An excellent travel day, some history, and beautiful views....

Our Location: Elephant Butte State Park, Elephant Butte, NM

 

We woke this morning to a bit of a mist or a maybe drizzle, you could almost feel it but then doubted because you couldn't see any evidence of it. Know what I mean? 

 

Can you see the outline of the mountain off in that haze?

 

A quick breakfast, unhooked utilities outside, packed up inside,  and moved the Dogsled into the harness. We were at the dump station at our regular 8:30 am departure time. Took a while to do our business of course and finally we were on the road at 8:50 am. Not in a huge hurry, not going far today. A couple of hundred miles. 

 

The foothills are getting closer and closer, roads are empty.

 

The temps were warmish this morning, a light sweater was enough to ward off the slight dampness and chill. The wheels rolling westward on US380 found us enjoying the once again flat lands giving way to rolling hills and finally to mountains. The traffic was light as we rolled along. The country side more of the same desert like scrub land with what I think might be mesquite bushes dotting the landscape. The usual ranches/farms, a few houses and a town here and there along the route kept us craning our necks to see more. We managed to put in an hour or so before we stopped for a short break. Riley was busy snapping pics as we drove along the blacktop creeping ever closer to the mountains. 

 

Off in the haze the mountain is starting to get bigger

.

 

Our first sign of them was a blue haze in the distance. The outline slowly taking shape as we watched in amazement as layer after layer of hills and mountain appeared.  We've driven through the hills of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia numerous times but those mountains are nothing at all like these mountains. These mountains have an allure about them, an invitation to come closer, to explore and to learn their history and share their secrets. Almost mystical in a different way than the Smokey's. Barren and stark, the colours vibrant in feel, but the landscape muted and harsh, unforgiving perhaps would be the best way to describe it. Truly awesome. 

 

Very pretty drive today.

 

We passed through the little village of Hondo, nestled in the foothills, cute and inviting. We moved on to Lincoln County, stopping before town to see the placard about  William H. Boney, known as Billy the Kid. He was a slight  player in the Lincoln County wars. Further along we stopped in the little hamlet of Lincoln that featured numerous historical markers telling about the town, the townspeople, etc. Alex McSween a lawyer and John Tunstall opened a store to be competition to the only other one in town. Both men died due to the Lincoln County War that raged. Two sides, each pitted against the other. Murder and mayhem were rampant during this time. Rutherford Hayes, the US president called Lincoln's main street the deadliest street in the US. On another trip through this area I'll be sure to set aside plenty of time to visit a number of these museums and monuments. Today was not the day. 

 

Lincoln County main street. Boardwalk along the store owned by Alex McSween and John Tunstall.

 

The beginning of this part of the drive was interesting. The road was terrible, washboards everywhere, the herky-jerky thump thump of a badly paved road was beginning to get to both of us, so we stopped often. However we managed to get through the short span of bad road and found that it  improved greatly a bit further along. The windy, hilly, twisty road required constant concentration with little time to look around. The road was narrow with no shoulder and I will admit that is not my favourite type of road. 

 

Looming out Riley's window.

 

Climbing these hills, no matter the grade the Dogsled just slipped along without any issues of any kind. He wasn't in the least bit winded or lagging, but humming right along like he was out for a Sunday stroll. A bit of a cross wind at times made him pull a little here and there but nothing serious. The down bound was no issue either, with both tow and the engine brake engaged we rolled down pretty easily. 

 

Lava Rocks from the Valley of Fire

 

The view was inspiring. Each time we topped the next rise we marveled at the beauty before us. In no hurry we stopped often and managed to find great views with each stop. 

 

The haze makes them look blue.

 

We merged onto I-25 southbound and let the Dogsled set an easy pace while the Igloo rolled smoothly along behind us. At times it was easy to forget that the Igloo was back there. We stopped at our first interstate rest stop in New Mexico. Impressed with the facilities, as the  numerous picnic sites have big tables, extra benches and even a grill in each one. The restrooms were clean and fresh, nothing fancy but well maintained. We were both impressed with the rest stop and the views!

 

Almost like a postcard.

 

We rolled along until we arrived at Exit 83, which we took. Up and down, round and round we finally found the little town of Elephant Butte, New Mexico. We didn't have much time to sight see as we were busy watching for the state park signs which we quickly found after a short drive through the town. Pulling into the state park we marveled at the view before us, even with the low water levels it's very pretty here. 

 

View from the rest stop on I-25

 

We've set up in Quail Run at sight number #28, a nice little pull through spot. We've decided we'll stay for at least 5 days, probably more as we've finally found the temps we've been looking for, the dry air is wonderful and we're going to spend some time looking around. The sand is soft, the quail are plentiful and I think I may have seen my first roadrunner earlier but I didn't get a good look. 

 

On a long and lonesome highway....

 

We arrived around 2 pm, we were set up by 3 pm and cooking by 4 pm. Lunch was late today. It was more like dinner really. We BBQ'd and enjoyed the view. Short pants, t-s, all the windows and vents open, we are truly ready to settle down for a while now. 

 

Elephant Butte, New Mexico

  

So there you have it, our day's travel. We enjoyed it immensely. We are both looking forward to just doing nothing tomorrow. Then we'll need to find some where to do laundry, and well take a few short tours around the area to check things out. I'd like to visit Truth or Consequences while we're just touring with the Dogsled. So as you can see, we have a bit of a 'like to see' list while we're here. We will get a couple of them marked off at least. 

 

This is our view from our picnic table.

 

Sorry no pics of lunch today as we were both hungry and it was late. Lunch was bbq'd dill potatoes, orange zest mixed veggies (asparagus, beans, mushrooms, corn, peppers, celery) and some turkey dogs. Along with a green salad of course. Good stuff. 

 

This view from just around the corner as the sun is sinking behind me.

 

We took a stroll after dinner and managed to snap a few pics of the sunset here. After wards I chatted with my dad as I do every evening when it's a travel day. He likes to know we're safe and settled for the night or a few days. He's enjoying the pictures in this blog, commented on Riley's new friend in Roswell and my visit with the little fella in the two holer. ~laugh~ Glad you're enjoying this Dad!

 

Pretty nice sunset...

 

Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed your visit. Feel free to leave a comment. 

 

Almost gone...

 

Until next time...be safe, take care.  

Sunny warmer day, blonde moments, and strolling thru the animals at the park....

 

Our Location: Mid Way RV Park, Dexter, NM

To all those past and present who serve in the military protecting us from harm, we offer our most heartfelt THANK YOU, you are in our hearts, thoughts and prayers each and every day, not just on this one day.
 

A warm night, or at least for me it was. I didn't even need to add my fleece blankets to the bed, which I've been doing many nights since leaving the warmth of summer behind. Riley on the other hand had her duvet and a fleece blanket on top of her usual thick cotton blanket. She said she was cold. Not me, I was toasty. 

One of the climbing apparatus at the park.

A long evening last night spent doing a few things, talking to my dad, editing photos, writing my blog and before I knew it I was drooping at the key board so I called it a night after about 15 minutes of research. Long in the sense that darkness arrived just about 5 pm here in Dexter, and we've been fortunate because it hasn't been that dark that early until yesterday, or at least it didn't seem to be that dark. 

A Texas Longhorn

This morning dawned cool, overcast, foggy, and not very promising. I was up earlier than Riley and started to do a few things on my computer such as check emails, charge my e-reader and try to download some more books. I haven't used it for a while and have forgotten how to do that, so it was a learning curve too. 

The Great horned owl was bored with us.

Around 10 am, after cleaning up, dressing and doing our usual morning things we decided to head out for a bit. First I had to add some more Blue Def to the Big Dog, he sure seems to like that stuff as he's lapping it up pretty quickly on this long drive. From there we grabbed some sweaters, phones, camera, etc before heading into Roswell. We had a couple of things in mind to do today. We managed to find a couple of stores to visit, we browsed mostly but bought at a few. We will be returning a cord tomorrow to the Big Lots store, we had hoped it would work to recharge Riley's tablet but it just won't fit. We've had that trouble for some time now and will have to have one shipped to us from Samsung at some point when we find a place we can accept packages. 

American Bald Eagle stretching his wings

We tracked down a small park/zoo in Roswell. Geared mostly to kids but it was interesting anyway. A few creatures in this little zoo, admission was free but we dropped some bucks in the donation slot.  Bison, goats, pygmy goats, Texas Longhorns, miniature horses, burro's, foxes, badgers, cougars, black bears, various kinds of fowl including peacocks, eagles, hawks, ducks, and we by passed the reptile and insect house. I was looking forward to the carousel which was hand carved, with only about 100 in existence now. However it was closed and locked in a covered building, as the season was over. I would have loved to get a few pics of Riley and I on it, however it was not to be. 

Some very odd coloured turkeys.

Leaving there we headed out to find a few other places to enjoy but decided we needed to do some groceries and head home as it was pushing 1 pm and we were both kind of getting tired. We haven't been walking much the last number of weeks and with all the walking we'd already done I think we just had both had enough. Plus I think the barnyard smells kind of get to a person after a while, add to the fact that the sun was now out and it was warming up very nicely. 

This fellow greeted us as we made our way to the water/bird area.

Hopped in the Big Dog, found our groceries and headed home. Stopped to give the Dog a drink of diesel @ $2.79 per gallon and did the stupidest thing I've done for a long time. I truly have no idea what I was thinking about, I'll blame it on a blonde moment. I put my credit card into the slot for the receipt. Can you believe that? I guess my head wasn't where it should have been. ~laugh~ Do you know how embarrassing  it was to go inside and ask them to open the pump to get my card back? ~laugh~ Sure enough, it was tucked in there and had to be pulled out from among the receipt paper.  Then I had to go back in and prepay because I don't have  zip code. I tried the 5 zeros but it kept saying the zip wasn't long enough. Oh well, after all that the Big Dog took less than $65 USD to fill from about a 1/3 of a tank.  I checked the readouts for the oil and the fuel filter and have decided that I'll do the change a bit further down the road, there is still 30% left for both. So I'm pretty confident that it can wait for a bit. 

This wolf thought we were boring too.

Back home even though the sun was shining, the wind was cool so we opted to cook inside. Today was an easy lunch with a big green salad, cheesy garlic ciabatta buns , spaghetti with mushroom sauce. I will say it was pretty good. I had watermelon to top it off while I sat outside to read my book. I didn't stay outside too long, the flies have taken over from the beetles, at least outside. Still a few beetles kicking around inside too. 

Met up with some fellow Canadians

A medium sized tabby cat came to the foot of the steps and yammered a bit, looked forlorn and ticked off, as his ears were flattened straight sideways a few times. He even stayed when I went out to read. After a while he finally decided we weren't going to feed him and off he went in a snit. He didn't look like a stray as he appeared well feed. HRH Miss Kitty wasn't impressed with this squatter and ignored him after giving him a tongue lashing. Although perhaps it was Riley she was telling off as Riley had just finished giving her a bath. ~laugh~ It was hard to tell who she was more upset with. 

Strutting their stuff.

Back inside I started editing pictures and decided I'd start my blog early. Google was being a butt and wouldn't let me sign me in with my computer. Unknown device it said. Dahhh this is the one I use all the time, how could it be unknown. It took me about a half hour to finally figure out how to get the stupid code to sign back in. Yes, I'm sure most of you know how to do that and are pretty sharp and quick but I'm blonde and it takes me a while sometimes. ~laugh~ That's my story and I'm sticking too it. 

Little badger.

A couple of posts on face book to some folks I haven't seen for a while and I set to work on this blog.  About 5 pm we shut the big door, and closed all the windows as well, leaving a few vents open to let in some nice cool air. We're enjoying this weather very much and are looking forward to more of it in the days ahead. 

The bigger of two hawks.

Dinner will be a salad for  me and I have no idea what Riley will want. We eat lunch as our main meal and then find something small for dinner.  It works for us.  

Two old relics in good shape.

So thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed  your visit.  We did!! 

Until next time...be safe, take care....

Warmer weather.......

Our Location: Mid Way Rv, Dexter, NM

 

We woke this morning to clear blue skies and frosty temps but we weren't complaining. At one point I had to go back inside and get my gloves to try to at least warm my hands a bit so I could continue to pack up and hitch up. 

 

This train had 5 engines, three on the front and two on the back.

 

As I was hooking up the gentleman from Elberta, Alabama came by, (I think he's bored) asking if we enjoyed the canyon yesterday. They too went there and loved it. They spent pretty much the whole day there, not leaving until dusk. As we were chatting a fella a few doors down from the Igloo stopped his pickup at the end of the driveway asking me if I had a repair man over a few days ago. I answered yes, he asked if I liked him, was he good, what had he worked on, etc. This guy was having furnace issues too. Inside I went to grab Matt Curry's phone number for the man. I told him I was sure he would be most satisfied with the service of Red Rover RV Repair, wished him luck and continued to finish up the last little things before heading out. 

 

Wind turbines stretching off into the haze.

 

With these slight delays we were on the road by 8:50 am this morning. Which is fine, we didn't have far to go anyway, a couple of hundred miles and we called it a day. 

 

Shiny silo's with what I'm sure is planted trees to help protect from the wind. Reflection on the glass makes the pic look more hazy than it actually was.

 

The roads were pretty good, pretty empty too. We have opted to head southerly while going west instead of just straight west. We're hoping to find some warmer weather. So we headed mostly south for a while but then veered westerly as well. Passing little Texas towns and numerous stockyards or cattle yards with literally thousands of cattle in them, waiting for the end of their time. The area around whatever kind of slaughter house it happened to be was crawling with cattle. Thousands of them thickly packed into holding pens. There were so many cattle that you couldn't see the land, just a moving dark mass that stretched around these industrial buildings. The smell was horrible. Truly, utterly disgusting. We passed one Beef Packaging plant that made me want to leave any food I'd consumed behind and believe me I wasn't interested in any food for a while.

 

A very patriotic Texas farmer.

 

The landscape was more of the same flat land, scrub land, with the horizon hazy and no definition between sky and land. The sky is huge out here and at times brilliantly blue, not the sparkly blue of Ontario, Canada but so bright it hurts your eyes to look at it too long. Due to the land being so flat I think it makes the sky look bigger as there is nothing to disrupt the skyline. Farms/ranches often have some fancy iron scroll work at the gate, and almost every side road along US 60 had cattle guards instead of gates. Numerous industrial factories/plants dotted the landscape, not all were named but they just seemed to appear in the haze. 

 

Cattle in the stockyards, all of that black stuff is cows. It goes on and on.

 

The small towns were cute, the divided highway would become 'undivided' in town, therefore allowing the driver to cross to the other side of the street without any difficulties. Then it would divide again after leaving the town.  Speed limits in Texas are 75 mph with some slow downs in the smaller towns to 45 mph but anything with a population less than 2000 didn't warranty less than 45 mph. 

 

I wonder if this is sagebrush along the road way?

 

We crossed into New Mexico rather suddenly and we weren't expecting it at the time but we turned the corner and the sign said "Welcome to New Mexico" so we figured we'd managed to make all the right turns to that point. ~laugh~  We crossed into Mountain Time (at the state line) around 11 am Texas time, which made it 10 am in the new time zone. So now we are officially 2 hours different than back in Ontario. I'll have to be careful calling there or I'll be getting told off. ~laugh~ We crossed from Farwell, Texas  into Texico, NM at that little street corner. I'm not sure but I think I may have missed a weigh station on that corner, but no one came after me, so I guess we're okay. The signs are all kind of jumbled together and it's hard to read long signs, watch traffic and make turns all at the same time. The sign (which I seen two more later in the day) said ALL trucks, tow dollies, tow bars, rentals, etc. so I think that would include me but I"m not sure. I didn't see anything about 5th wheels or travel trailers either. I'll have to ask someone. 

It just goes on and on and on....

As we continued into New Mexico we noticed the landscape gently changing from long flats stretching as far as the eye could see to a slight, gentle roll in the distance. The roads are straight and you can see for a long way but as we drove further in we found that the rolling of the hills was becoming more obvious out the window. 

The roads are long and straight, you can see the rolling hills now.

We stopped twice today on our travels. Once at a Walmart for a leg stretch and to pick up a couple of little things and once at a road side rest area. Along this particular stretch of road the signs aren't spaced far enough from whatever they are advertising and one must be right on top of things if they want to stop. Two road side picnic tables, complete with a covered roof and tons of graffiti add a couple of rubbish containers pretty much covered the little area. However it was a great little stop.

A little New Mexico fixer upper, slap a couple windows in, a door, some shingles, it's good to go.

We bypassed Roswell on our way to Dexter. We'll go back into Roswell over the next couple of days. I'm hoping to get an oil change and a fuel filter changed while we're here over the next few days. I want to get them done before they NEED to be done and we're getting close enough for me to feel it's time. Also need to dump more Blue Def into the Big Dog again. This about the 3rd jug on this journey westward so far. I've started carrying a spare one just in case. 

Not the big signs as seen on the Interstates.

We arrived at Mid Way RV park in Dexter, NM around 1:30 pm Mountain time. Checked in at the office and opted for a pull thru without sewer as the back in's with sewer were really, reeeally tight. We would have fit but we would also be looking into the neighbours window without leaving the table. The slides would have made it extremely close quarters in the two back in spots he offered. We instead chose site #22 in a more spacious row. 

This old building is in the tiny NM town of Texico just across the state line from Texas.

We've paid for 3 days but may stay an extra one to get the Big Dog serviced. I called a local guy that the office man recommended but he didn't answer so I'm not sure what I'll do now. I'll give it some thought over the next day or so. 

Large square bales of hay stacked in a field.

The Mid Way park is not fancy, it's close to the road way and a dairy farm with ill winds blowing from it today. There are about 15-20 units here, some full time, some visitors like us. The sites are fairly level or at least ours is, it's pretty clean looking, but has no amenities which suits us fine. We don't use them anyway. 

Becoming more desert like, I think.

After setting up, we payed up, then made some lunch. We debated about BBQ'ing but opted instead for an inside cooking experience. Today's menu was mashed potatoes, Italian steamed veggies (celery, asparagus, mushrooms, peppers, and beans), and Hawaiian BBQ Chicken. Add to that a mixed green salad and we were pretty full by the end but we managed to nibble on some oatmeal cookies as well. 

Flags still at half mast for the victims of the Texas Church shooting.

Tidied up, began editing pics and writing my blog. It's 5:10 pm and already pretty much dark now. We've found warmer weather and we're enjoying it immensely. Still too cold to sit outside due to the wind but tomorrow promises to be better as do the days ahead. 

 

This post office was literally on the side of the road, not near a town or even a cluster of house. Just all by itself.

So there you have it, our day. Nothing too exciting but it was fun, entertaining, educational, and warmer. It was a win all the way around. Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed your visit. 

Until next time...be safe, take care....