New Mexico - Truth or Consequences

We drove back along our familiar route on the I-10 through Oro Valley, Tucson, Benson, like seeing in reverse all all places that we’ve just been, but not stopping at any of them for a closer look. 

We did stop at one familiar place along our rewind tour: Wal-Mart parking lots - our sleep salvation. It's actually kind of comforting, in the sense that you go in and you immediately know where the bathrooms and the produce department is, but also monotonous in the sense that no matter where in the world you are, you can walk into one of these stores and see the same stuff in the same configuration. 

Needless to say when we finally passed “The Thing?” for the final time, and pushed on to new territory, a momentary victory cry was needed from both of us.

We went through an entire tank of gas, but that took us well over the New Mexico state line, into Las Cruces (where we promptly locked our doors), north along the Rio Grande (shocking) and finally to our next destination: Truth or Consequences.

I kid you not, this is the Rio Grande. 

Back in the heyday of game shows there was one created by Ralph Edwards who propositioned any town in the US to change its name to that of the game show, and every year they would film an episode in the town. In 1950, Hot Springs, New Mexico officially became Truth or Consequences…and as a place today, it’s interesting.

The game show ran for over 50 years from 1940 to 1988

The show left the town with an interesting name on the map, but the original name of Hot Springs is actually what’s pretty cool about the place. There are several spas along the main road that offer private hotel rooms with large baths that you just turn a valve and hot mineral water fills your tub. 

TJ and I took a tour of one with our CS host here in T or C but opted to leave the mineral baths for less hot days. 

We went back to our host's house and she gave us a tour of her art studio and offered us Gazpacho for dinner. She was a raw-foodist, meaning she mostly ate food that was uncooked or unprocessed. Cold vegetable soup definitely fits that bill! The flavour was fine, but the texture made my skin crawl.

We slept in her art studio that night, an uninsulated building separate from the house, and as it's a bit chilly in the desert so we didn't think anything about using the space heater while we slept. Our host found this to be a grievous offence however and thought we should have known better than to run it for that long. After that, the vibe immediately changed and TJ and I decided that we'd move on to another location as soon as possible. 

We were debating staying another day because we were hoping to catch a glimpse of the Spaceport Richard Branson is building, but it's apparently about 30 miles outside of town in the opposite direction of where we want to go next so we opted to just move along.

The vibes got weird, but the scenery is weirdly beautiful.