New Mexico

Our travel day was long and took us from the high country around Flagstaff through the dusty towns of Winslow (complete with the lyrics from the Eagles song “Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see” running through my head), and Holbrook (where we were unable to find a postcard of the town to send to the young Holbrooks back home), into the “mountain” community of Alpine, AZ before passing over into the state of New Mexico. We then began a long slow descent back to the desert landscape and finally arrived at our campsite at City of Rocks State Park about 6:00pm (well actually 7:00pm because it turns out New Mexico does have daylight savings time. I had booked an electric campsite when we did not know what our situation was with the propane which meant we ended up in a very ordinary pull-through site (albeit very well landscaped and with a very nice ramada over the picnic table)

rather than one of the very private, unique dry sites set amongst the Stonehenge like rock formations.

We took a long walk around the park in the morning and stopped into the well appointed Visitors’ Centre. Our first impression of New Mexico State Parks was very favourable and the fact that the price for a site with water and electric was $14 made it all the better.

We hit the road again on a rather boring route that took us though Las Cruces but our main stop for the day was reached at about 1:00pm at the White Sands National Monument. This is truly a remarkable and awesome sight.

On the 16 mile loop drive there is a nature boardwalk that allows you to marvel at the plants that survive and thrive in this brutal environment

 and then ample parking and picnic spots with shaded tables to protect you from wind and sun that allow you to get out and walk (or for the younger, more hardy types slide down the dunes on plastic saucers or sleds).

We walked to the top of a dune, but, no, we did not slide down.

From there it was a short drive to Oliver Lee State Park where we had our choice of a number of well spaced campsites and chose a dry site ($10.00) and enjoyed a warm evening campfire and a spectacular sunset. Again a very favourable impression of NM State Parks.

 

On Wednesday morning we drove north and were surprised to find vineyards and Pistachio tree orchards. We reached our destination of Santa Fe in the early afternoon, settled into our site at Trailer Ranch RV Park and attended to housekeeping and minor trailer repairs while trying to get the flakey RV Park wifi to function well enough to blog and download ebooks.