And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautifulwife
And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here?
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?
Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.
David Byrne, Talking Heads
After almost a year of planning, our second trip to the paradise we call Las Cruces, NM is in the books. I thought I would take a few minutes to begin to tell you a bit about it.
We first visited Las Cruces in February 2010. After months of research on the area, making a connection with a blogger there as well as checking out the city–data boards on the area, we went for a ten day visit. We became friends with a wonderful couple – Claire and Bill, met several nice people, looked at the area overall, checked out housing with a couple of different realtors and generally enjoyed our time there. We knew we needed to go back and so just this past week, returned from a two week stay there. We had several goals to shoot for and basically accomplished almost everything we set out to. There was a bump in the road (I ended up in the hospital for a few days, more on that in a later post) but overall the trip was an A++ in our book. So, what did we accomplish? A summary follows.
Reconnected with some friends, made some new friends:
A move like this is going to require a lot of support. To move away from friends and family is difficult and so we knew from the get go that we needed to establish and cultivate a social network. We were able to do so by starting a friendship with Claire and Bill. They were like family from the first time we met. Despite the fact that they took us out to the desert our first night there, on a somewhat isolated and empty dirt road, telling us stories of axe murderers and people disappearing in the caves of the desert, we knew that we had found some special people. They in turn had introduced us to some of their friends and family and very quickly, we are accepted into the group and became part of that circle. Relationships like this, long distance ones, are difficult to maintain but we worked at it, writing and phoning to maintain the contact. On our return, we frequently touched base with Las Cruces and our friends were ever so helpful in scouting out potential homes and condos and keeping us informed about what was going on out there. During this last visit we had several socials with the “gang”, including several visits to a café with great desserts, breakfast at the best place in Las Cruces a number of times, a trip up to Hatch for one of the best chile cheeseburgers in the state and tours of some of the neighborhoods and a local state park. Social connections like this are GOLD.
Checked out some neighborhoods we would like to live in, and NOT live in:
During our first visit, we got the lay of the land so to speak, kind of figuring out where things were in relationship to each other. We had seen lots of nice neighborhoods, saw several types of houses, new, relatively new and older ones and just got a general feeling of our place. Since then we have scoured the internet looking at realtor ads and postings form Las Cruces at a variety of homes. We had hoped that this second trip would help us narrow down the selection and overall it did, another positive note. What did we learn? Well, we had considered several options to live in the city but after exploring the various neighborhoods felt there were two deal breaker issues. First off, the homes there are older and require more upkeep and attention. We do not want to have to deal with this at all. Second many of the neighborhoods in the city themselves are a mixture of nice homes and nice ones, landscaped front yards and cars on the lawn front yards, pretty rocks and cactus landscaping and dirt. It seemed like a crap shoot. We looked at several homes we liked in pictures but ended up next to house with furniture and car parts on the front lawn. We decided we wanted more.
We also had been looking to the north east part of the city, the East Mesa. This is where the developers found cheap land, bought it up and went on a building spree before the market collapsed. This area is marked by little subdivisions of similar housing done by different builders. The areas are a few square blocks in size and there are plenty of homes available there. They go by names that reflect their street names – The Gems (diamond, ruby, sapphire) The Pines (Virginia Pine, Stone Pine, Rock Pine) and the Planets (Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and NO I DON’T THINK I COULD LIVE ON URANUS AVENUE AND YES THERE WERE HOUSES FOR SALE THERE…)
We like it there because the homes were newer, the neighborhoods better kept, there are services being built out there now and you could hop on a main highway and be in the center of town in just a few minutes. We figured we could live anywhere out there but discovered that at some point, we just got to far away from the city and so we figured to stay closer in this East Mesa area. We actually saw three homes in the Pines, one of which was too small but two others we would put a bid on in a minute with nice mountain views, covered patios for morning coffee and evening grilling and large back yards with no upkeep due to Xeroscape (my back yard is 5000 pounds of rocks).
Figure out IF we could deal with the heat in the desert:
Whenever we mention relocating to NM, often the first comment (after "is that part of our country?") is about the heat of the desert. This is often followed by a comment about it being a dry heat. Well, having now done it, I am happy to report we did just fine and can handle it. A bit of an explanation is in order.
The east coast is just leaving the grips of a massive heat wave that created considerable difficulties for the population at large and the electric companies. While this was going on, we were n Las Cruces. A comparison: Average temperature in the northeast 94 – 101 degrees. Average temperatures in Las Cruces 93 – 99 degrees. Average humidity in the northeast – 70% or more. Average humidity in Las Cruces – 21%.
When we returned to the east, the first thing we noticed was how oppressive it was here. We were in A/C in the house and could not even go into non-air conditioned rooms. It was not oppressive in New Mexico at all. In the hottest part of the day, you did not want to be in the sun. You could not touch the fender of your car at 2 pm in the afternoon BUT a little bit of shade made it comfortable as did a gentile warm breeze present almost every day. It is dry, you must drink lots of water and if you feel thirsty, you are already dehydrating but it was very doable.
We had this figured out by the second full day there. No humidity is one of the nicest phrases I have ever heard. We sat outside in the shade several afternoons and we none the worse for wear. On other thing is that you don’t feel like you sweat. You do but it dries very quickly. Even when you get into your hot car until the A/C can take over, the back of your shirt does not feel wet. I am a notorious sweater and rarely wiped my brow the entire two weeks nor ever had to dry out my hat. One final note. The day we arrived in Las Cruces we opened our suitcase and found our clothing felt damp from the New England humidity. We hung it on hangers and by the next day, they were feeling dry as a bone.
Got all excited about the adventure, all over again:
After our last trip to NM we were on a high that lasted several weeks, excited about what we experienced and how we envisioned where we wanted to go. Of course after a while, this dies down a bit when things like work and bill paying and other mundane household tasks get in the way. For us, this was compounded by putting our hose on the market and dealing with all the stresses that that brings with it and so this trip served as an energizer- again showing us what we had going on for us in Las Cruces – the friends, the adventure, the life. It was great to be reminded of all that this place has to offer and I think we came back appreciating it even more.
This is how we ended up in this place, in another world, with dreams of a beautiful house, with all the worries and concerns and dreams ahead of us…
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