Las Cruces, New Mexico - 1/6 to 1/8/08

We stayed two nights at Sunny Acres RV park, a 50% off "Escapees" park - Escapees is a great RV club to which we belong. They're now starting to sign up these half-price parks. Usually, the discount is 15%. We were originally going to stay one night, but it was so windy the next morning, we decided to stay another night, so as to not drive the interstate with a 40' coach, pulling a car behind. Good choice! - the area on Interstate 10 between Las Cruces and the Arizona border is notorious for high winds across the desert - so bad that they have to shut down Route 10.

If I haven't mentioned it before, there are lots & lots of tractor-trailers on all of the interstates. It does make driving more hazardous, as the turbulence they create when they pass you in your RV is pretty disconcerting, especially when the speed limit is 75 mi./hr. - Joe is constantly on the lookout for approaching semi's and kind of veers a little to the right. They're doing 75 and we're doing about 58-60, in the right lane.

Las Cruces is a very nice place - AARP has voted it one of their "dream towns" for retirement. Money Magazine has rated it on e of the "best college towns" for retirement. It has a reputed 350 days of sunshine. I guess no one talks about the wind!

While there, we went to the Branagan Cultural Center, a very interesting museum showing many photos and artifacts of the 1850's, the settling of the area, the Mexican influence, etc. We were really lucky, as this was the week that they were featuring an exhibit of the "Navaho Talkers", including an extremely interesting movie.

During World War II, a U.S. general had the marvelous idea to have the Navaho Indians use their language as a code for communications. It was never broken by the Germans nor by the Japanese. The Navaho perfomed a very valuable service to the U.S.

First, their languange had to be transformed into a written code. Then, the Navaho would be stationed at critical posts in the war zone and then transmit important information, using their code, to one another, so that they could let their superior officers know what was going on.