Tag: New Mexico

A short and windy day

We were planning on making it somewhere just east of Tucson and doing some sightseeing, but the weather changed our minds. We knew there were wind and red flag warnings to the New Mexico border on I-10, but our trailer/truck combo handles wind very well. It does help to have an oversized truck! However New Mexico and Arizona closed I-10 west of Lordsburg, NM (I don’t remember where the Arizona closure began). They identified a detour using Highway 70, but that is a long way out of the way. We thought about it, but decided to stay in Lordsburg for the night. We had a choice between the Flying J parking lot or a KOA, and we chose the KOA. It was a good thing too! When we went to dinner (a nice little local place called “Ramona’s”), the line on 70 trying to get back on eastbound I-10 was miles long and moving at a crawl. There were city police, county sheriffs, and highway patrol trying to move the traffic along, but it was a mess. I am sure the westbound end was just as bad. You can’t take the traffic traveling on a high speed interstate and easily put it on a two lane state highway. I understand the issue west of Lordsburg is a large playa (dry lakebed) where the wind blown dust provides zero visibility.

The KOA is a decent place to spend the night, though the train does sound a whistle occasionally. I just slept through it all after having two glasses of Pastis, an anise flavored liquour introduced to me by my oldest son. Oh, and the truck picked up a nail in the tire driving into town. Everything was fine as we set  up, but by the time we went to dinner we had lost 1/4 of the air. No tire shop was open, but Kevin headed off to one this morning after airing up the tire (it was down to 20 pounds). We bought a high capacity air compressor just for this reason! The truck needs about 80 pounds in the rear tires to hold the trailer weight. Thank goodness for the TPMS that now comes standard in most vehicles. Having a tire blow out at 65 mph while pulling a trailer is not minor.

Today we continue generally north and west, heading back home.

I hate being sick

In my last post (a very long time ago!) I noted I had a bad cold. That bad cold morphed into a truly horrid sinus infection, and I have not posted our locations since then. Here is an update.

17-20 February: We ended up in Loveland, CO at Boyd Lake State Park the nights of 17-19 February. It is a very nice park in the middle of a housing addition, rather odd but ok. It was expensive since there is a park entry fee in addition to the camping fee so we paid $34 for a water and electric site. It was roomy and much nicer than the parks in town, so I don’t regret the money. Of course, I was sick the entire 3 nights we were there so I don’t remember much either. We did go to Rocky Mountain National Park, and that made enough of an impression that I have some memories of it.

Gorgeous as usual. It was the first time we have been there in the winter, but it was very warm with only a little snow in the lower elevations.

20-21 February: After Loveland we took I-25 to Sugarite State Park in New Mexico. We camped one night in the Lake Alice campground, the only campground open. The sites are small, the roads are dirty, and there was a boil order for the water, but it was set in a lovely piñon forested area. The cost was incredible at only $18 for a full hookup site (though no water). My sinus infection was getting worse, and I couldn’t do any walks let alone hike. The canyon had a number of historic sites, but all I could see were the ones viewable from the road. I basically stayed in the trailer and coughed my lungs out. I didn’t even take any pictures.

21-24 February: Off to Albuquerque and an Urgent Care center! We camped at our favorite Albuquerque campground, the KOA North in Bernalillo. It isn’t as fancy as some of the newer ones on the west side of town, but has nice people and doesn’t feel like a parking lot even though the sites aren’t large. We stayed three nights, and I got to a doctor. After Z-pack antibiotics and codeine cough syrup, I decided I would survive. I basically just hibernated the entire three days though.

24-28 February: (OK, it is just 27 February now, but we will be leaving in the morning.) The weather was warmer down south, so there we went. We ended up a few miles south of Alamogordo, NM at Oscar Lee State Park. What an absolutely gorgeous place and only $10 a night for a large, well separated dry campsite. This is the first time since Quartzsite that the weather and I both were good! Warm but windy meant I could sit outside and finally kick the  infection. Alamogordo is a pretty poor town, and we didn’t enjoy it at all. We did get to the city museum (quite nice) and the International Space Museum which was very good. Kevin and I worked in Aerospace for many years, and we related to many of the displays. I didn’t get any pictures there, but I should have!

The road into Dog Canyon where the park is.

The view off our campsite. Lots of variety in the desert flora. We have also seen roadrunners and Gambrel’s Quail.

Yesterday I actually did a short nature walk here at the park. We also went on a tour of the historic home of the park’s namesake. 

The house has been reconstructed, but it was hard to have anything but sympathy for the people who were making a living in this very tough and unforgiving land. They were successful, but what challenges they must have had! We also went to White Sands National Monument. I was there as a teenager with my family, but Kevin had never been.

 

Umm. I sure can see a difference in the quality of the pictures I took with my camera (RMNP) and the ones from the iPhone (all the rest of them). It is a pain to transfer the pictures from the camera to the iPad I post to the blog from, but I may just have to do it more often.

We leave tomorrow morning (28 February). The current plan (subject to change tomorrow morning) is to head to Las Cruces and I-10 tomorrow morning. I have no idea where we will end up, but that is part of the fun.

 

Out of the warmth

Yesterday was one of those glorious desert winter days. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky, the wind was light, and the air was warm. Ahhh! I did a lot of just sitting in my recliner outside. We also took the bikes out for a ride to pick up a funnel cake for breakfast (don’t judge LOL!) and to visit the Quartzsite Museum, a surprisingly nice place. We also had a nice campfire with some of the RV Forum folks who were still around. Most people had left on Sunday morning, the official end of the rally, but there were enough to enjoy a nice chat.

We decided to leave today, as originally planned. We intended on heading through southern Arizona towards Albuquerque, waiting there until my daughter called to say she was in labor. Well, she called us this morning as we were finishing packing that she was headed to the hospital tonight to start her induction. We finished packing, but instead of just driving a few hours down the road, we made it to Grants, New Mexico after a bit over 9 hours of driving.  The roads were clear, though there definitely was snow along the sides of the roads in a number of areas. We are staying the night in a clean RV park called Bar S, only $21 for full hookups. We really needed to dump the tanks and fill up with water. The complication is that it is going to be colder tonight than we have ever stayed in the trailer, 19 degrees! (I almost used a dash instead of a comma, but it looked like negative 19, a bit much even for us.) There is a train that comes by frequently, but it doesn’t sound its horn, so I think I will sleep fine. The cats are just glad to be out of the truck. (I know it isn’t a great picture, but she keeps moving her head.)

Lily on her tower.