Driving South Towards Silver City

My girlfriend Kate, cousin Brett, friend Oleg and I decided to go to Silver City to visit my family the weekend before the Spring semester began. Oleg is from Kazakhstan, so I wanted to help him learn about the great United States in a similar fashion to the true life documentary "Borat." As I showed Oleg, one important lesson about the United States is that everyone is required to own multiple guns, and Neo from the Matrix can be seen in many different places around major cities. Here is Neo in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Neo, with a uncharacteristically small caliber rifle (.22)

Once we loaded everything up and headed out of Albuquerque, we made sure to stop at Oleg's favorite coffee shop. We stopped at the Starbucks in Los Lunas, about 25 minutes south of Albuquerque.










I really don't like those sunglasses, but they have nice optics.

Oleg Semanov, Starbucks connoisseur

Fifty miles later, we stopped in Socorro to eat at the Mexican restaurant, "El Sombrero." Luckily, I had a few gift certificates left over from when I used to live in Socorro, which needed to be used up. As always, the food was very good.

Side View of El Sombrero

After the last major stop in Socorro, we made it back to the Black Range. The "Black Range" is the name given to the mountains between the towns of Truth or Consequences and Mimbres, and can be crossed in order to get from Albuquerque to Silver City. The alternative route involves driving through Deming, which reminds me very much of an alkaline flats badland. Most of the time, I prefer to drive through the heavily forested mountains. On this trip, we were actually able to see two javelinas running around. It was pretty dark, and they ran away quickly, so no photo evidence. Once we crossed the mountains, the remaining drive went smoothly and we arrived in Silver City.