This is a Test; This is Only a Test

Decided to take the dogs to Las Cruces yesterday morning to try to find a park to play in; it's only 20 miles from where we're staying.

Didn't find the park, but did find a small RV park I thought we'd enjoy instead of Camping World's. We stopped in a made the reservation for that afternoon. As I got into the car to go back to El Paso for the RV, the car wouldn't start.

When you buy a used car, you get what you pay for. Called a tow truck recommended by the repair shop; the tow driver said his company had just been approved by AAA for both towing and repair, so we went to his shop. Nice folks; Walker Towing and Recovery. They started out in Alamogordo in the '80s, and recently opened a shop here in Las Cruces. Their mechanic took the starter apart and said it wouldn't catch the flywheel. I love learning new languages, don't you? Anyway, I knew that was gonna take a while, so I had the owner's son, Sal Calmenero, drive me to Enterprise Leasing (I have a membership there) to get a car to drive back to El Paso. Enterprise had no one-way cars (so much for the value of my membership), so I called Hertz. They were happy to help; in fact, they came and got me from Enterprise (Sal had gone back to his shop) and rented me a nice little SUV.

Got the dogs and ran them back to the RV, then took the SUV to the Hertz office in west El Paso, right down the street from the microwave repair shop I had visited just a few days earlier. I'm learning my way around the west side of El Paso pretty well. Finished up there; they only charged me $38! Nice surprise, right in the middle of a nasty one, I thought. They drove me back to the RV where the dogs and I chilled for the evening.

After a crummy night's sleep, we left early this morning and went back to see how the repair of Oor was going. We arrived around 9:00 AM, and they were finished! When I got the bill, I got another nice surprise: a very reasonable charge for replacing the starter with a new one.

We're all nicely encamped in the Sunny Acres RV Park in Las Cruces, NM. It's a beautiful day: around 75 degrees F, mostly sunny, 13% humidity. Tomorrow and Saturday, however, the wind is supposed to pick up and my drive to Tucson will be in headwinds of around 40 MPH. I can hear the gasoline draining out of the RV already.

I'm happy, happy, happy to be back in New Mexico!

Las Cruces, NM Elev: 3900' to 4200'