Less than a one hour drive north to Rockhound State Park today. It will be nice to have a shower, not to mention flush toilets!
Rockhound State Park is located on the slopes of an extinct (hopefully) volcano. It is one of only two parks in the USA where you are allowed to search for and remove gemstones from the park. Apparently, gemstones appear from the eroding rock around the cinder cones. We searched and managed to find… some rocks. Not knowing what to look for is a bit of an impediment when searching for riches.
The campground is located on a small mountain range called Little Floridas (pronounced “floor-ee-das”), and has a great view of the valley below. The photo on the right was taken from above the campground looking down and past into the valley, where the town of Deming is located.
There are a few trails from the campground for hiking, and you are also allowed to wander anywhere, but watch out for snakes (signs everywhere, they grow up to 7′ in length). It was a bit cool (+6 to -6 celcius), so no rattlesnakes for us (yea!). A sprinkling of snow one night, so we got to see cactus with snow on them!
We are here for 6 nights, so some time for chores. In to town for laundry and an oil change for the Suburban.
Also bought some electrical supplies to fix the wiring to the new fridge. We replaced our Koolatron thermoelectric (plate) cooler with a Dometic compressor refrigerator. The Dometic fridge actually uses less electricity over time, but has a higher power draw when the compressor is running. The wiring that was installed for the Koolatron is not heavy enough for the Dometic, and the voltage drop (caused by a long wire run in a DC circuit) causes the Dometic to cycle on and off. It still runs, but is not as efficient as it should be, so we need to install heavier wiring. We now have everything we need to upgrade the fridge circuit (I think), but need some warmer weather to do the work (maybe we need to visit southern Texas for a while).
Made some brownies. Ate too many brownies. Where are the Rolaids?!
Great hiking in nearby Spring Canyon, which is a part of Rockhound State Park located about 2 miles away.
We scrambled up some trails and got into a bit of snow. The dogs were great on the rocky trails (even Lump, who is not known for his agility or vigour).
We encountered two hunters who were looking for Ibex goats. These goats were imported from Iran in the 1970’s, and there are now between 400 and 600 goats in the 12 mile mountain range.
Given that there were so many goats in a relatively small area, we thought that we would be bumping into them on the trails. Not. They are really hard to see. We managed to see one goat standing on a very high rock incline, and one group of five goats racing down another slope.
We met the hunters again on the way back down the trail. They had taken one shot (which we heard earlier), but missed (yea goats!)
We did see two Golden Eagles from the top of one of the trails.
We followed another trail to the “spring”, but never found the spring and the trail disappeared on us.
As we were driving from Rockhound SP to the Spring Canyon section of the same park we noticed a few RVs parked on land outside the park. Subsequently we discovered that New Mexico is participates in the US federal government “Bureau of Land Management” (BLM) program. BLM manages 1 of every 10 acres in the USA. People can camp on these public lands at no cost, but are limited to a 14 day stay in any single spot. Undeveloped (“dispersed” in government-speak) land is open for camping at no charge to anyone. Something to keep in mind when we bring our expedition vehicle back to North America. At the bottom of this page is a map of the land managed by BLM.
Trip Summary:
Depart from: Pancho Villa State Park, NM
Depart time: 12:00 pm
Odometer: 129431 miles
Arrive time: 1:00 pm (Rockhound State Park, NM)
Odometer: 129468 miles
Gas Summary (fill-ups):
None.