Leaving Las Cruces...Amarillo by evening.

Well, we scheduled our day around two significant deadlines.  First, we needed to be in Riudoso, NM by 3 p.m. so that Lana could meet a prospective reporter, and second, we needed to be in Amarillo, TX in order to sleep.  Seeing that Riudoso was an easy two hour drive Northeast, we started the day in a very relaxed manner.  But first, I'd like to show you just exactly how tired George was the night before...

He slept like a baby!

So off to the dog park we went, to let the "i-dots" burn some energy, knowing that we had a long day in the car.

So with the dogs tired out and a little time to spare before we headed off to our first destination, we decided to visit a small town just south of Las Cruces called Mesilla.  Mesilla is a very quaint, very cool little historic Mexican town.  All the adobe houses have hand-made wood fence porches and long strands of red chilies hanging from their walls.  It was straight out of the movies. 

In Mesilla, we ate lunch at a place called La Posta.  This was by far one of the coolest restaurants I have ever visited.  It was very large inside and the entrance/ waiting area/ atrium, was a wide open area with three large fish tanks and a very large bird cage, which carried a variety of parrots and one toucan.  Although we got our food to go and ate in the car (due to the dogs), it didn't take long to recognize just how unique this restaurant really was. 

And the food was good too!

After lunch we headed just around the corner from La Postal, to a little shop called "The Chocolate Lady."

Here we picked out a variety of small chocolates (chocolate covered Oreos, chocolate covered Ritz crackers and peanut butter, toffee, milk chocolate bark, and chocolate chile- mangos).  It was pretty much awesome!  Then we hopped in the car and headed north towards Riudoso, NM.  But I will tell you about all that tomorrow.  I'm tired.

To pick up where I left off...after the chocolate we hit the road for Riudoso...but not without a little visit from the boarder patrol. 

But don't worry!  "Boarder Patrol" was us driving through this station, rolling down our window for a guy in a uniform who said, "are you both U.S. citizens?"  We replied "yes," and he waived us on.  Pretty intense stuff!

As far as Riudoso goes, this little mountain town is a little hidden treasure.  Its like Estes Park without the high price tag.  Lana had one client visit here, so we didn't stay long but we did get the chance to drive around and check out the town, and of course check out the dog park. 

So, after tiring out the dogs for the second time of the day, we hit the road for the first part of our longest leg in the trip.  Off to Amarillo.  Because we left Riudoso at about 5 p.m. and still had a 6 hour drive to Amarillo, we didn't take too many pictures.  We arrived in Amarillo about 11 p.m.  Not that bad of a drive...pretty flat, saw some weather, and got our first speeding ticket about 15 miles into Texas (oops)!