This was our 2013 Jayco Flight Swift 198 RD

THIS WAS OUR 2013 JAYCO FLIGHT SWIFT 198RD, PARKED AT THE TOMBSTONE TERRITORIES RV PARK IN ARIZONA



Wednesday 13 March 2019

Roadrunner and Alien Sculptures

Where are we now?
Town and Country RVPark, Roswell, NM

Last Sunday we left Rose Valley, RV Park in Silver City, NM heading further east. We had heard of the famous Roadrunner along the I-10 and made that our destination for a lunch break. It sits on the property of the rest area on the south side of I-10, about two miles past Exit 135, just west of Las Cruces. This sculpture of a Roadrunner has been constructed exclusively from recycled materials. It has become a landmark and you cannot miss it as it is 20 feet tall and 40 feet long and we thought it is worth a stop. However, you can only get to it from the eastbound lanes, which we travelled anyway. From afar it doesn’t appear to be constructed from junk out of recycle centres and one might think it was made from wrought iron but upon closer inspection it is really fantastic how the artist managed to get the desired effect incorporating all kinds of rubbish. I tried to photograph it as best as I could, but I think Al from “The Bayfield Bunch” a top-notch photographer did a much better job of it, please look at his pictures and click  "The Bayfield Bunch" for the link.









Driving further we passed “White Sands” where the sand dunes are the whitest I have ever seen. Imagine huge sugar hills! We were not able to stop, so no pictures. 
While driving on US-70 we stopped to take a picture of the road sign for the Holloman AFB across the street. Our niece, Judith is with the military in Germany and she had been there to take a course at the Holloman AFB a few years ago. So this picture is for you, Judith.


We overnighted at a Walmart parking lot in Alamogordo, NM. The place was hopping when we got there in the afternoon but we found a good parking spot on the side and just rested for the afternoon/evening.  The next morning there were 10 RVs parked around us. Walmart has also a gas station and the price of $2.11/gal was the lowest we had seen so far. Sadly, it was only set-up for credit cards, no cash and our Canadian credit card would not work in the machine as it required to put in a 5 digit Zip code, which we did not have, because we use postal codes in Canada that have a combination of letters and numbers. A little further down the road we filled up for $2.14/gal, so that was ok too.



Our destination was Roswell, NM, a town famous for flying saucers, UFO and visiting Aliens. Along the way on US-70 in the town of Ruidoso Down, NM, I noticed artwork on display by the roadside and voiced that it would be fun to see. Benno did me a favor and stopped the truck so I could have a look. I marveled at all those garden things and carvings and took some pictures and then we drove on. A little further we saw another bunch of statues and Benno even turned the truck with travel trailer in tow around so I could go to see those too while Benno waited in the truck.  There were lots of stuff to see but as I was going around the displays to the back I couldn’t believe my eyes. Down there was the “Mother Load” of all garden art, statues and Mexican decor. There were workshops, where they did the chainsaw carving of statues incl. aliens in all sizes and there were warehouses full of all kinds of imports and other locally made carvings and such. My golly, this was more than I ever had hoped to see, I ran through half of it and then called Benno over so he could have a look also as he had been wondering what took me so long. Taking more pictures was pointless as I was totally overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it.















So if you happen to be in the area, you might want to have a look yourself. 

Thanks for visiting and I hope you come again.

11 comments:

  1. at the gas stations asking for zip code you just use the numbers in your postal code and add 2 zeros: ours is N0M 1G0 ....so I punch in 01000
    it always works. Kelly

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    1. Thank you for that tidbit of info as it will become useful. It was the first time we came across a station without an attendant.

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  2. We do the same as Kelly says, our postal code is N0C1K0, we put in 01000, as Kelly says, it works.

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    1. I had tried 5 zeros which didn't work and never thought of the postal code combination.

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  3. What lovely area to explore always love the roadrunner, and of course the Aliens.
    We do the same thing as Al/Kelly and Bill for the zip our postal in N3A 2W2 so zip is 32200.

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    1. You have a very cool drive! How nice that Benno was able to accommodate you by stopping along the way. Some very nice things to see for sure!
      Have fun with your further explorations now that you know all about fueling up! :)

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    2. Thanks everyone. If the code works for you it should for us. That place with all the art work has just about everything you can imagine and everything has a price tag (reasonable) that I appreciated.

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  4. The first time we headed south we had the same problem with the Credit Card. On our way Home an attendant told us the trick. Our's is 82100.
    Quite the find for the Artwork.
    Be Safe and Enjoy!

    It's about time.

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    1. I would have asked you guys how to use our Canadian credit cards if we had come across no attendant before. Now we should be good, I think. If you need any of the art work for gifts or garden and are passing through, stop and have a look.

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  5. Adding the two zeros did not work for us once so we just used any numbers and it was fine.

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    1. I had tried different combinations but apparently not the right ones. Perhaps those are different machines at that Walmart location. Who knows.

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