Arizona, New Mexico and Texas January, 2005

We were once again excited to take a winter trip after Christmas.  The weather in Northern California was pretty wet with lots of snow coming down on all the mountains around us, so the easiest way out of the state was to head South.  We wanted to see Grandpa Del and Karen's new house in Palm Desert anyway, so that's where we headed.

Palm Desert is a long way from Placerville.  The trip took us about 12 hours.  That included a stop at a rest area where Nancy heated up some split pea and ham soup she had made, and boy, was that ever good.  For dinner we stopped in a grocery store parking lot and had some home made tacos.  The meals broke the trip up nicely, but it was still a long drive.

This was the first time the girls actually stayed up to see the new year in.  We watched the Dick Clark show and visited with Grandpa Del and Karen and some of their friends.  Here's to 2005!

We slept in the trailer in front of Grandpa Del and Karen's house, and in the morning we were treated us to a fabulous french toast breakfast.  After some long walks and some time watching the Rose Parade, we headed out around noon.

Our first stop outside of California was Picacho Peak State Park, which is between Phoenix and Tucson.  We arrived just as the sun was going down.  I made a big fire in the fire pit and we enjoyed the evening together.  The girls started writing in their journals as they eased back into their homeschool work.

In the morning, we decided to start up another fire, since the one the previous night was so nice.  Later on we took two small hikes.  There were a lot of interpretive signs and we all took turns reading which helped us appreciate the wide variety of plant life in the desert.  The girls are becoming desert cactus experts.

Here's the cave at the end of the "Children's Cave Trail".

From here we took a short drive to the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum.  It's a cross between a museum and a zoo.  There is a walking trail that took us through the entire museum, some of it inside which included a stream profile and a really fun man-made cave.  Most of the trail was outside with displays of every thing from mountain lions to a cactus garden.  They even have a walk in bird aviary, which the girls really enjoyed.

We feel that we all got a good sense of what this desert region is about except for the heat of Summer, but I think we'll let the girls read about that in a text book.

We camped close by at Gilbert Ray County Park.  The sunset was once again spectacular.  We heard the coyotes howling after dinner.  The rain came later on in the evening, and we enjoyed playing a couple games of Uno.

In the morning we were treated to the distinctive smell of the Creosote Bush - it gives off it's smell most prominently after a rain.  The ground was muddy and red, and the sky had some dramatic cloud formations that enhanced the mountain ranges.

Our next stop was historic Tombstone, the town that hosted the infamous shootout at the OK Corral.  Nancy and the girls went to see the world's largest rose bush, which covers 8,000 square feet.  The record rose bush is in a museum, so I spent the time walking around the town with our dog, Conner.  The sidewalks are all made of wood, and they have several "cowboys" who encourage everyone to attend the shootout at the Helldorado, a tavern at Fourth and Toughnut streets.

This town has the nickname "the town too tough to die".

We picked up some prickly pear jam and honey as well as a few postcards.

We ate lunch, then hit the road again.  The weather was fairly windy.  We managed to dodge a tumbleweed that was about the same size as our truck, blowing across the road.

We were all proud to enter New Mexico, a state none of us had ever been in before.  The wind was quite impressive. When we're traveling, the kids and Nancy alternate reading books about the state we're exploring.  We all got a kick out of Anna Joy telling us all about the Yucca, New Mexico's state flower.  She pronounced the word very loudly "yuck-AHHHHH" every time she came to it in the book.

We arrived at Rockhound State Park around 5:00 pm.  We got a nice site right next to a big playground, but the rain and wind hampered the girl's enjoyment of it.

We barbequed up some tri tip, and enjoyed another great meal in the trailer.  After dinner we did a bunch of jigsaw puzzles and the girls did some more school work.

The morning was a bit nicer in terms of the weather, so the girls spent a bit of time on the play ground, and we walked down to the visitor's center.  Rockhound is a unique park - they actually let you take up to 15 pounds of rocks with you, and they encourage you to go off the hiking trails in your search of the very best rocks.  We took a hike on the Thunder Egg trail.  The girls did find an arrowhead, which was pretty cool.

After lunch we took off for Las Cruces to see the New Mexico Ranch and Farming Museum.  We arrived just in time for a cow milking demonstration.  They had quite a few very good exhibits outlining farming in this region from how the Native Americans did it centuries ago all the way up to modern times.

I enjoyed looking at some of the older farming equipment, and seeing how they managed water back in the old days.

We picked up some souvenirs at the gift shop, and spoke with the greeter at the museum.  He gave us a great recommendation for some authentic New Mexican food, Andele.  We ordered a platter of tacos al carbon, which was simply outstanding.  The salsas were all spicy - but very good.

After dinner we took a much needed walk around the courtyard of La Mesilla.  There's a lot of history in this area.

After dinner we headed out of town to get close to the White Sands area.  The closest campground is Oliver Lee State Park.  We got there well after quiet time, and set up as quietly and quickly as we could.  We were looking forward to seeing what the site would look like in the morning.

The morning dawned bright, sunny and cool.  Rose and I shared a pomegranate while Nancy and Anna Joy took Connor for a walk.

After taking it easy for a while we hitched up and headed to the New Mexico Space Museum.

They had an interesting series of outdoor displays mostly of early rocket motor test vehicles, including "Little Joe", used in the Apollo program.

They also had some human test vehicles, one which subjected the tester to over 40 g!

The inside of the museum covered the entire space program, up to the winning of the X prize.

Our next stop would be White Sands National Park.  We took a nature trail that explained quite a bit about the sand, the vegetation and animal life that resides there.  Here's Anna Joy posing by a Yucca plant (yuck-AHHHHH).

The sand at White Sands is simply incredible.  I've never seen sand that clean and pure.  It's very popular to bring sleds and toboggans to the dunes and slide down them.  Unfortunately it had rained the day before fairly hard, so the sand was wet, and sliding down was difficult.  The girls sure gave it a try though!  Conner loved the sand, and loved running around on it.

If you get out to that part of the country it's really something that should be seen.

Another thing that I enjoyed about this area is the Air Force Base.  It's the home of the F-117 stealth fighter jets.  They were constantly flying overhead.  Very impressive.

The sunset was unreal.  The sand looked just like pure white snow.

We had some hot chocolate in the trailer, changed the girl's clothes and headed South.  We weren't really sure where we wanted to go from here, but as we drove along we decided it would be City of Rocks, NM or Texas.  About 200 yards from the Y in the road, we decided it would be Texas.

There was a small State historic site that we wanted to camp at, but the sign at the entrance said it was full.  So we decided to press on to Guadalupe Mountain National Park, which was a couple hours to the east.  We arrived at about 10:00 pm.  The RV campground was really more like a parking lot, but that was fine for us given our time constraint.

After a nice breakfast (the girls made cinnamon rolls) we took a nature hike and learned about the mountain vegetation as well as the ruins of an old stage coach stop.  The girls decided to do the Junior Ranger program at Guadalupe Mountain National Park, which they enjoyed doing.  It was VERY windy in the park, I guess due to the elevation.  Once we got off the mountain the winds seemed to calm down.

Here's a picture of the highest peak in Texas, with some of the stage coach stop's ruins in the foreground.

The all-important sticker ceremony at our door.

After a stop in Las Cruces we went on to the City of Rocks State Park, which we all wanted to see.  The sun was setting when we got there, but we had a nice fire and a good dinner.

In the morning, the rocks were bathed in the morning sunshine, but it was fairly cold out.  This is the view from our trailer.  After breakfast we walked over to explore the rocks.  It was really fun crawling around on them.  The girls enjoyed breaking the 1/4" layer of ice out from the puddles in the rocks.  Conner had no idea what ice was.  I'm not sure he really knows what to think of it now, either.  We think he had dreams about it the next evening - he was whining and barking softly in his sleep.

We were back on the road around 10:00, and headed North.  We found some really beautiful back roads - hwy 78 to 191, 70 and 60.  We had to slow down at times due to streams running across the roadway.

We entered into the Phoenix area right at rush hour.  We learned that Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the US.  Just as we were about to get out of the Phoenix area, we filled up with fuel and found a Cracker Barrel restaurant.  It's a chain that's pretty popular in the South, but we'd never seen one.  The food, service and store they have are all great.  We enjoyed being waited on and having a nice break from the stress of being in heavy traffic.

Our next destination was Burrow Creek, a BLM campground.  Since it was dark, we had to watch the mileage pretty closely so we didn't miss the turnoff.  Perhaps due to the road construction or the size of the campground, there was no sign, just Burrow Creek road, which we managed to go down.  The road was mostly washed away, and quite steep and narrow.  I used 4 wheel drive and drove the 1.5 miles in first and second gears.  When we arrived at the campsite, we set up in a pull through site and went to sleep.  There were only two other sites in use, one of them was the host.

It rained pretty hard over night.  The morning dawned overcast, but what a beautiful campsite!  We all walked around the site and enjoyed the fresh cool air.  The girls found a part of a spinal column from some kind of animal, and we saw a tree that beavers were working on knocking down.  They also had a desert garden which was very nice.

The next leg of the journey was to head into California.  A word of advice: When coming through Needles, CA, come through with a full tank of fuel.  The price of diesel was about $1.00 more than it was in AZ.  That's an expensive lesson when you use as much fuel as we do.

The drive from Needles to Barstow is long, straight and boring.  There's a pretty steady climb out of Needles which required me to drive in 5th in stead of 6th, and I'm sure the increased noise didn't help.  Heading over the Tehachapis was a nice change, and it also felt good to get out of the desert.

Our final stop was in Bakersfield.  We got a real nice lake-side spot at a county park with full hookups.  We made a really big fire and ate pizza and salad outside by the fire.  It was a really pleasant evening.  This was the warmest evening of the trip.  California had been pounded by rain while we were gone, and we happened to arrive during a small break in the storm systems, which was nice.

Later in the night, it started to rain quite hard, and was still coming down in the morning.  The girls started getting anxious to leave pretty early because they wanted to get home.  So, we headed North.  It rained most of the way home.

We enjoyed this trip a great deal.  I think we ended up seeing more than we expected, but that's been the case of most of our trips.  We logged 3081 miles in the 10 days we were gone.

We can't wait for our next trip!

Here's some links to some other trips we've taken if you enjoyed this one.  If the links don't work by clicking on them, copy the URL and paste it in your browser.

Nevada, Arizona, Utah: http://home.comcast.net/~joelcool/rv/nv_az_ut.htm

Mono Lake, Bodie and Yosemite: http://home.comcast.net/~joelcool/rv/2004/monolake2004.htm

Lassen Park: http://home.comcast.net/~joelcool/rv/2004/lassen_volcanic_park_july.htm

Trip to Wisconsin (long): http://home.comcast.net/~joelcool/rv/2004/wisconsin2004a.htm