On to New Mexico! 4/13 to 4/30/19

Hi folks!  I just wanted to give you a heads-up that this blog post is probably a little lower on the reflective/humor scale than some of my past posts.  After six weeks in the RV, Karen and I seem to be having less mishaps to report…though I’m sure that having just written that will guarantee we’re in store for some soon!  This blog post is a little more itinerary-like – just catching you up on the places we’ve visited in the three weeks since we were in the Big Bend National Park area.

Karen and I were sad to leave the Big Bend area in southwestern Texas, but seeing that the average temp hits 91 degrees in April, we figured it was time to make our way a bit northward to find milder temps.  Our plan was to start with the southeastern corner of New Mexico to visit Guadalupe Mountains National Park and the Carlsbad Caverns, then work our way over to the south-central part of New Mexico and head north toward Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos.  Our hope was that by the time we’d get to the northern part of New Mexico and its higher elevations, the climate there would have moved past winter into spring.  As you’ll see later in the post, we probably headed too far north a little too early!

Our first stop on the northward trek was Marfa TX, which isn’t too far from Big Bend.  Marfa is another small town – about a population of 1,800 – but after having been in Marathon (pop 470) and Terlingua (pop 80), it certainly felt like a bigger town.  Even though Marfa is small, it has a solid reputation for being an arts/music hub, as well as for being funky.  The first day we got there, Karen and I ventured into town and found a place called “Planet Marfa”, which had a really fun beer garden that totally lived-up to our hope of finding something very unique/funky.  Marfa is also famous for the “Marfa Lights”, where you head east of the town at night for a few miles to a viewing area and watch the horizon in hope of being able to see these mysterious lights that occasionally appear in the sky.  We pulled into the viewing area and couldn’t see where to go because it was pitch black out.  We were afraid that if we used our phone flashlights, we’d piss people off who were already there.  Given that it was really cold and windy, too, we basically gave up on the idea.  We’ll just have to give it a shot again the next time we roll into Marfa!

We stayed in Marfa for a couple of days and then continued northward toward Carlsbad NM.  The drive was very scenic as we worked our way up in elevation toward the Guadalupe Mountains, which are significantly taller than the mountains in the Big Bend area.  By the way, when you’re driving a big RV on an ascent up a mountain, you feel a bit like an 18-wheeler in that your vehicle’s speed really slows down and you become aware of the traffic forming behind you when it’s just one lane each way. Actually, the same is true when you’re making a fairly steep descent down a mountain, too.  You just have to resist the urge to go faster when you see cars lined-up behind you.  As we have gotten more veteran at driving the RV, we’re getting a little more immune to feeling that pressure…but I have a feeling it won’t ever go away completely.

The first day we were in Carlsbad, we headed to an area near the Guadalupe Mountains National Park somebody told us about that would be good for taking the dogs because we’d get to hike to an area where they could be let off lead and swim in a river.  Beside the fun of letting the dogs have some freedom to run and swim, we were also treated to one of Karen’s favorite things – seeing some wildlife.  In this case, we were surprised to see a small group of wild turkeys.  Karen successfully got some photos, so we’ve included one below.  On our last day, we decided to take a guided tour of Carlsbad Caverns.  Basically, you drive 7 miles from the entrance to the National Park, climbing a mountain, until you get to the entrance to the Caverns at the top of the mountain.  Along that drive, Karen spotted some wild long-horned goats, so we got some photos of them, too.  While the guided-tour of the Caverns had a little too-much sitting and standing still for our taste, I would still say that the magnificence of the Caverns is a must-see.  For those of you who live back east, I’ve never been into Luray Caverns, so I don’t know how Carlsbad compares, but my understanding is that Carlsbad has the largest caverns in the US.  By the way, to get into the caverns, you take an elevator 800 feet down from the top of a mountain into the middle of it.  When you see a schematic drawing of that image – this long skinny elevator shaft going way down into the mountain, it makes your heart skip a beat.  The caverns are dimly limit and have a year-round temp of 56 degrees, all of which contributes to an other-worldly experience. I’m posting one photo from within the caverns even though it just can’t do justice to the size and grandeur of what we saw.

The next part of our trek took us west from Carlsbad to Las Cruces NM.  After having been in small/remote towns for the previous month, we have to admit that we welcomed the signs of “civilization” as we entered Las Cruces.  Those signs, by the way, were Starbucks, Panera, Buffalo Wild Wings, etc…lol.  Las Cruces has a population of 102,000, so we really are talking about a big city. While we’d like to think of ourselves as people who love the beauty/simplicity of living in small/remote towns, the reality is that we also like having relatively easy/quick access to the amenities of a large city…so we’ll be keeping that in mind for when the time comes to stop RVing. Perhaps a small town that is within an hour of a bigger city will suffice!

Besides getting our dose of civilization, the other thing that we enjoyed during our time in Las Cruces is that we took a little day trip to White Sands National Monument. Probably the easiest way to describe White Sands is to say that it looks like a massive beach with dunes of white sand plopped down in the middle of flat plains of desert vegetation.  The only thing missing for it to be an actual beach is a lake or an ocean.  We saw people walking all over the dunes and even sledding down them on coasters, so it surprised us that they weren’t being worn down by all that activity.  When we started to walk on them ourselves, we realized that it wasn’t like walking on sand – the surface really didn’t give away from the pressure of your feet – it was firmer than we had expected.  We found out that it was actually white gypsum rather than sand.  I’m providing some photos below.

Well, if we thought Las Cruces was a big city, our next stop, Albuquerque, is five times the size in population – 560,000.  Karen found an RV park that was situated just off of the historic Route 66.  For those who may not know this history, Route 66 was one of the original highways of the US highway system and it was built in 1926, running from Chicago to Santa Monica – 2,448 miles.  It was so famous that it had a song about in the late 1940’s and a TV show named “Route 66” in the 1960s.  If you haven’t been to Albuquerque, it’s quite a site to see the city sprawled out at the foot of the Sandia Mountains.  The mountains are on the east side of the city, so it’s a really cool backdrop during sunset.  We used our stay in Albuquerque to continue getting our “hit” of civilization – we went to a dine-in movie/brewhouse and got ourselves restocked from Costco, knowing that the next part of our journey would take us back to smaller, more remote towns.  We did make a trip into Old Town Albuquerque one day just to get a look at some of the historical, century-old adobe structures.  Old Town is a very touristy area, so there are tons of eateries and artsy shops there. We had some pretty yummy shrimp tacos at one of the eateries!

Our final destination during April was the town of Angel Fire NM (pop 1,100), which is about 30 minutes east of Taos.  Like many of the other towns in this area (including Taos) you can tell that there is a major focus on skiing.  It sits at 8,400 ft elevation, so the temperature got considerably cooler as we climbed in elevation.  Karen found a very new and luxurious RV park called Angel Fire RV Resort.  Since their spring season doesn’t start until May, we got a great deal on the week we stayed there at the end of April.  Not only that, there was hardly anybody else staying at the RV park, so we had it pretty much to ourselves for our five days there.  Being at such high elevation and essentially sitting on the side of a mountain, we had to put up with continuously breezy conditions.  That would have been fine if the temps were in the 70s or 80s, but it was mostly 50s and 60s when we were there (and lower 30s at night!!), so it limited how much time we spent relaxing outside of the RV. The scenery was pretty spectacular…as you’ll see in the photos below.

One of our favorite days in Angel Fire was when we drove about a mile from the RV park with the dogs to a trail that took us up a mountain with numerous streams flowing down it due to the melting snow.  At one point, we came upon a small ridge that we crested to find a sizeable stream-fed pond. The dogs jumped in and swam in the pond despite the fact that the water had to be ice cold because the pond’s banks actually had snow on them.  I guess the dogs’ fur coats kept them well insulated!  See the photos and video clip below for the fun that was had.

While Karen and I were glad that we were in Angel Fire during the off-season because there weren’t very many people around, the flip-side was that a number of the stores, restaurants, and other services were not yet open for us to explore/enjoy.  It’s not a big deal, but it is one of the factors one should consider when being mobile – deciding whether to stay at a place in season or out of season.

Well, that’s it for now. Our next destination is Questa NM, which is only 45 minutes northwest of Angel Fire, but because it’s at a slightly lower elevation, we’re hoping to get weather mostly in the 60s and 70s. Questa will be the first place that we plan to stay at for a full month.  As you might remember from an early post of mine, many RV parks offer monthly rates that are significantly lower than daily or weekly rates.  The park we are going to stay at will charge us $350 for the month plus a charge for our electricity usage, which we’ve heard should run us in the $50-$75 range.  That would make our daily “rent” just under $15/night.  At most of the RV parks we’ve been to out west, we’ve typically paid $30-$50/night, so the savings by staying for a month can be substantial.  Now we just have to hope that we enjoy the park and the surrounding area enough to want to stay there for the month!  We do plan to use the time to thoroughly explore Taos and Santa Fe, so we’re looking forward to it!