the intersection in the order you arrived, sounds awkward but it is actually very civilised when you get used to it. Have so far found the drivers very polite and the people very friendly.

By the way we discovered that Las Cruces is actually named after the three crosses the local native Americans used to crucify three catholic preists trying to convert the indiginous population.