It would be a three hour drive with windy conditions on I-10 to our next destination, Hacienda RV Park in Las Cruces, New Mexico. After all of the recent short hops, this seemed like a very long drive. But on the positive side, with all of the surrounding mountains, it was very scenic.

One of the highlights of I-10 is the huge recycled Road Runner located at the eastbound rest area just to the west of Las Cruces. The giant figure is built from all sorts of discarded junk.

After we arrived and settled into our site #41, I discovered that the rear bathroom window was gone – yep it was just gone! We had problems with this window previously where the operator was separating from the vent pane. Rob had tried various adhesives but I guess it let go in the strong winds that day. Luckily when the vent pane ripped itself off, it didn’t hit our tow vehicle, or anyone else as far as we know.

A new window had to be custom fabricated and it takes 4 to 6 weeks. We knew it would be many weeks, a lot of driving and some bad weather before we would be in one place long enough to provide a stable shipping address. So the repair had to be robust enough to survive all that. A piece of plastic duct taped over the opening wasn’t going to cut it. As usual, Rob donned his repair hat and after a few trips to Ace Hardware for a piece of Plexiglass and Home Depot for some hardwood, he was able to fabricate a temporary window. Below is a video Rob did for this temporary repair (BTW, the window never leaked and held up fine for several weeks on the road).

The next morning we had planned on going to the Shed for breakfast but when we got there it was really crowded with no place to park. Instead we went to A Bite of Belgium restaurant. Even here we had to wait a bit, maybe about 30 minutes – it was Saturday after all. Back in 2017, we came here for the first time and loved it – we had the basically the same waffle and omelet which hit the spot. We ordered one lemon cream (no need for syrup on these waffles) but the waitress brought us two for an extra $2.65. No big deal, just a little annoying. Excellent breakfast though!

Breakfast was followed by a beautiful drive to Dripping Springs Natural Area, always such a pretty drive! Back in 2017, we had climbed one of the trails, huffing and puffing all the way! No way that was happening on this trip due to my A-fib.

We tried the Shed again the next day where we luckily found a parking space. It was about 30 minutes before a table was available but well worth the wait. We both ordered the Steak Fingers with green chile sauce ($15.50). Delish!

To be a little closer to Hatch, NM, we had made a reservation at Leasburg Dam State Park in Radium Springs which was only 21 miles away so we slow rolled our departure from Hacienda.

Small but decent park with 34 well spaced sites. We had a site with water and electric (30 amp only), each site has a covered picnic table.

Craving a chile burger from Sparky’s Burgers in Hatch (we had been there in 2022), we headed there for lunch.

As we neared the town, traffic was all backed up with what seemed like hundreds of trucks! It seemed like it took an hour for us to make it through one of the main intersections. Jeesh! Apparently I-10 further up had been shut down and the trucks had been diverted through town. We finally got thru the mess, were able to find a parking space and walked to the restaurant. There was a line there as well so we had to wait about 1/2 hour to place our order at the counter. When your order is ready, your name is called. We both had the Combo #1 ($13.99), a 7 oz green chile cheese burger with fries and iced tea. Yummy! Cross that burger off our craving list! This is one of our top 5 burgers.

We would have liked to have ridden around the town but with the traffic being what it was we decided against it, so immediately after lunch we headed back to the Leasburg Dam, taking some backroads to avoid the mess.

It was at this time that our satellite carrier, Dish, experienced a cyberattack, so we were stuck with the programming of Las Cruces because we couldn’t change the service address to get the local channels. The ability to once again change our local channel service address wouldn’t resume for us until May!

On February 24th, our journey east continued. Goodbye New Mexico, hello Texas!