Had the leftover pizza from Grimaldi's from the night before for breakfast, along with fresh brewed coffee. Ended up getting out of the AirBnB by about 10am.
Made it to the downtown area and parked in a city lot about two blocks from art museum. Made our way down there (the downtown El Paso area is partially on a hillside) and entered the free museum.
Some pics from museum:
At first I thought it was all neon art, but up close came to realize it was all done with cardboard and LED lights. A timely commentary and exhibit for the current state of political affairs in January 2019.
After art museum walked around just a bit, grabbed coffee at the shipping container place, sat upstairs on 2nd floor deck of container and wrote out postcards. Then walk a few blocks to mail at post office then back to parking lot to hit the road for Roswell. Also walked the immediate streets around to get a few pics in.
The drive from El Paso up (and mainly over, eastward), to Carlsbad, NM was a little over 2 hours. Friend #5 drove which was nice to be able to take in the sights as a passenger. Very isolated stretch of highway with only the occasional 18-wheeler or other auto on the road.
We stopped along the way on a long stretch of open highway for some pics. Friend was amused by my sort of mascot that had accompanied me on the entire trip, and wanted to do a few pics with said mascot (a plastic toy dinosaur I found on the ground right as I was leaving for my trip).
We trekked on and to the turnoff for the road to Carlsbad Caverns. As expected, signage was up showing that the park was closed due to the gov't shutdown.
We decided to trek up to the actual entrance anyway and see how far we could get. Turned out we were able to wind around and up the 7 miles or so into the park and to the main buildings that we believe provided access to the caverns. The buildings were entirely closed and only a few other travelers who had made it up to the extensive parking lot area to check things out. Good sightlines looking out over the desert looking eastward. Turns out we were in a different part of the same Permian Basin that I was in when driving through Odessa, TX.
On our way out we made it a point to stop at some of the vista points ("Exhibits" as they were noted per signage). For one particular one we ended up getting to see a herd of sheep milling about right next to the road, eating grasses and such.
As it turned out, after looking for closely at the mountainside on opposite side of the road, there were many more such sheep up on the mountainside, including little sheep children (dont know the word for kid sheep).
The roadside sheep were regarding us warily I ended up realizing, given that we were effectively in the middle of their split pack.
We got back in the car soon enough and were on our way again. Plan was to find late lunch in the town of Carlsbad, which was just 15 minutes up the road.
We got to the town without clear plans and ended up driving through it without anything jumping out at us. Quick discussion led us back to the Wendy's for 4 for 4 late lunches (Friend hadn't had Wendy's in years and was not familiar with the value and quality that is the 4 for 4 meal).
4 for 4s were purchased and consumed, and after pit stops we were on the road again to Roswell.
Didn't end up getting into Roswell itself until after nightfall. Ended up driving through the downtown area on the way to the AirBnB and catching all of the alien-themed sights en route, including for alien head street lampposts I had read about.
Got to the AirBnB and there was a very friendly cat right outside ready to greet us. I am still partially convinced the cat may have been otherwordly. Including for its alien-head-shaped eyes.
The AirBnB itself for Roswell was -- interesting. There weren't many options at all and this one was the only one that came in inexpensively. Size-wise had the space of a two-bedroom house, but height-wise was a different story.
Notes elsewhere in the house stated that if you are over 5'11" to be prepared to have to duck to get into the 2nd bedroom. I took the first bedroom this Roswell night. The first bedroom, despite having adequate head clearance in doorway, was windowless and had 7 foot ceilings in entire room.
After getting settled in we headed out to drive around the rest of the town, get dinner, and get some coffee shop time in (I had seen a Starbucks less than a mile from our place).
Dinner was found thanks to Yelp, a place specializing in burgers and named something like Downtown D's Diner Burger Dive. Very much Guy Fieri vibes for the place. Got some specialty burger and fries, and a cream soda. It was one of those places where the wooden tables were sticky due to misuse/overuse of cleaning agents on varnished wood, compromising the finish. Burger was pretty good but fries not -- ended up eating only half of burger and taking the rest since was still pretty full from late lunch.
After dinner then Starbucks for maybe 45 minutes of laptop time (including for this blog) over a chai tea latte. Then up to a supermarket to buy a few things for consumption, including beer. Found some alien-themed beer options and bought two (6 pack bottles, 4-pack pint size cans). Also ended up purchasing a "Peanut Patty" after each Friend and I had independently picked one up at the checkstand, sort of looked at, then put down again, and cashier asking us if we had ever had one and telling us how good they were. She gave the sage advice to make sure for the one we buy does not have bleached out white residue on the back. I ended up buying one for us. Funny that I had asked why it was red and the cashier really couldn't answer (said could be due to peanut casings being red) -- later looked at label and confirmed one of first ingredients listed was red dye #40.
Back to AirBnB for an intended early night, given long day ahead next day. Managed to take advantage of washer and dryer in place and get a load of laundry done over a few alien beers.
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