Old Mesilla is on the outskirts of Las Cruces, NM. The plaza there reminds me a lot of Santa Fe, but not as fancy. I imagine that Santa Fe used to look like this when it was first built, since the builders are the same people.
After spending the night in El Paso, we drove through UTEP’s campus, where the buildings are modeled after the architecture in Bhutan.
Before leaving El Paso, we visited the Chamizal National Memorial.
“In 1966, Congress established Chamizal National Memorial to commemorate the Chamizal Convention (treaty) of 1963. The Chamizal treaty finally ended a long-standing border dispute between the U.S. and Mexico. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo established the Rio Grande/RÃo Bravo as the international boundary between the U.S. and Mexico. However, rivers naturally move over time. In this case, the river gradually, and at times abruptly, moved south, which left Mexico with less land than the 1848 treaty established. The land disputes that arose because of the river movement caused tension between the U.S. and Mexico for more than 100-years. Finally, in 1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos met to discuss the “Chamizal Issue” and through diplomatic negotiations, they solved the Chamizal Issue with the signing of the Chamizal Treaty.”
We bid adieu to family and drove 118 miles west from Spicewood to Junction, TX, through the rolling hills of the Texas Hill Country with its scrubby bushes and wide open spaces. There we saw a variety of roadkill: 7 deer, 2 skunks, 3 raccoons, 1 armadillo, 1 porcupine, 1 opossum and many more critters that were unidentifiable bits of fur, etc. (I’ll spare you the gory details).
We appreciate the familiarity of the wide open spaces of the West. It feels like home.
It’s pretty swampy in Texas at the Louisiana border on I-10. There is a comprehensive Welcome Center there with the standard state maps and travel brochures, but also some interesting interpretive info on the surrounding Blue Elbow Swamp.
We were lucky to arrive in Spicewood outside of Austin in time for our great-niece’s 6th birthday party. We had dinner at a place that pleases kids and adults alike: a play area for the kids, good beer for the adults! After that, we headed over to the Christmas Tree lighting complete with Santa Claus, the Chick fil-A cow, cookies, s’mores, and music.
Charlie is a big fan of Cajun Zydeco music, so we traveled through the Zydeco Cajun Prairie to see the hometowns of Geno Delafose, Steve Riley, Clifton Chenier, Queen Ida and Boozoo Chavis, among others in Louisiana northwest of Lafayette. The area is mostly rice farms and ranches.
http://www.zydecocajunbyway.com/index1.html
We ate at a Cajun restaurant for dinner, Randol’s, in Lafayette, where Charlie danced with Giselle, a woman with whom he danced when we went to Southern California Cajun Zydeco dances in Pasadena many years ago. She moved from L.A. to Lafayette several years ago. Both were surprised to see each other in Lafayette!
On our way to Lafayette, LA, we stopped in Breaux Bridge for lunch and a walk around downtown. We ate at Buck and Johnny’s, where there are Zydeco dances every Saturday morning. When we went into a local souvenir store, the woman who owned the store was really friendly, and spoke with that unique Cajun accent. We knew we were in Cajun Country, for sure!
We drove from the Atlanta area southwest through Auburn and Montgomery, Alabama, landing in Gulfport, MS to spend the night.
We toured Auburn University:
We exited the freeway in Montgomery to view a few historic sites:
We bade farewell to our Fayetteville, GA home on November 29 and began our journey west back to California. Here are a few parting shots of our home in Fayetteville:
We enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving Day with Charlie’s family in Fairburn, GA, with about 35 people there. What a fun group! We were so thankful to be able to spend the day with them.
The next day, Charlie’s cousin, Bill, invited us to watch his tree-climbing skills. He is part of a recreational tree-climbing group and explained and demonstrated all the skills needed to climb a tree safely. He urged us to try it — to no avail. We were too chicken!
Christmas lights appeared in our neighborhood the weekend after Thanksgiving, making it even more beautiful.
We spent the day before Thanksgiving walking along a nature trail that we discovered in Peachtree City. Lovely urban park!
