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Road Trip Day 2: Las Cruces to Tucson

Time to hit the road.


After about an hour, we stopped to stretch our legs at a park I'd seen on the Deming tourism site. Sexy Nerd doubted that Deming even had a tourism site and was concerned that stopping there would lead to our deaths.


It was such a neat park that even Sexy Nerd lightened up. I would never plan for us to go somewhere dangerous...as long as you don't count that Super 8 in Kissimmee. Things were okay until I got into bed and found something tucked into the sheets. But that's a different story.


Deming should advertise this park as a botanical garden.


Back on the road to Tucson, we saw many interesting sights.


Has anyone out there ever actually stopped to see The Thing? I told Sexy Nerd that I've been there and that it's just a totem pole, but I just said that because I don't want to pay $2 for us to see it.

I checked online. It's a mummy and a bunch of junk.

$2 could buy us lunch at McDonalds!


Everything was going well. We were going to arrive in Tucson with plenty of time to spare before my cousin's wedding. Until...


Ah, a semi truck on fire! There's a road trip killer.


Luckily, I remembered to buy a gigantic tub of licorice for our trip. We had food. We would be okay. Though, I did worry that I may have to share my Red Vines with the other stranded travelers. That simply wouldn't do. It's not in my nature. Ask my mom.


A trucker came over to our Alero. I hid my licorice. He told us that the estimated time for the road to be cleared was in 5 more hours. It was a truck on fire - where did the 5 hour estimate possibly come from?? Perhaps he was just trying to clear the other vehicles out of his way. Cars began to turn around. I've always heard that this is an extremely dangerous, not to mention foolish and illegal, thing to do.


The view from the median!


Sayanora, suckers!


It's too bad we waited 45 minutes before feeling brave enough to drive the Alero off the road. If we hadn't turned around, we would have missed this "charming" little town. Can it be classified as a ghost town if it still has a few residents? I'm not sure how many ghosts.


We finally arrived at our hotel. Sexy Nerd travels so much for work that he had a free nights stay at the Fairfield Inn. The staff was extremely friendly and a polite little girl held the front door open for us when she saw us approaching with our luggage. Her sister, however, was at the front desk eating the last of the free check-in cookies. Damn her.


Since we had lost our time advantage, we went swimming at the hotel.

THIS WAS THE 1ST AND ONLY TIME WE HAVE EVER BEEN SWIMMING THE ENTIRE 5 1/2 YEARS WE HAVE BEEN TOGETHER.

Yes, you would be right to assume that we would surely have gone swimming at some time during our honeymoon in Hawaii or on either of the cruises we have taken or at a pool in one of the many, many other hotels we have stayed in.

But you would be wrong.

Sexy Nerd, who is the reason we had never been swimming, now wants a pool.

Then, we got ready for the wedding.


Not exactly the most formal attire, but it worked. If only the camera had been raised a little higher.


Sitting down seemed like a good photo choice, but we didn't factor in the eerie glow of the ironing board!


We...uhh...may have spent so much time taking photos that we arrived after my cousin's wedding ceremony had started. Oops.

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