What's with all the Bar-B-Que shacks?

We are in Las Cruces, at yet another Wal-Mart (map), adjacent to yet another Bar-B-Que joint.  (We skipped this one, opting instead to eat in last night.)  If you zoom the map in, you can tell we are actually directly across the freeway from the Hacienda RV resort, at which we will be joining up with our caravan on Sunday.

This particular Wal-Mart also happens to be next door to an International/Cummins/Fleetguard/Allison dealer, where, yesterday, I picked up a gallon of TranSynd synthetic transmission fluid.  Our tranny seeps fluid, and needs to be topped up periodically, and, while I would guess that standard ATF is widely available in Mexico, there probably is not a gallon of this synthetic stuff in the whole country.  At $30 per gallon it's pricey stuff, but our tranny runs several degrees cooler on it, and, as close as our cooling system is to capacity, that makes a difference.  On ATF, our retarder would cut out on overtemp at inopportune moments -- with TranSynd, it seldom does.

I also stopped back in today to pick up spare primary and secondary fuel filters, one of the checklist items for the Mexico trip.  We are also right across the street from the Kubota dealer, yet, despite my best efforts at researching cross-references, neither the Fleetguard dealer nor the Kubota dealer could come up with a fuel filter for the genny.  It has a Baldwin on it now, but none of the Baldwin dealers in town has one in stock.

We left the Wal-Mart parking lot briefly this morning, to go pressure-wash Odyssey on a nearby cul-de-sac in an undeveloped parcel.  In a few minutes, we will pack up and move a few blocks, to the Big-O Tire dealer, who will be doing our tire rotation tomorrow morning.

That should wrap up all our errands, and we will settle in at Hacienda until the tour starts.