New Mexico views...

From Deming we headed to the City of Rocks, a New Mexico State Park halfway between Deming and Silver City.  This was a spectacularly scenic spot, the campsites are scattered among very large boulder outcroppings.  I felt like we were in the middle of a Star Trek location shoot.  The New Mexico park system has reservation sites, first-come-first-served sites, some with power and water, others without.  We found a perfect site for our fifth wheel, site #18. It was extremely spacious and secluded, no hook-ups boondock style, and the park itself had no dump station or sewer hook-ups.

Site #18

Jeanne and the kids at City of Rocks

A Star Trek alien planet?

Unfortunately, our stay was marred by high winds and dust storms, but we still had a good time.  There were hiking trails around the perimeter of the park and up to a scenic overlook area.

A few days here and we headed to Rockhound State Park just outside of Deming.  This is a small state park that actually encourages "rock hounds" to hunt and take rock samples (15 pound limit is requested). The campsites were spacious and spread out, this park had a dump site, and we took space #13 which had water and electric.  It was still a bit windy at this park too.

Home at Rockhound State Park

The park as seen from the mountain trails

From Rockhound State Park we went to the Oliver Lee State Park outside of Alamagordo, NM. This is another tiny state park at the base of the Sacramento Mountains at Dog Canyon.

Space #24 at Oliver Lee State Park

If you are ever near this area, a must see is the White Sands National Monument area adjacent to the White Sands Missile Testing area. (Don't worry, they block the roads to this area when they actually are testing missiles).  The monument area is 275 square miles of awe-inspiring whiteness. It felt like being in the snow fields, like we were supposed to put our jackets on, except it was 80 degrees and sunny. We watched as our footprints in the sand disappeared quickly with even the lightly blowing winds sweeping across the desert. Eerie!!!

"Where's my jacket?"

That is one big dune!

We packed up from Oliver Lee and went to Roswell, NM looking for UFO's or aliens. We stayed at the Bottomless Lakes State Park.  This time we made reservations for a 5 day stay, but I would probably forgo any more reservations in New Mexico State Parks.  They charge an extra fee for reservations and every park we went to had plenty of vacancies in the first-come-first-served spaces, many of which were better sites than our reserved ones. We continued acting as a magnet for terrible weather, encountering a HUGE dust storm with 50 mph winds in Roswell. The temps also fluctuated big-time, one day we were in the high 70's and the next there was a flash freeze warning in the morning. Oh well, that's how it goes with our travels. Now you all know that if you know we are approaching your location......RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES!  While in Roswell we just HAD to see the UFO museum. It was only $5 to get in and it was interesting to see.

Looking for a first-come-first-served camping spot?

Well, we are about done here in Roswell. Next up, we will probably head towards Santa Fe. We'll let you know next post. If no post ensues, just figure we got abducted by aliens...