MOVING ON TO LAS CRUCES, NM

Sunday, January 22 – With crappy weather in El Paso, we decided to leave a day early and head to Las Cruces.

We are staying at Coachlight Inn & RV. We think this is a pretty good campground. Wide, gravel, full hook-up sites with a picnic table and a little landscape island between sights. It is a Passport America sight, so we are staying for $18/night. Very nice location to boot!

Looking right.

Looking left.

After getting set-up we headed into Old Mesilla to do some sightseeing and to enjoy several of the many wineries and craft breweries. These small towns have certainly discovered the financial opportunities of mini-breweries and wineries. There were many more opportunities to enjoy an adult beverage than any other store in town so that is where we left our tourist dollars. We went to several wineries for tasting and did buy a couple of bottles of wine.

The Heart of the Desert had free wine tasting…works for us. For the first time, we tasted a wine using pistachios. It was delicious. Yes, we made a couple of purchases here for our wine tasting party this summer.

Double Eagle, known as The Crown Jewel of Historic Old Mesilla, is known for their menu of 50 margaritas recipes. The interior is gorgeous. Marsha had the Award Winner Margarita, and Paul the Traditional Margarita. Both were delicious.

Beautiful sitting room.

Dining area.

Our last stop in Old Mesilla was at the New Mexico Vintage Wines. What a nice place. Marsha tasted several wines. Paul wanted to try the craft beers. All our tastes were excellent.

They had a great patio with a gentleman playing and singing. Notice the blankets on all the stone benches. What an excellent idea.

We then stopped at the Spotted Dog Brewery and enjoyed talking to several local couples about life in Las Cruces and sightseeing in the area. Another nice place to do some tasting.

Our first day in Las Cruces was a good one. Please don’t get the wrong idea about Old Mesilla. It isn’t just a town for drinking. We will show you the small town in another post. We look forward to the next three days of sightseeing.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

MORE SIGHTSEEING IN EL PASO, TX

Saturday, January 21 – It is rainy, windy, and pretty chilly here in El Paso, Texas. Winds on our weather station were registering 26 mph with gusts of 38 mph. Coupled with the rain and low temperatures, it wasn't the greatest day for sightseeing. Regardless, we have things to do and places to see! (click on any photo to enlarge it)

Our first visit this morning was the Chamizal National Memorial.

The Memorial celebrates the peaceful settlement of a dispute over the international boundary at El Paso, Texas and Cidad Juarez, Mexico. After decades of arguing about who owned a piece of land shaped and reshaped by the meandering Rio Grande river, the question was finally settled by diplomacy and technology. The river was diverted to a concrete channel for four and a half miles, forming a permanent border between the two nations.

We took this photo from the scenic road in El Paso.

The Memorial Visitor's Center is small and takes less than 30 minutes to tour. We started with a short video and then walked through the displays (mostly photograph) reading about the disputed land and how it was settled peacefully. We really enjoyed the Memorial and would recommend it to our traveling friends. The Department of Transportation did an excellent job with this museum.

Marking the boundary required the surveyors to locate points dictated by the Treaty. Without modern technology, they verified longitude and latitude from the moon and star positions.

The Bridge of the Americas was built between El Paso of the The United States and Cidad Juarez, Mexico. So busy is the port of entry, the two cities feel more like one metropolis.

Next up was the El Paso Mission Trail tour. The tour consists of three missions – Ysleta Mission, Socorro Mission, and San Elizario Chapel. We stopped at the Trail Visitor's Center. Even though the Internet said they were open on Saturdays, the sign on the door indicated it was closed on weekends.

The first chapel we visited, the Mission Ysleta, was also closed due to reconstruction. The gentleman in the lobby said the remodeling was complete, but they were having difficulty getting an occupancy certificate from the city. We took pictures outside and headed to the Socorro Mission.

The Mission Socorro was open, and we found it quite beautiful. Paul especially found the ceiling interesting and very attractive. Old timbers with a “reed” style covering. The flooring also caught his eye as unique. Adobe pavers cover the entire floor of the church. Marsha enjoyed the religious statues, and the beautiful alter and side alters. We enjoyed this Mission immensely.

Gorgeous ceiling.

The third and final mission was the San Elizario Chapel. Unfortunately, we found it closed due to reconstruction. Again, we took exterior photos and moved on. Not a great tour with two out of three missions closed, but hopefully the construction will result in a wonderful tour in the future.

We did enjoy an interesting stop on the way back to the Sunland Park Racetrack & Casino. We pulled into the Licon Dairy. Having served the community for over 50 years offering freshly made “Azadero” cheese. A thin six-inch disk of soft, mild, string-type Mexican cheese, with or without jalapenos. There is also a free petting zoo and fishing pond, but with the wind and rain we chose not to visit that area. We purchased an Azadero cheese with jalapeno peppers. Delicious.

Of course, no visit to El Paso is complete without a photo or two of “the wall.” We had to get some photos taken before the huge, beautiful wall is built.

It is the black wall along the road.

Looking from El Paso to Mexico, the big red X is visible every where. The 20-story tall sculpture in the shape of a giant "X" is a symbol full of meanings; a mark to welcome people (to Mexico) and to demonstrate the ancestral Mexican culture.

We really enjoyed our few days sightseeing in El Paso, although if the weather was nicer we would have stayed longer. We do recommend a stop in this city full of culture.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day.

 

 

EL PASO SIGHTSEEING DAY

Friday, January 20 – We started our tour of El Paso by stopping at the Visitor's Center to pick up some brochures, a couple of maps and to ask the Center's guide all about visiting El Paso. We had planned several self-guided walking tours but it is cool outside and pretty windy. So walking was pretty nasty. We soon decided to do a driving tour instead.

We drove around most of the “old El Paso” downtown area enjoying the architecture and the tremendous Mexican influence on this area. There are several streets packed with Hispanic stores and hundreds of local residents and Mexicans crossing the near-by border to shop in these traditional shops. (Click on any photo to enlarge it.)

Beautiful Opera House.

Hotel Paso Del Norte (Camino Real Hotel.) has an 80-year old Tiffany glass dome, once part of the hotel's lobby, is now the showcase of the elegant Dome Bar. The hotel has hosted such guests as Pancho Villa, President Taft, and “blackjack Pershing.”

Bar area. The photo doesn’t do it justice at all.

Monastery of Perpetual Adoration.

Shopping in old El Paso.

Immaculate Conception Church.

There is also a Segundo Barrio Murals tour we hoped to walk. But due to the weather, we managed to visit many of the paintings by driving around town. Not easy because there are many one-way streets causing some confusion. These murals are scattered throughout the city. There are so many of them. We did find some unofficial murals that we felt may have been gang related in a scary part of town. We didn't linger long for many photographs.

El Corrido Del Segundo Barrio.

La Virgen De Guadalupe.

Not sure if we should be driving around in this area.

We then drove over to the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) to visit. By now, the temperature had improved and the winds and died down, so we decided to walk around campus. This is a beautiful campus with an adobe/New Mexico style of architecture we find very attractive. It's a little hilly so we did a little huffing and puffing. We have to get in shape after spending too much time in Texas flatland.

UTEP Miners.

Geological Sciences.

Main Old Building.

The UTEP football stadium is unusually attractive. It is built into the mountains using the geography as a natural bowl for the stadium seating. It is also home to the Sun Bowl, one of the football bowl games played each year around New Year's.

Here is where we really huffed and puffed. Can you see Paul
way down there?

After our walking tour of UTEP, we decided to drive the Mount Franklin Scenic Mountain highway.

We had some difficulty finding the correct street. It was tucked back into a residential area. But after turning around and back-tracking several times we eventually found the correct street. It winds up the mountain and provides an amazing view of the city, near-by Mexico, and the surrounding area. Unfortunately, it was VERY windy on the mountain top, and we didn't want to spend too much time enjoying the scenery.

Think it is windy?

We then headed back to the Sunland Casino campground to relax for the rest of the day.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!