Day 7
The thing about traveling in this part of the great American desert is, it’s big and there’s a whole lot of nothing out here. We had planned to spend a couple of hours a day driving and camp every night. However, there are no campgrounds. Nobody wants to camp here. There are lots of RV Parks, but they are for people who want a place to park their motor homes, plug in, cook and eat dinner, watch a little TV and go to sleep.. They are not interested in spending anymore time in Brenda, AZ. Come morning, they’re on their way. Campers on the other hand like to build fires, sit outside and enjoy nature. RV parks don’t allow fires and there’s no place to sit outside. The best way to enjoy this country is get through it as quickly as possible. That’s my long way of explaining how we got from Phoenix, AZ to Las Cruces, NM in one day.

I said there was nothing out here. That wasn’t quite true. There are billboards. More billboards than cactus. They guide you to food, rest, furniture, lawyers. Pretty nearly everything you could want. We pay attention to them. Spotted one which invited us to “SEE THE THING”. It was ahead at exit 322. We were at exit 4. There must have been a thousand more of those billboards along the way. So we stopped, had a delicious lunch at the Diary Queen THE THING shares a parking lot with, paid our dollar and went in tho see it. My mother would always refer to these roadside amusements as “traps build by knaves to catch fools”. Well, she had never seen THE THING. Her saying is an insult to fools. Fools would never be drawn in to see THE THING. Any way, we saw it. I could tell you what it is, but you might want to stop someday yourself and I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.