2006/02 Southwest USA trip (NM-AZ) - Rockhound state park |
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We went back along the sand track to El Paso, crossing back into Texas for a little while. Possibly, there was a way on the other side of the crater to get further into New Mexico, but we didn’t risk it. We had a brief halt to refasten our luggage pod as one of screws had popped out. The good news was that the brush guard was still tight so the lock washers and Loctite seemed to be working. In El Paso, we took advantage of access to a big Wal-Mart store for groceries and screws and treated ourselves to a rare lunch out at Cracker Barrel.
After lunch we headed off north towards Las Cruces in New Mexico. The state’s welcome centre had free Internet access, so we read about two weeks of e-mail and then sent messages off to the family saying all was well. After that we’d only covered a couple of miles up the freeway when the camper started vibrating due to a front tyre breaking up. We left the freeway and found another, slower road to take us to Las Cruces and a Firestone dealer. The dealer had the right tyre, but was short two staff, so we were in for a long wait.
We turned on the TV to get the weather forecast, and heard lots of references to the temperature in “T or C”. This is a local abbreviation for the town of “Truth or Consequences”, which is the next place along the freeway. It used to be called “Hot Springs”, a pretty common name in these parts, and when the TV game show asked for a town to volunteer to assume the show’s name, they volunteered. I don’t know if it was a good move, as nobody seems to use the full name and “T or C” is now a bit obscure.
We didn’t get away from the Firestone place until after 7pm and we still had about 70 miles to drive to our planned campsite at Rockhound state park. We thought we’d found a shortcut, but on exiting the freeway at Akela all we could do in the dark was get back on the freeway again! Despite all the space they have, New Mexico’s freeway entrances and exits seem to have been designed by Rubik. We eventually rolled into the park at about 9 pm and had the usual fun working out what the payment rules were, and finding the campground in the dark, and finding that it was full, and then finding the alternative, the primitive camping area. But, at least, we did eventually find a spot for the night.
Friday January 27th
We woke to find that we were in a beautiful spot, partway up the Little Florida mountain range, with a view out
over the valley and the nearby mountains. We walked down to the Visitors Centre to find out what minerals the park has. Rockhound is one of the few parks in the country where the public is allowed to mine for rocks and take them away. We hiked up the mountain to where the major rock faces started. The slopes were full of cactus and yucca, much as we’d seen in Texas but with the addition of large barrel cacti.
We found yellow and orange and brown jasper, and some blue opal, and pieces of black perlite, a kind of volcanic glass, similar to obsidian but not as hard. Most of the rocks were still in the rock face so it took some hammer and chisel work to get them out. After an hour or so of whacking rocks, I left Sandie to her collecting and thought I’d climb the rest of the mountain, but I soon found myself on a black cliff face made entirely of perlite.
I gathered a few specimens and set off back down. Coming back down with bad knees and heels is always harder than going 
up for me. The technical term for my usual mode of descent is “all fives”, but that isn’t too good when bouncing over cactus! Sandie wanted to see the cliff so we looked around and found an easier trail and we climbed up to just below the perlite cliff, where people had been digging into the rock and the debris slopes for geodes and thunder eggs. Geodes are the hollow round rocks full of crystals, and thunder eggs are solid and usually full of agate. We think we found both but won’t know what we’ve got until we get home and can saw them in half. I still owe Sandie a big saw for last year’s birthday, so we’ll be going over to Wisconsin to get that when we get back home.
With a pack full of rocks it was slow going down the mountain, but still better than having to climb up a crater wall! The weather had been perfect all day, warm and sunny with just enough breeze to keep us cool.
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