Day 1 Austin to Amarillo Day 2 Amarillo to Raton Day 3 Raton to Castle Rock Day 4 Castle Rock to RMNP Day 5 RMNP to Fort Collins Day 6 Fort Collins to Moab Day 7 Moab to Flagstaff Day 8 Flagstaff to VEGAS Day 9 VEGAS to Las Cruces Day 10 Home Again

Day 9 (7/8/02) - Las Vegas, NV to Las Cruces, NM

Leaving Las Vegas.  We slept late and checked out of the hotel around 11, hoping to get out of the city before the temperature started to climb (it was supposed to reach 117 that day.)  We stopped for fast food on the way out of the city and headed down toward Needles, hoping to avoid the traffic jam at Hoover Dam.  We crossed the Colorado at Lake Mojave and headed down through Kingman, Phoenix, and Tucson.  We stopped for dinner in Tucson but had some difficulty finding a restaurant.  Finally, we stumbled upon an Italian place in the middle of downtown, and for being (apparently) the only restaurant in Tucson, it was relatively un-crowded and had quite good food.  We had intended to stop for the night somewhere between Tucson and Las Cruces but ended up having to drive all the way into Las Cruces to find a motel room.  Even then, we had to try about 5 places before finally finding a vacancy at around 2 AM.