Sights from southern New Mexico

The main living space of The Sanctuary. It’s absolutely huge, with a breakfast bar, a small bar, a dining table, fireplace, multiple additional tables and seats to accommodate a party of thirty people.

Looking toward the kitchen of The Sanctuary. A large, well appropriated kitchen with a refrigerator large enough for a family of 12.

On our recent trip to New Mexico, we stayed in three different places overnight, as we drove from location to location. We spotted a few cool things along the way that I want to remember.

One of the most cool Airnbs I have ever seen in all the years I’ve used that service, was our place in Carlsbad, New Mexico. This town does not offer much for affordable, beautiful, and fun places to stay. But there is at least one, and I found it.

Called “The Sanctuary,” it absolutely is. This place is so much fun. The decor was somewhat mismatched and not entirely on theme, but it was instantly comfortable, unbelievably spacious, and undoubtedly a special place for a couple to spend some quality time. There are tons of antiques and special touches and curious marvels tucked into corners and alcoves.

A panoramic photo was the only way to get the entire bathroom in a photo, with the sink on the left, the tub behind it, toilet in a room to the back right, and large walk-in shower foreground right.

Artistic touches around the primary suite bathroom.

There is only ONE bed in this entire place, and it has two bathrooms. This is clearly an entertainment space, but only room only for the host to stay.

The outside of The Sanctuary is also very cool. The website says it used to be a church.

The front of The Sanctuary. The stuff off to the right with the covered entry, and beyond, is additional rental space. We did not see inside any of this space.

One thing we loved about this place was that we could walk three blocks to an outstanding food truck called El Nopal. We had such delicious Mexican food that we went right back the next day. Lots of food for a great price. We also found a super cool Mexican import place.

Also only a few blocks away was this Mexican import store, run by the friendly and gregarious Jesus. We spent some time here just for fun, and what a great spot it is!! I fell in love with a four-foot-high Katrina for $190 and came this close to buying it.

We wanted to shop and shop and shop, but eventually forced ourselves to extricate and leave. Pedro and I always travel with only a small backback each. There was absolutely no space for delicate ceramics.

“In this house, the one with the eggs is me.” In the Spanish language, “eggs” is a euphemism for something else. I decided I want this little sign at my house, hee hee.

We tried a breakfast place called The Blue House Bakery & Cafe just blocks from our Airbnb, and this place also had outstanding food. Again, we ate at the same place the next morning for breakfast. Travel is so much better when the food is good. The bird photos below are from the tables and chairs at the Blue House.

Each time we walked around, we were surrounded by loud calls of a variety of birds. Some sounded like ambulance sirens, some like robins, some like grinding gears, some squeaky doors, or robot bleeps and bloops, some sounded like crows and some like jays. Yep… it was all the same bird. I became obsessed. Finally I got a couple of photos and identified it as the Great Tailed Grackle. It’s a wonderful, smart, large, and talented singing bird. I thought I found a female grackle off in the distance (all of these were iphone photos, and not good for enlarging), but the bird looks more like a White Winged Dove. Not related. The upside of that discovery, is realizing that Stevie Nicks was singing about an actual bird.

In Carlsbad, Pedro and I were overly interested in the traffic lights. These are completely non-intuitive to us. We had to get photos to prove to ourselves we aren’t crazy.

Not super crazy here, but still odd. There are two lanes, and two different sizes of lights, fit horizontally instead of vertically like lights we are familiar with.

Here’s the weirdest part: the green left turn arrow is on the right of the fixture. (The yellow left turn is in the center!)

The lights are disconcerting. First of all, each bulb is apparently dedicated. Here in Oregon, each light can change to whatever you need: red, yellow, arrow, etc. Here in Oregon, the lights are hung according to where the message is going. If the light applies to the car on the left, the light will be on the left. In New Mexico, I guess, you just need to figure out which light applies to you. The left turn lane holds both the red light, and the green turn light. It was so confusing the first time, we didn’t turn, and got honked at!

While watching for traffic lights, we spotted this!

We also stayed at a place in Tularosa, which was not beautiful or interesting, but it was very well priced, and clean. It was 5 minutes from Tularosa Falls, 25 minutes from Three Rivers Petroglyphs, 30 minutes from White Sands National Park, and 20 minutes from the wedding we attended. So all things considered, it was perfect. Also, the man who managed it, Michael, was a gem.

I have no photos of the Airbnb, but I do have photos from the pistachio museum nearby!! It was closed when we arrived, but I leaned over the fence and took photos.

Our Airbnb the last night was in El Paso. I found us a place ten minutes from the airport and it was tiny but perfect and beautiful and tasteful and I wish we could have spent more time there. I took only one photo because it reminded me of two bloggers: Marlene, who loves the color aqua, and Kelly, who started the trend.

Aqua appliances and chickens in our El Paso Airbnb

OK, that’s it for all the orphan ideas (I think). I will try to focus topics for the rest of the trip. Next up we will spend a day – a marvelous day! – in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. After that, some outstanding petroglyphs, White Sands National Park, a surprise private waterfall just gushing water in southern New Mexico, and then the reason for the whole trip: a magnificent wedding of the current captain of the Belle Brigade team, and her man (whose family is from New Mexico, and that’s why we were there).