Las Cruces, visit with Jan! Farmers' Market, Mesilla

   We drove from Sonora, Texas about 420 miles, all on I-10, to Las Cruces, New Mexico where my college roommate from Marietta, Jan, lives.
    We arrived mid-afternoon on March 4. Jan had a lovely meal of quiche and asparagus waiting for us. We chatted until almost midnight! Jan feeds the birds and we added new life birds to our repertoire. (Eurasian Collar Dove, White-winged Dove, Scaled Quail, Pyrrhuloxia (a cardinal with a pale bill which Mark tried and tried to photograph), lesser Goldfinch (really small!) Of course, we saw other birds but these ones are new to us.
    The next day, we went to the Las Cruces Farmers' Market and walked the length which was fun.

Jan and Mark at Las Cruces Farmers' Market

Then, we went home to finish off the quiche and homemade guacamole that Jan made. In the afternoon, Jan and I went to Mesilla, an old historic town which was terrific. The town appeared on a Spanish map 22 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.  The town was a crossroads for north-south, east-west traffic from the time of the Anasazi. After the Mexican-American War (1846-48), the southern boundary for the U.S. was 3 miles north of Mesilla, putting the village in Mexico. The building which is now the Double Eagle Restaurant in photos below dates from 1849 and is the oldest structure on the Plaza. Billy the Kid was jailed in Mesilla in 1881 by Judge Roy Bean, the famous Haning Judge. In 1970, the Double Eagle was bought by Robert O Anderson who became president of Atlantic Richfield Oil. He turned it into a restaurant. Jan's son, John had his wedding reception at the restaurant. Jan and I went into the so-called haunted room where 2 murders took place in the 1860s. The portraits on the wall are of the parents of the young man, Armando who was killed by his mother in trying to protect the maid, Inez, with whom he was in love. Inez was also killed. The staff are convinced that things move in the room and, while we were there, the lights blinked and one of the waitresses screamed. Hmmm. Jan gave me a lesson in the intricacies of adobe - the hand-building of it, the maintenance, the thickness of the walls, its flexibility. It is now very expensive.
    (Mark stayed home to do his knee exercises and watch the birds in Jan's back garden.)

Mesilla

Bandstand, center of Mesilla Square

Ceiling in Double Eagle

Gilded baccarat crystal handeliers at Double Eagle

Town Square, Mesilla, looking at Catholic Church

Barbara and Billy the Kid

Plaque in Historic Old Mesilla

Street in Mesilla

"Haunted Room" at Double Eagle

Ceiling of an adobe store. Vigas - the large cottonwood logs

   We had another nice dinner of Jan's homemade chili stew and Napa cabbage salad. Again, we stayed up chatting. Jan told the story of when she and Larry moved out here in a winter storm in 1973 as Larry had been offered a job here at the University and where he eventually earned his Ph.D. Their harrowing trip, supposed to take 4 days, took 9. One day they only got 40 miles as the snow was so intense. Their van's hydraulic door and lift for Larry's wheelchair got stuck and he had to be lifted out by the hotel staff and then Jan had to fix the thing, one of her first ventures (of many later) of electronics maintenance.