Well, we’re back home in New Mexico. And by home, I mean we’ve arrived safe and sound at the world headquarters of StressLess Camping. It’s sort of a mixed bag.

That means that this adventure has come to a close, which is a bummer, but it also means that we’ve arrived safely without any real incident to mar the adventure and that’s fantastic.

After yesterday’s goofiness of things being closed or just not operational (a brewery with no beer? Blasphemy I say!) we spent the night at the Carlsbad RV Park which is conveniently located in its namesake city.

Carlsbad RV Park

This place clearly used to be a KOA based on the architecture of the main building.

This whole area appeals to transient workers and the RV parks are where a lot of them live while working in the area. That included our neighbor who was residing in a Keystone Bullet travel trailer with his collection of various vehicles in equally varied state of repair.

This RV park has an enormous laundry room with as many laundry machines as many standalone laundry mats have. There are the big machines, the little machines and a desk and some chairs for you to enjoy while waiting for your wash to be done.

There is also a pretty well-equipped store right adjacent to the laundry room with plenty of RV-related things as well as ingredients to make a variety of meals including locally-sourced jam. There were also souvenirs and that sort of thing.

This RV park is fully gated so, if you arrive after hours, you need to use a key card to get back in. That gives one a feeling of security although, quite honestly, there were no signs of things being sketchy.

The bathrooms in this RV park are as nice as the ones we encountered at Two Creeks Crossing in Texas. Clearly someone had recently completely refurbished these bathrooms and had done a first-rate job with them.

There is also an indoor pool, which we didn’t avail ourselves of. We’re more the hot tub sort of people.

And, speaking of hot tubs, we came home and immediately cranked ours back up so we could sit in the water and stare at the desert. Priorities and all.

You know you’re in New Mexico when…

Some of the roads in this country are immaculately maintained and smooth as silk but that isn’t anywhere near the way you’d describe I-40 in New Mexico. This road is infamous for being an example of a suspension rattling disaster. We came out of Carlsbad and, as soon as we transitioned onto I-40 there was no doubt we were on this bone rattler.

But the signs that we were in New Mexico were pretty evident when we were passed by a cabover truck that indicated that it was operated by a movie production company and there, on the back of the truck, was an old Bounder motorhome. Clearly someone is either filming, or has recently filmed, another tale that involves our friend Walter White from Breaking Bad.

More about roads…

We almost learned a very hard lesson last time we traversed the road from Roswell to Vaughn. This long, boring stretch of isolated desert is one of those roads that would be a whole lot of fun if we were behind the wheel of a new Corvette.

But towing a trailer it makes me grateful for all the good podcasts there are.

On our lesson-almost-learned adventure we left Roswell with probably ⅔ of a tank of gas knowing that the miles between the two cities should result in our having about ⅓ of a tank of gas by the time we high Vaughn. The prices are lower there so it makes sense.

Enjoying a meal at Penny's Diner Vaughn - a roadside attraction and vintage cafe in small town USA

Well, this vast, open stretch of desert can also be quite windy and the headwinds we faced on that trip forced our already-inefficient pickup to become the king of gas suckers. As we got closer to Vaughn our gas warning light came on with our truck’s confuser predicting that there were fewer miles between empty and where we were than there were between Vaughn and where we were.

Shoot.

I considered unhooking the Rockwood and leaving it behind to improve fuel mileage.

Finallky the display on the truck’s instrument panel stopped guessing at how many miles were left and just read “you’re hosed.” Or something to that effect.

But, by some miracle, we made it to the gas station in Vaughn where I could have kissed the lady behind the counter. Apparently my amorous feelings for her petroleum distillate were shared by others and she claimed that they had to rescue many a car out there in the desert.

This time I filled our now-larger fuel tank in Roswell so that making it to Vaughn was not an issue. And, this time, there were no headwinds to speak of.

That gas episode I described the first time made us so shaky we stopped at Penny’s Diner Vaughn where the 1950s feel translated into plentiful and tasty food for real. I also liked sitting at the counter and watching the cook do his thing.

Somehow I’m fascinated by commercial food prep.

So, this time, despite not having to promise things for generations to come to get to Vaughn, we still stopped at Penny’s Diner Vaughn. Once again there was a lot of food at a fair price with me ordering the chicken fried steak breakfast and Peggy getting a club sandwich with tater tots. Both were pretty good and very filling.

Vaughn is one of those old railroad towns that were necessitated by the railroads needing to replenish water in the steam engines that ruled the rails but, today’s diesel locomotives don’t need frequent stops. So, like so many towns, Vaughn is a ghost of its former self but Penny’s Diner is still a nifty place to grab a taste of the past.

Oddly enough, though, neither the menu nor the sandwich board at Penny’s shows the prices of the food so you just kind of hope it’s not overpriced. It’s not. A sandwich with tots, a big breakfast for me and two iced teas came out to just under $30.

I’m not sure when these essays will continue but I hope you’ve found them enjoyable. We’ll certainly come back when the mood strikes us or we head back onto the Great American highway.