We woke up around 7am, and went to IHOP for some breakfast. John had a clubhouse for breakfast because he was craving a real sandwich, and Kelsey had chicken strips with hashbrowns for the same reason! Weird how these two can eat ANYTHING for breakfast.
After breakfast we got on the road headed to San Antonio. Right away we were very pleased to be on a nice, fast, smooth highway! However, after a few hours of the same nothingness to drive through, we soon got tired of it! The scenery doesn’t seem to change in Texas!
We arrived in San Antonio around 1pm. I had contemplated sending a message to an pal Scott and Terri whom we had met in Playa to see if they wanted to meet us somewhere, but we decided that we’d just visit the Alamo, then head west a bit to a hotel so John could catch some playoff football.
The Alamo was very neat to see. First I took some photos of some great architecture on the buildings outside the Alamo:
John really liked visiting here, it was very cool. Here’s some pics of The Alamo:
We left the Alamo and drove through San Antonio to get back on the I-10. We just loved the old-style buildings of this city, and how it was easy to get around, not confusing. We thought this town was absolutely beautiful! We fell in love.
We stopped at a hotel on the other side of town. The kids and I sat by the pool in the sun (I don’t want my tan to fade! Wah!) while John drank some beers and watched the Seahawks game. We ordered chinese for dinner.
The next day we headed off towards New Mexico. We passed by the windmills again, which look really neat and cover the hillside for a long ways.
We passed through El Paso, and you can see Ciudad Juarez, Mexico just on the other side of the Rio Grande. It’s amazing the contrast of cities that are so close.
We soon approached Las Cruces, it was about 4pm and we decided to stop for the night. It is great not being in too much of a rush to get anywhere, our driving days are much shorter and we’re seeing so much more of this country. When we got to our hotel and watched the news, we soon realized that we didn’t want to get to San Diego so quickly! The freak rainstorm, flash flooding, mudslides…we thought is was probably prudent if we hung out here for a day or two. So we quickly looked into what was in the area to do. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express that night, which is a nice hotel and included breakfast.
The next morning we packed up and headed Northeast to the White Sands Missile Testing facility. We headed up into the San Andes mountains a bit, then back down into a valley. The sites of the valley and mountains were unbelievabley beautiful.
We got to the Missile place and checked in through security. We went to the missile museum, which had a bunch of older missiles and plaques telling you about them. It kind if weirded me out looking at all these “weapons of mass destruction” (heh heh), Kelsey also didn’t like it. Jorden, like John, thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread!
That’s Jorden in front of this missile:
Jorden, very happy to see these sights, Kelsey looking pensive: 
This is the genuine orginal Darth Vader helmet, given to this place by George Lucas as appreciation for letting him record sounds of missiles here for his movies.
This one struck me as funny, the plaque said that is was some kind of missile seeker used in Roswell, NM and was often mistaken by the public for UFO’s. !!!!!! Was this an attempt at government cover-up??? =) We had a good laugh.
After this, we left and headed east another 30 miles to White Sands Memorial. This is a white sand desert, which is actually crushed gypsum that remains from a dried up sea millions of years ago. It is all crystals which are very cold to the touch. It was absolutely beautiful and we were so glad we got to see it. These pictures in no way do it justice. It looked just like a snowfall!
Not a very complimentary photo of me, but John liked it.
We left the White Sands and headed back to Las Cruces. After a visit to Walmart for some supplies, we went to see Old Mesilla, a town rich in history. It is a place full of old Adobe buildings and homes, and is where Billy the Kid was tried and convicted. There is a beautiful Catholic church that dates back to the 1850′s.
The stained glass was the original, now encased in Plexiglass to keep it well.
After the church we walked around the town a bit and took some photos:
We bought a couple souvenirs then headed out west…ha.
We stopped in Deming, about an hour away, again at the Holiday Inn Express.