Heading East to New Mexico...

Monday, 19 May, we took highway 180 south and east

out of Silver City… 30 miles down the road toward

Deming was the turnoff to City of Rocks State Park,

which is about 4 miles east off the road. This is a very open, desolate area of New Mexico…a big broad valley with rolling hills and lots of yucca plants, grass, a few prickly pear cacti here and here…surrounded by distani mountan ranges. When you turn east onto the road that takes you to City of Rocks you soon pass a private hot springs called the Faywood Hot Springs Resort.

It was closed this time and looked like it had been closed for some time… according to the website the propert is for sale. One of the couple that owned and ran it died unexpectedly and the spouse wants it to go to a new caretaker. Just up the hill from Faywood is another turn off to the north with a short drive to the park. About 1/2 mile before the actual park is a sign that says “STOP” where you are supposed to pay the day-use fee unless you are a camper. Reckon that’s to make sure everyone who drives into the park has paid the fee and displays their receipt, as there’s really no other way to make sure everyone is legit.

As you drive toward the park you can see City of Rocks …an outcrop of rock pillars and boulders that seem to rise up out of the flatlands around them.

It’s a very interesting thing to come upon…the rocks

formations are other-worldly. The literature says that

some of the pillars are 40 feet tall, and there are a lot

of those “balanced rock” formations that you are sure

are going to tumble at the slightest breeze. It’s

photographer’s paradise, too, with lots of interesting perspectives and unusual scenes to enjoy. What’s fun is that there are camp

sites tucked away right in the rocks...very charming settings for a camp-out.

There is a very nice modern visitor’s center that has interesting displays, a

short video about the park and a rack full of literature on the area and the

flora/fauna of the park. There are 50 campsites, 10 of which are in a loop

near the visitor’s center and have electrical and water hookups. There are no sewer hookups and there is no dump station at this park, so come with empty holding tanks. There are showers at the visitor’s center, and vault toilets sprinkled about the grounds. The electrical/water sites are very nicely landscaped and each has a covered shelter on a cement slab with a fire ring

and picnic table. Half of the electric sites are pull-through and the other half

are back-ins…all have great views of the rock formations that lie across

the road from the camp ground. The dry camping sites are the more

interesting ones, in that they are literally hidden in the rock formations…

some of them actually sit beneath balanced rocks and in narrow openings between rock pillars. Some are situated behind retaining walls built and then back-filled to make them level. Some of these dry camping sites are accessible with RVs, but most are more suited to truck or tent camping… Three of the electrical sites are reserveable and a handful of the dry-camping sites are as well…but most are first-come, first served. If we go back there and dry camp, we’ve picked out the site we want.

There’s a road that circles the entire formation of rocks which is perhaps a

mile square…with side roads that take off into the rocks to cozy, secluded camping sites and trails. There is a trail that starts at one end of the formation and goes right through the middle and comes out on the other end. There is also a trail that completely circles the formation, but further out in the desert… There’s a nice botanical garden on the south end of the rock formations to

walk through, as well as an observations point on a nearby hill that has its own minor outcrop of rocks. From there you can see the entire park from the east side. The electrical loop is on the east side of the rocks so the sun sets

behind the rocks from that location, making for a silhouetted view of the

rocks at sunset. If you go to the west side of the formation at sunset you are treated to a great New Mexico sunset across the valley toward the mountains

in the distance…

It was pretty warm the day we arrived. We were back in shorts and shirt weather for sure…and it was definitely the “off” season. The AC

was necessary in the Bambi…we took a leisurely walk with the

Girls, but short so they wouldn’t get too overheated, then jumped

in the truck to take a drive around the park to get the lay of the

land… There were only 3 or 4 RVs in the electrical loop (2 of

which were volunteers) and perhaps 4 campsites occupied in the dry camping areas. It was eerily deserted, actually. When we were here last, during the winter, the place was crawling…so busy that we couldn’t get a camp site!

The air card internet connection was not good…we could get connected, but got dropped frequently. We learned that reception was far better of the west side of the park, opposite of where we were camped… Terry was able to communicate with his clients via email while we were there, but it was fortunate that there as no call for file transfers, etc…the connection did not last long enough for a successful transfer of attachments to emails.

Monday evening we grilled chicken…and we discovered a baby rattle snake in our camp site, on the concrete slab with the picnic table, just as the sun was beginning to set… We later learned it was a “Prairie Rattlesnake” according to the park ranger…and that we should have let the rangers know we had seen it so that they could come and relocated it outside the park. It was just a little thing, but it was feisty as could be…striking ferociously at the broom as we shooed it away into the brush…and it would no doubt have not been a good thing if we or the Girls fell victim to its enthusiasm. There had been an adult rattler found the same day…and we are sure we saw a couple of hikers near the loop jump back from something on the ground in their path— probably a rattler. This made us wary when we walked the Girls from that point on… checking under the trailer for snakes and along side the paths and roadways… In all the years of camping and RVing in the desert, this was the first rattle snake we had come across. But it was a good reminder to keep an eye

out for them. They are there. Glad this one was just a baby…an adult

would have presented far more of a threat, especially since it was all coiled up right outside the Bambi door, and Terry noticed it before the Girls hit the ground.

Tuesday was our day to really explore the park….we left the Girls in the air conditioning and took in the visitor’s center…then took the truck to the observation point on the nearby hill…and drove around the rocks again, getting out here and there to take a closer look… That evening Terry took off to the west side of the rocks at sunset to try to get some sunset pictures…

Then a quite evening in the park. Surprisingly, we

had great TV reception while we were there…miles

from anything and good TV…guess it’s because that

whole corner of the state is not that heavily populated,

so if there is any TV reception for anyone in this area is has to come from Albuquerque, Santa Fe or maybe Silver City…and that meant that anyone in this part of the state is in the line of fire for TV signals.

That evening a small black pickup truck with a black wooden camper shell complete with AC and a satellite dome parked in the space next to us…

a man and his dog…it was an odd configuration of a camper…obviously

hand-built and oddly painted black.…but with satellite TV installed. Kinda interesting. That evening the winds began to get a little stronger…and we were rocked a little during the night…and the guy in the odd black truck was gone the next morning...maybe the wind blew him away.

Wednesday was a very windy day. This was the day we were scheduled to leave City of Rocks and head south on 180 to Deming, where we would pick up I-10 to head back toward Arizona. As we packed up it got even more blustery and the ranger asked us if we were sure we wanted to travel that day… We thought it would be OK, so off we went…about 11:30 AM. By the time we got to Deming, which is about 30 more miles south of City of Rocks, we had downright dramatic crosswinds with periods of dust activity as we passed

barren fields with no vegetation to hold the dust down…

We drove on through the edge of town to get on I-10 and headed west toward Lordsburg, the point where we had turned north days earlier to go to Silver City. The wind didn’t get any better as we drove west. In fact, it got darn scary…very high head winds followed by cross winds as the interstate took a slight turn north…there were intermitted dust storms that reduced visibility

to about 50 feet…that went on for a couple of miles, then

suddenly we were be out of it…still windy, but with visibility.

None of the surrounding mountain ranges were visible…there

was nothing but dust. Then we’d come to another heavy dust

episode. What concerned us the most was not our driving, or the

Bambi, which was definitely being buffeted in the wind, but

the semi trucks that were blasting by us going like bats our of hell… It was scary because we knew they were not able to see any better than we could… Our speed was reduced to 45 or 50 mph or less sometimes, but those trucks barreled by at 80…made us worry that we’d be rear-ended before long.

We finally got to Lordsburg and decided to gas up and head north on highway 70 to Safford, AZ…getting us and the Bambi off the interstate and out of the line of fire of speeding truck missiles. Once stopped to gas up we were amazed to find that the dust had stuck to the truck and Bambi like dirt on oil…both were covered with a fine layer of dirt and dust. We could barely see out of the side view mirrors and the windshield of the truck and the front window guard of the Bambi were thick with a coating of dust… It was bizarre. We washed the windows in Lordsburg giving us a new view on life…

We headed northwest on highway 70…that took us up to the NM/AZ border near a little town called Duncan… From there it angles toward Safford through an area of low hills and high desert…not an unpleasant drive…it was still windy, for sure, but a two lane road with far less traffic (rather desolate, actually) but no dust to contend with…we were so happy to be out of the dust that the wind didn’t matter…

We entered Safford from the east about 2:30 PM…we were now back on Arizona time, so we had gained an hour on the clock. The truck and Bambi

were filthy from the dust storm…sort of our “badge of honor”

for having gotten through that mess. We have camped often

at Roper Lake State Park just south of Safford on

highway 191…but this time our favorite loop was closed for

construction, so we were obliged to find a site in the other

loop… That loop was also under construction…they were apparently alternately closing the two electrical loops making improvements to the sites and roads…there had been a lot of grating going on, so the ground

was torn up…and it was still very windy, so the raw dirt was a source of some pretty powerful gusts of dirt…not just dust this time, but chunks of dirt… sweeping across the campground toward the lake…but we persevered…

and set up camp.

Greg took the Girls for a walk while Terry “dusted” the truck and the Bambi with his handy-dandy hand-held dust-mop-like affair that give it a waterless bath when necessary. It made a huge difference to both, so we all felt better and a little cleaner. We took out the outside chairs, but we never did use them as the wind was too much…they got knocked over right away, so we finally just folded them up and laid them down so they would stay put… This loop we were in has shelters at each site, so we set up the BBQ grill near the shelter’s wall to break the wind and we BBQed steak and shrimp…a very nice dinner was had, despite the wind, dang it!

When we drove into the Safford area we noticed smoke up in the mountains southwest of Safford where Mt. Graham is. We learned on the news that

this was a controlled burn that had gotten out of control because

of the high winds, and was now a full-fledged forest fire that they

had dubbed the “Frye Fire”… They said they couldn’t do

anything abut it because of the wind, so it burned away. That

night after the sun went down we could see the red flames of the

fire from the valley below…it spread considerably since we arrived earlier

that afternoon. This meant that the wind brought us not only dust and dirt from the torn up camp ground, but smoke from the fire… The combination made our eyes burn some, so we pretty much stayed inside with the AC going. We also learned on the news that evening that I-10 had been shut down between Deming and Las Cruces, NM, just east of the area we had drivn through…so we knew that we had really lucked out in reality…it could have been far worse.

We had originally planned to stay at Roper Lake two nights, but due to the conditions at the park and the weather, we decided that we’d head out the next day to Tucson, 120 miles to the west. It was still very windy, and a wind advisory had been posted for the next day on the I-10 corridor that we had to take to get home, but we decided to bite the bullet and go home.

That night we not only rocked and rolled in the Bambi from the wind, but in the middle of the night it started to rain! Good in terms of controlling the fire and holding down the dust… Still pretty warm, the AC was off and on all night… So Thursday we packed up and headed home about 11:00 AM… It was still windy, as pedicted and we sort of gritted our teeth in preparation for high winds once we got to I-10, about 35 miles south of Safford. But it turned out to not be that bad…there was some wind, but we had no dust storms like the previous day and it was relatively smooth sailing compared to the hellish day before…

We arrived safely at home about 3:00 PM, unloaded, put the Bambi to rest till next time… It started to sprinkle shortly afterward…the rains was following us all along this trip!

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