BAKED BRAINS

Saturday, June 27 to Monday, June 29.

We swished our way NW through the light rain on US180, hung a left at SR78, and left NM for Arizona. Temperature-wise, we shoulda stayed put.  The drive up 180 was beautiful, and the descent on 78 from the high plateau was high anxiety, filled with 7-10% downgrades (hmmm, that’s a memorial there by the guardrail), switchbacks, and acrophobic wonders.   At Safford, we turned up US70 through the ridiculously green Gila Valley, which reminded me a lot of the Salinas Valley, miles of agriculture with mountains on both sides,  although these were quite a bit bigger, topped by the 10,720 ft Mt. Graham.  Our target for tonight was Apache Gold, an Indian casino with RV park, supposedly at $12 a night.  Folks, save your money.

The rv park was a big parking lot, with generous spaces but virtually no shade.  Turns out our AAA guide is last year’s, and the price is now $20.  Not wanting to drive any further, we stayed put.  We hoped to get some free player’s bucks and maybe a decent buffet dinner.  Not(x2).

We hoofed it to the casino across the blazing parking lot.  This ain’t Vegas, kids.  The casino was surprisingly small.  We went over to the “Players Club” to get our free “fun pack” that the signage had advertised.  Well, whoop-de-doo.  It consisted of a coupon good for fifty cents in slots credit, and $2.50 towards the price of a drink in the bar.  Huh?  We didn’t bother with either, and walked over to the . . . closed . . . buffet.  On a Saturday night?  I don’t think we missed much.  It was supposed to be, according to the signs, a seafood buffet, at the princely price of $23 each.  Ouch.  Back to the rig and Loni’s ever-so-much-better cooking.  This truly is a loser of a place, and not just in the gambling sense.  Ought to be called “Apache’s Revenge.”  The only saving graces were the sunset sky and the amazing sight of a couple traveling with FIVE, countem FIVE, toy poodles.  A traveling kennel?  Loni was particularly taken by the woman wiping each dog’s rear end before allowing them back into the rig.  Yuch.

Sunday we hooked up with our old friend, US60, and headed down into the Phoenix area.  Actually, we stopped for the night in Mesa, as Phoenix itself doesn’t seem to have any RV parks other than 20-30 miles up in the local mountains, and those didn’t have electricity.  Did I say it was getting hot?

Well, how about setting records?  When we stepped out of the rig after getting parked we nearly passed out.  Turns out it was 111 degrees!  Yikes.  Got the A/C going, determined that the advertised cable tv didn’t exist, and found that the “free” wifi wouldn’t allow us to sign on.  Oh, well, they DID have a very nice big pool, with no one at all in it or around it.  We had it to ourselves for about an hour before anyone else showed up.  This place actually is a retirement village composed of about 1,000 8x30 mobile homes, arranged in a grid pattern with virtually no landscaping.  This is so dreary that it has probably hastened more than one demise of the poor old souls who end up here.  The rv rentals like ourselves are put on the concrete pads of vacant slots that lack a mobile home.  You can imagine the “view.”  You’ll have to, cause I didn’t take any pics here.  We soaked in the pool until we were prunes, then went back to the “cool” rig, which was down to the mid-80’s inside.  By comparison with outside, it was very nice.

We thought we might stay an extra day, to go see some sights in Phoenix, but the thought of trying to navigate the scoot around, with helmets on, in 110+ heat, put the squelch on that.  We decided to head for the border, and back to the state park we had started this trip at, Buckskin Mountain State Park.  The drive there (the first part on I-10) was uneventful, and largely boring except for the 80mph trucks that kept overtaking us like we were standing still.  There was hardly anyone at the park.  Guess the heat (about 105) was discouraging them.  We lucked into the primo shaded spot, so at least all we had to deal with was the ambient temperature.  We discovered the first and only other Lazy Daze of our trip several sites down from us, a grey 26 footer.  We knocked to say hello, but I think we woke the elderly owner up.  He was polite but a bit dazed, so it was a short conversation.  Time for a dip in the river, which is surprisingly clear.  We marked the end of our trip with a great steak dinner, the last of our beer, and cleaned up the remaining Haagen Daz coffee yoghurt.  All was right with the world.

LAS CRUCES, SI; EL PASO, NO

Wednesday, June 24 to Saturday, June 27.

Balmorhea is a nice park, with little ramadas at each site with picnic tables.  A stream, originating with the spring, runs through the park and is stocked with fish, some good sized.  Actually, smaller ones are in the pool, and if you stay still they come up and start nipping at your skin.  We kept moving.  They also have created a pretty nice wetlands area with tall reeds and other vegetation, and we spotted a big turtle, several water snakes, and some nice birds.  Sorry, Audubon, no identifications here. 

We took off and went west on I-10 to SR54 where we headed north to the Guadalupe Mountains national Park.  Nice drive with, natch, dramatic mountain vistas.   Didn’t stay at the park, but turned west on US62/180 towards El Paso.  Again, a beautiful desert drive, with storms dropping rain to the south, but not much of note to report.  Entering El Paso we quickly determined that we’d rather press on to Las Cruces.  From what we could see of El Paso, it is one of the more unlovely cities and, unless you wanted to go across to Ciudad Juarez (we didn’t), there was precious little to keep you there.  We had passed through Las Cruces on our AZ/NM trip last year, and thought it looked pretty nice.  Also, our friends Perry and Sara, who make frequent drives to L.A./Vegas, had a favorite restaurant there.

This turned out to be a good call.  Our AAA Camping guide had several choices, but one was quite close to the restaurant, so we chose it, the Siesta RV Park.  This is an excellent park, and is within walking distance of the old town portion of Las Cruces, called Mesilla.  Think of a lower-keyed Santa Fe, with a nice town square fronting a very nice mission church, which we photographed at night.  After setting up and getting the A/C going, we walked to Mesilla and found the restaurant, La Posta, right on the square.  This place has been in operation for 80+ years, and is in a building even older with a series of rooms with eclectic, to say the least, decorating.   They make a number of Margueritas, including “authentic” ones that use only fresh lime juice, no sweet-n-sour mix.  That was my choice, with special tequila and Cointreau.  Oh, yes.   The food was typical everything-covered-with-sauce-and-cheese, and plenty of it, but did have some good flavors peeking through.  Good chips and salsa.  After dinner we strolled around and found a little theatre that was run by a nonprofit group, showing “The Great Buck Howard” starring John Malkovich (sp?).  Five rows of seats, with tables and chairs behind for eating while you watch, and a lady to introduce the evening’s entertainment.  Loved it.

Thursday we unloaded the scoot, gave it a sponge bath, and went off to the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum.  This is a fairly new facility, with some parts still under construction, and demonstrates ranch operations.  Some schoolkid groups were there, so that made the milking demonstration more fun, as well as the bottle feeding of the orphaned “brangus” (brahma/angus) calf which was growing 50% faster and larger on its diet of Holstein milk.  We got a private cart tour of the various pens and stables with a grizzled cowboy guide, and his enthusiasm for the various types of stock was infectious.  There was an unique cutting-torch metal diorama that this picture only captures a portion of.  After that we went inside to view the exhibits, which had some great displays of southwestern history and life.  Loni got sidetracked by a woman who had been giving the kids a demonstration of quilting in the lobby.  Her samples were really beautiful, and they ended up talking for a quarter hour.   Loni liked the saddle teeter totter in the kids playroom.  This definitely is a good stop.  After we had finished, we debated scooting on up the the White Sands Missile Museum, but the wind was blowing and gusting pretty strong, and it would be a 25 mile trip each way.  We opted to go back to Mesilla and look at the shops.  Most were the usual touristy junk, but some had some nice artwork and house stuff.  We actually spent some buckos on a metalwork sculpture and a rooster lantern.  What?  I’ll have to post pictures, but they’re all wrapped up at the moment.  Next morning (Fri), we took our power walk through an adjacent residential neighborhood and admired the xeriscape varieties of the front yards.  Adios, Las Cruces, we enjoyed our stay.

We took I-10 (ugh) west to US 180 and turned NW, over the local Continental Divide,  towards Silver City, which was billed as a former mining town turned art center.  Well, it was a mining town, and boyhood home of Billy the Kid, as they remind you at every turn.  the drive up 180 was again scenic, with the mountains looming, but I wouldn’t go out of my way again to visit Silver City.  It’s a collection of old and reconstructed buildings, precious few of which are worth much to look at, with much boarded up and out-of-business enterprises.  I realize we are here in the off season (only mad dogs and Englishmen . . .), but this place felt dead.  And nearly all of the shops that are still in business close up at 4:00.  We found only one shop with anything to look at.  The best part of the town was its “river walk”, which stretches for 3 blocks along the former site of the town’s main street, which was washed away in some 19th century flood, resulting in the relocation of everything.  The other good thing was the RV park, which is right in town, was neatly maintained, with good shade trees.  Another gold star.  It even had high entertainment as we watched some poor guy towing a long horse/human combo trailer try to parallel park it behind our rig.  We lost count of the forwards and backwards.  He kept making the same mistakes over and over.

Before settling on that park, we had thought we would try to do some dry camping up in a state park north of town on SR15, towards the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.  However, about ten miles up the road the signs warned that the road narrowed, with no center stripe, and it was dangerous for vehicles over 20 feet in length.  That’s usually an exaggeration, but the road was so narrow that we got concerned we might get in a situation where we couldn’t turn around if needed, so we bagged it and opted for in-town.  Too bad, as the local promos show the area we were heading for to be quite lush with pines and lakes.

We also thought we might stay another day and use the scoot to go up that mountain road to the Monument.  That was squelched by the first steady, albeit light, rain of our trip.  It started that night and was still going on Saturday morning, so we called it quits and quit Silver City.