Van Horn, TX to Deming, NM

Van Horn, TX to Deming, NM

January 2-4, 2019

We left Van Horn Wednesday morning, looking for warmer weather.  

We crossed into New Mexico and stopped at the Welcome Center but it was closed.  Evidently people are using electronic devices to information and not asking for help at the Welcome Centers, so they closed half of them.

We decided to make a short detour to see the White Sands Missile Range Museum east of Las Cruces, NM.  Note to people towing RVs who want to visit: park in the gravel lot on the right before the paved lot next to the security building.  You have to leave your rig outside the army base and go to the security building to get a pass to get on base to go to the museum.  Once we were there we enjoyed the museum and displays.

Here are some of the displays inside.

This one is a 1/3 scale model of the Gadget, the first atomic bomb.

Before it was White Sands Missile Range it was a ranch owned by the McDonald family.  You can read the display and I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

There was a room about the Trinity project, which was part of the Manhattan project.

I thought this computer was interesting.  We probably have more power in our cell phones than in that whole computer.

How many of you remember the duck and cover drills we had to do in school?  Somehow I don't think a desk would have helped much.

I thought this display on missile sniffing dogs was interesting.  They tested the missiles and trained dogs to find the pieces so they could analyze them for success or failure.

Then we moved to the outside displays.

I'm glad we got to go as it was on our bucket list.  However, we decided we wouldn't make a special trip to go see it, just go if you are in the area already.

Thursday afternoon we arrived at A Deming Roadrunner RV Park (Passport America) in Deming, NM for two nights.  It's not a destination but it does have full hookups for ~$12.50 a night.  

Friday we drove up to Rockhound State Park and took a short hike.  It's beautiful there and we'd like to go back and camp sometime.  The weather was much warmer and in the low 50s.

Tomorrow we leave and plan to do some boondocking until Tuesday at the Cieneguita Campground south of Empire Ranch in the Las Cienegas Natural Conservation Area north of Sonoita, NM.  It's been a long time since we've done much boondocking so this will be interesting.

Roving on...

We've Come A Long Way

Dempolis, AL to Van Horn, TX

December 29, 2018 - January 2, 2019

We traveled a long way since the last blog.  We left Dempolis on Sunday and drove to Lincoln Parish Park in Ruston, LA.  Although it looked like a beautiful park and we'd like to return I didn't take any pictures because it poured down rain until after dark, and then again in the morning.

First we crossed into Mississippi...

...then Louisiana...

...and then Texas.
You can see on the last picture that they started treating the roads for the bad weather conditions they were expecting.

The landscape changed a lot during the day.

We were sticking to the interstate because of the weather.  We had a small detour to get around some traffic and realized that we said we were going to do the back roads.  So we headed for Copperas Creek Park in Proctor, TX and spent Monday night there.  It was a CoE park on a lake and was nice but we wouldn't make a special trip to go back.  They also didn't have any data/internet service which I didn't like.

Driving across Texas on Tuesday (Happy New Year!) the landscape changed again and the oil wells were everywhere.

At one point I counted a dozen of these gas flares.  When petroleum crude oil is extracted and produced natural gas is produced also.  There's no way to store this natural gas so it is burned off.

As we drove west the temperature got colder and colder, into the 20s.  We ran into fog and you can see what it did to the grass and bushes.  Fortunately they had treated the roads here too, although it was slow going.

We got down to a lower elevation and could see some of the scenery.  I thought this mountain was pretty.

We spent Tuesday night and tonight at Desert Willow RV Park in Van Horn, TX.

It was really cold when we got here.  Outside it was in the 20s with the wind chill in the teens.  The temp on the left is on the inside and was about 38 degrees when we got here.  The temp on the right is in the basement.  We had the Buddy heater, the fireplace, and a ceramic heater going and it was this morning before it got up to 70 degrees.  

Although we have full hookups we can't use the water because the spigot is frozen.  So we can't dump the tanks either because we don't have water.  We are learning quickly how to do this RV life.  We've already, in less than a week, discovered things we wish we would have taken with us and some things we would have left behind.  I'm sure we'll be learning the whole trip.  

Next stop, Deming, NM.

Roving on...