Thursday, January 6

TRAVEL DAY

From: Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, NM – Cloudcroft.

To: City of Rocks State Park, Faywood, NM.

Day 87 – At 7:15 a.m. this morning it was 35 degrees, partly cloudy with no wind. This was a scenic campground; we will come back here again. We departed at 9:30 a.m. after dumping tanks and hooking the Honda up to the RV. This was a bit earlier than usual, and we ended up being very glad we left early.

We stopped for gas in the RV, then headed south on I-70 back the way we came a couple of days ago. We passed again by the White Sands National Park & Monument and drove thru Las Cruces, a big city. Once we got on I-10 heading west, we were in new territory for us. We were mostly out of the mountains and hills and driving through the flat lands of the desert. The roadside signs were entertaining with many advertising some big place selling tons of western artifacts and souvenirs, only to see just a small building once we got to the place that was advertised. There were also many signs warning of dust storms which appeared to be prominent in this area. Luckily, it was not a windy day. One sign was also disturbing regarding hitchhiking prison escapees.

We turned onto Route NM-180; the dust-storm signs continued. After maybe 20 miles, we turned right, following signs to Faywood Hot Springs Resort and our campground, City of Rocks State Park. There wasn’t anything else out there in the boonies. Approached & passed Faywood Hot Springs – umm, must’ve been popular long ago, but certainly not much there now – and then saw some small hills, which turned out to be rocks, upcoming in the distance. We arrived shortly thereafter at the State Park.

We arrived at the campground at 12:35 p.m. We did not have reservations which was a good thing. As we circled the campsites, most of which were buried between the rocks, we saw that many were not level, some wouldn’t even begin to fit a 30-foot RV & tow car, and some were off the campground road on a pathway that we wouldn’t be able to drive on to get to the campsite. If we had reserved in advance, who knows what we would’ve gotten. There were 8 campsites available that had not yet been reserved. There were 5 campsites that were non-reservable – first come, first served. We drove the rugged, dirt campground road, which curved through the awesome rock formations which were up to 40 feet tall, checking out campsites that were not yet occupied. We were not the only vehicles on the road. In front of us and behind us were other vehicles doing the same thing we were doing: Vans, RVs, Trailers, and tent campers, bouncing along on the rough road, checking out campsites.

We had not had lunch yet. The girls were meowing to get out and stop this journey; they were hungry, too. But if we had not left early today, all the campsites would probably have been gone by the time we arrived. We drove through and wrote down the numbers of the sites which we thought we could get into. Then we pulled off at a restroom and got on the computer to check availability of these campsites. We ended up with two reservable sites that were available and we’d also driven by a non-reservable site that looked good. We went to the non-reservable site and parked there to claim the campsite. Upon exploring the empty site, we saw that the sign post with the campsite number had a sticker on it stating that the site was occupied thru Sunday, yet the site had been completely vacated. We drove to the Ranger Station and were told that even though the site appeared to be unoccupied, they couldn’t allow us to grab it as long as they had not been informed that the previous renters had left. Back to square one. We rushed (along with other hopeful campers) around the campground again, re-evaluating remaining unreserved campsites. We chose a campsite and as quickly as possible, reserved it online, beating anyone else who might have doing the same thing. Site #32 was ours. Phew.

Starving, we pulled into the site and before setting up or leveling, we made lunch and fed the girls. Then we spent awhile trying to level the RV. We unpacked and finally sat down to relax more than six hours since we’d left Oliver Lee this morning. Once we’d had a chance to look around, we realized what a great campsite we’d ended up with.

Rob put up the screened tent (which we had not used since Delaware towards the beginning of our trip – just too cold and windy). A Road Runner scooted by our RV with a large bug in its mouth. We did not have the camera nearby. When we were in the tent later with our celebratory Rosemary Bourbon Cocktails, two adorable Rock Wrens were flitting about around the tent and RV – very cute birds – again camera not nearby. We got a text from Cathie that she and Petey were coming here to camp a few days from now, and she just happened to reserve a campsite right around the corner from us. After dinner, Rob went out to take pictures of the stars. There are no lights here to interfere with the black skies.