Friday morning April 22nd, we left San Antonio, NM - again headed south on I-25. We are still in the high desert. The elevation ranged from 4700-5100 feet. There were a couple of deep canyons where the highway would drop 400-500 feet, then go back up the other side.
We stopped in Truth or Consequences for a couple of McDonald's breakfast burritos and McMuffin to go. You may remember years ago, the town changed it's name. Originally, it was named Hot Springs (for the hot springs in the area), but in 1950 Ralph Edwards, the Host of the NBC radio show Truth or Consequences, promised he would air the show's 10th anniversary broadcast from the first town to change its name to Truth or Consequences. Hot Springs made the change and won the honor of that 10th anniversary broadcast and has been Truth or Consequences ever since. OK - there's your trivia!
We got off I-25 at Hatch, NM (Chile Capital of the World) and hit Hwy 26 for about 50 miles to Deming, then Hwy 180 and Hwy 61 to City of Rocks State Park about 30 miles west out of Deming in the middle of the desert. Hwy 26 is a very good 2-lane that again crosses a lot of desert and some farm lands.
The entrance road into City of Rocks State Park overlooks the park and you can see where the name came from. It's like this big patch of huge rock formations out in the middle of the desert.
There are a few campsites with electric hookups, but the majority of them are out in the rocks and have no hookups - what we call dry camping. We chose a site and worked the motorhome into position -- thank God for hydraulic leveling jacks! We had rocks all around 3 sides with a fantastic view across the desert on the other.
Of course, LaVerne put our hummingbird feeders and some seeds on the ground and it didn't take too long to get customers - Black-chinned Hummingbird and Canyon Towhee.
The rest of the campground is very, very interesting. We rode around and took some pictures of the campsites in the rocks.
Our desert view also provided a couple of great sunsets!
We spent a very relaxing weekend at this state park. Saturday we just camped all day and Sunday we drove back into Deming and went to the worship service at the First Baptist Church. The pastor gave a very good sermon and we could understand him -- found out later he is from Birmingham, AL! After church service we went to the "Si Senor" Mexican restaurant for lunch.
Yesterday (Monday), April 25th, we moved to Rock Hound State Park about 12 miles east of Deming - a good 42 mile drive. This park is also in the desert, but it is more populated in the surrounding area. The campground is at the bottom of one of the mountains in the Florida Peaks.
We checked in and got a campsite facing the mountain and have another great desert view looking back toward Deming. We also have a very nice little cactus garden by our site.
There are wild Persian Ibexes that live on the mountain and we hoped to see some of them. We camped here several years ago and did get to watch a small herd of them as they climbed around on the cliffs. We felt lucky then - a park ranger had told us that he'd worked here for 10 years and had never seen them.
Yesterday and today have been pretty uncomfortable as far as the weather goes -- it's beautiful and sunny, but the wind has been blowing 20-35 mph (with gusts up to 50) for two days. It's too windy to sit outside. So, we sat inside, watched the mountain for Ibexes, and had bird visitors in one of the blooming cacti in our garden.
Bullock's Oriole
Audubon's Oriole
Curve-billed Thrasher
Like the last place we were, our desert view really gave us a couple of beautiful sunsets.
Tomorrow is moving day again and this time we're taking a big jump. We're going to spend about 3 days "waltzing across Texas" and go to High Island on the Texas Gulf Coast. This is one of our favorite birding sites and we hope we aren't too late for some of the annual Spring migration.
No comments:
Post a Comment