Day 16, Wednesday January 28, 2009

Up early to take the Suburban to the Chevy dealer for an oil change and 4WD diagnostic to determine what the problem is when the yellow light comes on and says "Service 4WD." Fortunately the light problem is a documented problem with the 4WD selector switch and has nothing to do with the condition of actual mechanical components. Unfortunately (for my wallet) the service technician noticed that the front brakes were not engaging fully because of the amount of salt corrosion on the brake pads. The rotors were in poor shape too so I had them replace the whole works in the front. I had noticed that braking with the trailer seemed kind of mushy and with an extra 5 tons pushing yo, good brakes are important.
Otherwise, a relaxing day - no trailer maintenace demands. We had lunch in Mesilla and then drove down Highway 28, which is referred to as "The Old El Paso Road." I guess that was the highway to El Paso before I-10. Once past Mesilla there are the vast pecan orchards of the Stahman Nut Company. They are supposedly the largest grower of pecans in the world; they have 3200 acres of pecans here and a similar number of acres in Australia. We stopped at their store and bought a few treats and looked at everything.
Later we did some driving around Las Cruces and drove on the foothills of the Organ mountains where there are several very impressive housing developments with exclusively adobe style houses, although they all looked to be in the $250,000+ range.