Day 21: Truth Or Consequences NM - Tucson AZ

The coffee was ded gud, thank for asking.  And off again across MOAR Scorching Plains™, with only the San Augustin Pass east of Las Cruces for levity.

Another day, another Scorching Plain™

That, is, until you reach the Scorching Plain™ at its foot, turn left and run smack into White Sands National Monument.  Which, as the name suggests, is full of sand.  Which is white.  The reason for this whiteness is because it is gypsum, rather than the usual, well, sand, so you can walk on it quite comfortably in bare feet even when it's 30 degrees.  Which it was.

The local lizards, though, are white supremacists:

The National Monument is wedged into a corner of the White Sands Missile Range, which is more famous for being where The Man detonated the first The Bomb, but the Trinity Site is right up the other end near Socorro so the chance of my growing an extra head are pretty slim.  There appeared to be some Weather brewing over the next set of mountains to the east, so I made my excuses and left, in a westerly direction.  Got a few brief showers anyway but nothing to warrant roof-erection stops.

Distant weather forces Mr L to beat a hasty retreat

I also managed to not get stopped by the Border Patrol this time.  They have checkpoints on the main roads around Las Cruces, on account of Mexico being only a few miles to the south, and in 2014 I was subjected to a lengthy interrogation about my foopball affiliations from an agent who was a Wet Ham fan.  Today they just wished me a good day and allowed me to leave without even having to stick a gun up my nose.

From Las Cruces to the Arizona state line and beyond is MOAR Scorching¹ Plains™ of the very dullest sort, although from I-10 Lordsburg NM does not look nearly as godforsaken as it does from the bit of it I drove through two years ago.  And there are a bazillion billboards for The Thing.

Almost, but not quite, enough to make me stop in Dragoon AZ and pay my $5 to find out more.  Thing Fans may find out more on Wikinaccurate.

And so to Tucson for a final night of not very much before the Shiny Metal Birb whisks me back to LHR.  The room has, however, one of these:

A tub, a tub!  My kingdom ect ect

from which the entire US Army Corps of Engineers will be required to extract me come bedtime.

1: Which really were Scorching today: 39 degrees in Tucson this arvo.