A drive through New Mexico can be both exquisitely beautiful and achingly depressing. Beautiful are some of the vistas, depressing are the poverty stricken towns; so when you hit a long stretch of the latter, any sign that promises wonderful things ahead is exciting indeed.
Signs for White's City litter the highways for miles, and we even ended up diverted off a highway through tricky signs and onto a rural route headed straight towards the biggest tourist trap in the Southwest.
We ate what can be barely described as a meal at the Velvet Garter Steakhouse, which the website's strange copy introduces like this: “What's this? An Italian Restaurant in the desert? You Bet!”
We took to calling the place The Golden Harlot. We didn't have time to go to Carlsbad Caverns due to all the time we lost getting sidetracked to the “resort” of White's City, but Jim did get an amazing tee shirt that I still wear to bed sometimes that says “Doing it in a Cave” on the front and has boxes checked off that read “Been there” and “Done that”.?Jim also bought a bunch of foam geckos that he vividly remembered from the rooms of girls he knew in junior high.
But what do you think?