Good morning, my friends! This morning we find ourselves in the state of New Mexico. And look at you! You got there without ever leaving your chair! There's a lot of magic in this world, isn't there?
3/28/24
Las Cruces, New Mexico
The southeastern part of Arizona is where the Sonora Desert gives way to the Chihuahua Desert.
About halfway into our day's drive, we crossed the state line into New Mexico.
Continuing on, we saw some fields of orange things blooming. They were too short to be poppies.
Just before we reached Las Cruces, we passed by a rest area. It features a giant statue of a roadrunner. Mike remembered seeing this before, but I didn't.
Okay, and as I mentioned, this park has the best hot tub we've ever seen. After visiting the first time way back in 2004, we've returned to this park multiple times for no other reason than it was the right distance, and it has this really big hot tub. Looking at the image below, the distance from left to right is about 15 feet. And we headed over there right after dinner to soak our weary bones.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh. So look at that picture of Sadie at the beginning, and you'll know how we felt.
Okay, so the day is now up in the air. I blame you guys for make me learn about the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. Now what are we going to do? As repayment for your impertinence, I'll make you wait until tomorrow's post to see what we decided. And ya' know I love ya', right?
3/27/24
Chiricahua National Monument
Good morning, my friends. It's our last morning in Arizona today. We'll be moving along to New Mexico by this afternoon. First stop is Las Cruces, and weather permitting, we'll make a visit to White Sands National Park while we're there. For now, though, let's talk about yesterday's sight-seeing adventures.
As we drove into Willcox a few days ago, I saw the turn-off onto AZ-186 that would take us to Chiricahua National Monument. It was west of the KOA where we're staying. So, naturally, as we're leaving, I tell Mike to head west and follow the signs. Along we go on our merry way. The mountains to the north were pretty with the combination of sunshine and clouds overhead.
Okay, so we get ourselves turned around and backtrack until we see the sign we passed originally. Finally, we were headed in the right direction. (I hate it when that happens.) Off in the distance, we could see snow in the mountains. I believe these are the Sierra Madre.
Many miles later...about 40...we passed through the gates for the national monument.
These mountains are called "sky islands," and the next sign explains what that means.
Interestingly, as the mountains rose from the desert, it isolated these particular animals. They cannot survive a trek across the desert should they decide to move elsewhere.
As the mountains rose, they took the trees with them. It's interesting to drive in on such a flat and barren landscape to find so much greenery at the higher elevations. Also, there were very few places to pull off the road for a better look. Those available were usually only large enough for one or two cars to park. For this next image, we simply stopped in the middle of the road and I snapped the picture as quickly as I could.
The images below are parts of a larger sign that describes the origin of this landscape.
We'd reached the end of the scenic drive by that time, and so we headed back down the hill the way we came. Along the way, we were able to see the formation below known as "Sea Captain." You'll have to use your imagination here too. The little white spot on the right and toward the top of the formation is an arch. It's hard to tell from this image, but it goes all the way through and you can see the mountains in the background. And, yes, it was snowing by that time. It continued snowing until we reached the desert floor.
As we headed toward the exit, I was able to capture a few shots out the window.
So despite the cold and the wind, we enjoyed our visit to the park. And we got lucky. As I mentioned in a previous post, the road we were driving had been closed just past the visitor center in the days prior to our visit. Even the ranger discouraged us from ing if we couldn't drive on the road. With snow falling while we were there, I wondered if the road would close again. Indeed, looking at the website this morning, check out that very first alert.
We've encountered some bad weather on this trip. Really, in a month of traveling, there have only been a few warm and dry days. Nevertheless, we seem most often to be charmed when we travel. Weather tries its best to cooperate so we don't miss anything along the way.
It's very tempting to collect these, and they aren't the first cute picks we've seen on this trip. Still...I'm just off a big house-purging, and the last thing I need is to start another collection.
Okay, so that was our day. As I said, we'll be heading east again this morning. Our day will end in Las Cruces where we're told the weather is going to be very nice. We have two days there, and then we'll move on to Fort Davis, Texas.
The eclipse is approaching my friends. We're keeping our fingers crossed for clear skies. You might want to join in with the finger crossing. It's okay to uncross them occasionally, but when you're sitting still, I recommend keeping them crossed. Interestingly, I saw this graphic in the NYTimes this morning. It shows the likelihood of clear skies based on historical data. We'll be in Whitney, Texas, almost right in the middle of the state.
You can see that our chances for clear skies are 50-50. Fortunately, it looks like we can head west if we need to. Of course, this guarantees nothing, but forewarned is forearmed.
All right, my friends. Time for me to get going with my morning's activities. The sun is shining and we're looking at blue skies for our day of driving. We're heading to an RV park we stayed at many years ago. It was once among our favorite parks because of its huge hot tub. We're hoping the hot tub is still operative and that we can soak our travel weary bones when we get there. It's just one more reason to keep our fingers crossed.
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