Day 2: Albuquerque... to Las Cruces

Well... the "i-dots" woke me up at the usual time (5:30am), wanting to be taken out.  Do you know how awkward it is to take two dogs out to go to the bathroom out of a hotel room door?  Surprisingly, everyone who works at the hotel is up and outside of your door at 5:30 in the morning.  Then both of the dogs immediately relieve themselves on the rocks between the sidewalk and the parking lot, with what seems to be a big smile on their face.  Luckily, I got them back in their kennels with a Milk bone for a couple more hours of sleep. 

After dropping Lana off in downtown Albuquerque for some appointments, "the boys" and I hit up two different dog parks.  The first park was wide open with no fence around it, lots of homeless Vietnam Vets and an oddly large amount of police patrolling around.  The second, was a very nice, completely fenced in park, with a small pool and two (not so friendly) Jack Russells.  So, after a while, we decided to leave the dog park and go wait for Lana in the air conditioning of the car, since it was 101 degrees out when we left the park, and Frasier and George are very susceptible to the heat.  As you can see, Frasier is very quick to make himself comfortable in the front seat!  Panting heavily he soaks up the air conditioning pridefully.

Although the Jack Russells were not so friendly, their owner was.  Since he was the only other person in the park, I stuck up a conversation with him to inquire about a good restaurant to have lunch.  Being very nice, and having lived in Albuquerque for 20 years, Doug, described to me three different options around town.  After listening very closely to his three choices, I decided to go with his "most authentic Mexican food," choice.  A place called "Number 1 Taqueria." 

Well... "Number 1 Taqueria," turned out to be some of the best Mexican food we have ever had (both Lana and I raved about it).  In fact, we ate in the car in the parking lot because there was no seating available inside.   I would definitely eat there again and I would recommend it to anyone in Albuquerque.  Just to show everyone how much I enjoyed it... here are some more pics.  

After grubbing on our seriously good Mexican food, we finally headed out of Albuquerque towards Las Cruces.  It was approximately a 200 mile stretch of road, which isn't bad, but the weather was a bit sketchy. 

 98% of the time, its sunny and hot in New Mexico.  But when the weather comes in... you can see it coming.  The rain was nothing compared to the wind that blew across I-25.  We were constantly passing signs saying "Strong gusts may exist."  And they did.  But as the wind got better, the road signs got weird.  

 The town of "Truth or Consequences" was way too intimidating for us to visit, but we did get to see "Elephant Butte" from the road.  Although it was not as big as I thought it would be, it was quite windy there.

 

The puppies, however, were not bothered by the wind or the road signs.  We got into Las Cruces around 6 p.m., took the dogs to the Las Cruces dog park, and called it a day.