Once we left the park, the task remaining for the day was to get to Las Cruces, New Mexico.  We had one fun little adventure along the way; we stopped at the Greyhound Bus Station in Salt Flat, Texas, about 70 miles south of Carlsbad.  The Greyhound bus stops southbound at 2:10 p.m.--which, as it happened was just a few minutes before we got there. We didn't see the bus or the passengers, but there were a few folk in pickup trucks in the parking lot; apparently they had just dropped off passengers.  It stops northbound at 3:20 p.m.  We were both tickled that even WAY out here in the middle of nowhere, people can get public transit.

We aren't sure where these people come from; there are no houses in Salt Flat that we could see.  Wikipedia calls it a ghost town (population zero), but there is a cafe here (the cafe is listed on the Greyhound page as the bus stop).  Amazing!

Just a note:  the mystery of the clock in the car is not solved:  when we crossed the state line from New Mexico into Texas, the clock changed itself to Mountain Daylight Time, which was the time in New Mexico, which is an hour ahead of Arizona (which does not go on daylight savings time) but an hour behind the time in Texas.  Just about the time we passed Salt Flat, the clock changed itself back to Arizona time--Mountain Standard Time (which, at this time of year, is the same as Pacific Daylight Time).  There was no corresponding weird change of the clock when we passed out of Texas back into New Mexico.  Go figure.