Las Cruces, New Mexico

Memorial Day weekend, 2017

I would be spending 4 nights in Las Cruces and as I did in Alpine, Texas, chose the city for it’s strategic location to things I wanted to visit while I was here.  I actually spent very little time in Las Cruces (a beautiful town), only being there to sleep, eat and watch the two big NASCAR races held in Charlotte, NC (on TV.  I confirmed the fact that I could watch the races while I was here when I made the reservation).  The young couple I stayed with had lived in the Charlotte area for a number of years so they understood my NASCAR obsession.  They had a beautiful new townhouse on the northeast side of town and were the ones who told me about Meow Wolf, a funky art complex in Santa Fe, NM which I’ve posted pictures of in the past.

This was the view as I approached my Airbnb the night I arrived:

And here is a map of the area to get your bearings:

(Photo credit: weather-forecast.com)

Not sure why El Paso isn’t on the map (it is just to the right of Ciudad Juarez, on the United States side of the Rio Grande river.  CJ is in Mexico).  The city of Las Cruces is shown by the red dot in the center of the map.  Other places I will be visiting while in the area are White Sands National Monument (above the highway between the two occurrences of the words Las Cruces), Alamogordo (above the higher words Las Cruces), the Gila Cliff Dwellings (due north of Silver City on the left side of the map) and Hatch, located just northwest of the red dot.

After checking in at my Airbnb I headed back out to an area southwest of town called Old Mesilla Village (aka La Mesilla).  Most of the restaurants which were on my short list were located there, as well as many historic buildings and the San Albino church:

There were some interesting birds in huge cages at the restaurant I chose to eat at the night arrived and I’d be back down to Old Mesilla Village several more times during my stay.

Old Mesilla Village was a beautiful place to walk around in the evenings and I highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in the area.

One day I drove south of La Mesilla on one of my scenic roads and saw acres and acres of pecan groves:

There were also many places where avocados were being grown.