After a very comfortable stay at Stevens Inn in Carlsbad, we continued on our way. Our next destination is a town called Eureka Springs, AR in the Ozarks. As you already know, we love to take back roads as much as possible and stay off the freeways and this trip provided an opportunity to to explore US 62, one of the most unusual roads in the country. What makes it unusual is that, like all even numbered US routes, it travels east-west across the country, but it also travels north-south and is the only even numbered route that connects the Canadian border at Niagra Falls with the Mexican border at El Paso, TX. To top it off, it passes through Carlsbad, NM and through Eureka Springs, AR. So three guesses which road we are taking to our next destination. 

Driving along US62 in New Mexico, there appears lots of desert and little life. What life can be found (from the car) consists of mining, small manufacturing, solar farms, wind farms and oil wells. At one point, we passed a potash mining and processing plant. Not recalling what that was, we Googled potash and discovered that it is a general term for various mined and manufactured salts containing water soluble potassium. Its main use is in fertilizer to help with plant nutrition and water retention.

After traveling for 1 1/2 hours we bid farewell to New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, and lost another hour as we entered Texas and the central time zone. For quite some time we drove past irrigated fields with grape vineyards, an orchard (not sure what kind), cotton fields, peanut farms and sorghum fields. 

We had decided to stop in Childress, TX for the night. However, all the hotels were completely booked without a room anywhere to be found. Apparently, a huge data center is being constructed at one end of the town and construction workers from all over the country have taken over every available room. (You may ask why we don’t make reservations in advance. It’s because we like the freedom to make last minute changes when we find something new and interesting and when we decide we don’t like something. We can leave early or not stay at all or stay longer or go someplace else simply on a whim. In the 20+ years of traveling, this is only the second time we have been stranded.)  So, we continued onward along US62. Just outside Childress, we crossed over the Red River. Well, the river bed was red, but except for a little water on the river bank, it was dry. Fortunately, about another hour down the road we found lodging at Altus, OK where we had dinner on the patio at a great pub called the 580. 

Best to all,
Wayne & Peggy