Last Days on the Road, Then – Gratefully – Arrival!

First morning at destination

I think today I will fill the birdbath with water and clear the window blinds of cobwebs. Yesterday my plan for this morning was to rush off to the laundromat, but I've decided rushing isn’t necessary. Here we are, Sunny Juliet and I, in our little Arizona cabin, surrounded by our own things, and Sunny seems as contented as I feel. In addition to all the toys we brought with us, she is rediscovering things left behind last year and has strewn her belongings all over the house, which doesn’t bother me one little bit.

So good to see you again!

 

Wednesday’s drive from dear little Santa Fe, New Mexico, to a Leland friend’s house in Old Mesilla, outside Las Cruces, was easy. I remembered (this is very important) to fill the gas tank before the long stretch of U.S. 54 to Alamagordo. 

...Because there's a lot of this kind of stuff along the way.

I stopped to poke around in Corona, as the Artist and I always had, and noted this time that Corona has all the basic necessities – school, grocery, post office, library, laundromat – besides all the pretty little stone houses and walls that I have photographed so many times before.

 

After Alamagordo and White Sands come the Organ Mountains and the San Augustin Pass, with stunning scenery for miles and miles and miles, and with every mile I recalled the first time the Artist and I drove this road and our continual exclamations at the beauty. “What a country!” the Artist would say, over and over. We were fortunate to be able to see so much of it together over the years. 

 

Our Leland friends’ winter house is on the far edge of Old Mesilla, west of Las Cruces, their neighborhood bounded by irrigation ditches that feed water to the cotton fields and pecan groves when there is enough water coming down the Rio Grande to divert to those fields and groves. The complicated system of ditches and sluice gates had me reflecting on just how old these irrigation technologies are in the Southwest, Mexico, and all through other arid regions of Latin America, where water is the political issue, as is pretty obvious even to an outlander when presented with a view of the Rio Grande River right now.

 

 

Kathy and I had a leisurely evening and morning, and then she took me to Coas Books in downtown Las Cruces, where we both made some serious purchases. And yes, this big bookstore had socks, too, Mr. Deutsch, but I didn’t buy socks this time. Just books!

Books from Coas

After that, it was back on the road for Sunny Juliet and me, the cabin in Dos Cabezas within easy striking distance now. But first – another bookstore stop called my name.

The Artist and I had stopped at Readers' Cove more than once on our travels west, so in addition to being a treasure of books, the shop was also, for me, stocked with memories, and it was a lovely pause again this year, well worth time spent. Priceless, in fact. Good to connect again with bookseller Margaret and to talk books with her, as well as to catch up on what’s happening these days in Deming. 

Books from Readers' Cove

But you already know how this episode ends. Arizona. Willcox. Dos Cabezas. The cabin with our familiar things. A beautiful Arizona sunrise on Friday morning. A good walk for me, a good run for little Sunny –

She seems right at home.

And look what I found!