We were up pretty early in order to depart El Paso as quickly as possible. We jumped back onto I-10 headed east across a big section (maybe 250 miles) of West Texas. The flat lands along the road are pretty unremarkable but the mountain ranges in the distance are pretty. From El Paso the interstate runs southeast along the Rio Grande for a while before turning due east. The ground climbs steadily and crosses a small range near Van Horn, crossing over a few passes between 4000′ and 4700′ elevation before starting a long downgrade into Fort Stockton. Near Van Horn, we crossed into the Central Time Zone. The road surface along I-10 is almost fair – I’d give it a C-.
In Fort Stockton, we pulled off onto I-10 Business for the trip down the main drag. Although there hasn’t been any rain here for a while, about four spots along the main street were flooded. We soon pulled into Park View RV Park which is a large gravel lot with a strange characteristic. All of the power is overhead instead of underground, a first in parks for us. There are full hookups and wifi and, best of all, it costs $12 a night with Passport America. The sunsets here are magnificent displays.
We will be departing tomorrow for another couple hundred miles before stopping for the night in Junction.
There’s some pix if you click here

Today, we left Deming and continued eastbound on I-10. A little over an hour later, we passed through Las Cruces, NM. I-10 turns south at Las Cruces and passes into Texas. Not too far into Texas, the road crosses the city limits of El Paso although the center of the city is still about 25 miles away.
I mostly try to see the beauty and unique qualities of things we see along our trip but I am at a loss to describe El Paso in glowing terms. We are sure there are possibly many attractive sights and fun things to do in this city but we didn’t pass any of them along the interstate highway. Interstate 10 through the sprawling city is a hellish arrangement of tight curves, confusing road signage, erupted paving and a 60 mph speed limit. The air, at least today, was like mud created by mixing some air, agricultural smoke, refinery emissions and whirlwinds of vehicle exhaust from the border crossing to Mexico . Directly on the right of southbound drivers as they drive on I-10 is the longtime murder capital of the world, Juarez, MX. We could tell from the U.S. side that we would prefer to live here and not there, even if we had to live in El Paso. We drove through town for about 30 miles until we reached and entered the maze that needed to be negotiated to find our RV park for the night. The Mission RV Park turned out to be located on property that was probably quite cheap because it located almost directly under an interchange between I-10 and a big beltway road called Loop 375. However, along I-10 the freeway ramps, bridge columns and abutments, deck spans and sound walls are visually attractive, having been designed in various Texas and Southwestern art motifs.
Mission RV park is a gravel area with full hookups, cable TV, a pool in a greenhouse thing, a laundry, an on-site high-bay RV repair facility, wifi and very little space between sites. It only costs $21 with Passport America and, since we are moving again tomorrow, it will do.
Some pix can be seen by clicking here

It was below freezing again last night in Deming. This is not a good place to have wonky heaters.
Today we made phone and internet reservations for our next few RV parks. We leave the Deming area tomorrow for a long, incremental drive east on I-10 through West Texas. RV park reservations are sort of a pain in the neck since every park takes and confirms reservations differently.
We do this exercise because finding out at the end of a 300 mile highway drive and a 15 mile trip down a side road that the park does not have a space is disappointing. Then, we can look forward to a random search of nearby (or maybe distant) parks, most that do not answer their phones, before being able to quit for the day. We try to avoid staying in casino or WalMart parking lots or highway rest stops.
We did not explore anything today. We can be quite boring.

After a pretty cold night, we got up this morning to perform our primary function – exploring and enjoying the unique attributes of the communities and parks of the U.S.A. Today it was Deming, NM. We started the day in the very good Deming Luna Mimbres Museum.
This museum has an extraordinary array of displays including Native American ceramics and baskets, a military section, large and exotic geode displays from both the local area and other western states, some old motor vehicles in great shape, over 1000 bells, a big “Old West” section, stunning Oriental ceramic stuff, paintings, musical instruments, motion picture and still cameras, some beautiful late 19th and early 20th century furniture and a gift shop with some great stuff. There is no entry fee but we always leave a pretty good donation in the bucket because the volunteers and donors do such a good job of maintaining a stunning museum.
After a few hours, we left the museum and decided to take a spin, this time going south. We drove down NM-11 toward Columbus, NM, where there is a border crossing into Mexico. Along the road, in the middle of nowhere, we came across the Hacienda de Luna residential airpark. Here we found a long line of low residential buildings with Spanish architecture that are each supplied with a backyard aircraft hanger. Cars are pretty scarce here; everybody flies directly from their house to wherever they need to go.
We pulled off to get a few pictures and promptly ran into an elderly guy named Ed Glover who seemed to be one of the few residents. He gave us the full rundown on the place, eventually opening the gate so we could drive onto the taxiway. We trundled him into the back seat of Charlotte and he took us on a guided tour of the airpark. It was pretty neat.
We continued south on NM-11 until we got to Columbus where we found Pancho Villa State Park. I’m not sure why they named the park after a Mexican revolutionary. Possibly, it was because back in the early 20th century, Germans were fooling around in Mexico trying to get the Mexicans to attack our southern border and keep us preoccupied enough to stay out of WW1. Pancho and his irregular army crossed the border into Columbus and a few Americans were killed.
Woodrow Wilson sent General “Black Jack” Pershing to Columbus along with 10,000 troops in order to cross into Mexico and capture or kill Villa. It was a thoroughly ineffective operation that ultimately failed. Villa was finally assassinated by a pumpkin seed vendor and seven associates as he drove from Paral, Chihuahua, back to his nearby ranch in his Dodge.
On the way home, Peggy remembered that we had not had a reward for a few days so we decided to go to a very strange place called Adobe Deli. This place is located near the middle of nowhere where you turn off on a dirt road to cover the last mile or so. There is nothing else around the joint. Even after you arrive, it is a bit difficult to determine if you have actually arrived at anything. We eventually found a small sign directing us into the front door.
Inside, we found a restaurant decorated with bizarre stuff like a windmill, big exterior flame heaters, a woodstove with the most non-code-compliant chimney extant, walls of corrugated steel panels, many stuffed animals, a full suit of medieval armor and a gorgeous full bar. The tables are made durable by being covered with copper sheets.
The steaks we ordered were good and the French Onion soup they serve with dinner was fabulous. Dinners came with a baked potato and cost around $25. Still inside the building but out of the dining room is more strange stuff like stuffed animals (they even have a yak), hats, old-style game and pinball machines, stained glass panels and a myriad of pictures. Outside there are cast bronze elk and buffalo statues, an abandoned water tower and some canopy framing without covers. A very weird place but they have good food.
When we departed we thought we had about a 15 mile drive back to Rancho Lobo RV Park but Peggy found a dirt road on Google maps and we took it and saved covering 12 of the miles. We got home just after dark but the temperature had already dropped to 39 degrees so we fired up all our heaters and settled in for some digesting.
Some pix of the Deming museum exhibits can be seen by clicking here

Pulling stakes in Sierra Vista / Huachuca area, we merged back onto I-10 to continue our progress going east. All of this highway passes through terrain at about 4000 foot elevation, but the road does go up and down over some minor ridges. The biggest ridge is the Continental Divide in western New Mexico at about 4600′.
The road passes through sagebrush and grass plains with small, spectacular mountain ranges strewn about the horizons. The BNSF train tracks run parallel to the interstate for most of the way and are well-utilized by numerous long trains running about every 15 minutes, both ways. The eastbound slow lane paving of I-10 is pretty bumpy and, when we could, we drove in the fast lane to avoid our expensive dental work falling out from vibration.
After a couple hundred miles, we passed through Deming, NM, and about 10 miles further on we pulled up at Rancho Lobo RV Park. We stayed at this same park in 2015 on our east coast tour. The park does not suffer from the nighttime racket of parks in town which are located a block or two from I-10. Rancho Lobo is a bit further from the freeway (maybe 800 yards) and the busy adjacent train tracks so it is pretty quiet at night. It is also bitterly cold for us west coasters with nighttime temperatures below freezing. The park has a surcharge (14 cents per kwh) for electricity but that is probably because everyone runs small electric heaters in addition to their propane furnaces at night. They now have wi-fi which works very well, in addition to full hookups, a laundry and a restroom/shower facility. Check Passport America for their listing.
There are some locomotive pix available if you click here

Today is our last full day in the Sierra Vista area. Initially, we were going to take a trip into the Dragoon Mountains east of us but we looked at our Arizona Gazetteer and found out there are no roads going into that part of the state and there is no danger I’m walking there.
We loaded into Charlotte the truck and took off going east. After about 15 miles on AZ-82, we turned south on AZ-80 and drove a few miles into Tombstone. Legend has it that the Earp brothers killed some people they didn’t like called Clanton and McLowrie at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone back in the late 19th century. In Tombstone, you can go to a tourist attraction called the O.K. Corral and see staged gunfights with guys in period costume shooting blanks at each other. In reality, the gunfight was not at the O.K. Corral but actually on Fremont Street a few blocks away.
We stopped to see the gorgeous old courthouse and spotted some stagecoaches filled with tourists wearing Gore-Tex parkas and stiff new cowboy hats. We also noted there are dozens of small mines around Tombstone. We did not know Tombstone’s claim to fame was not aggressive lawmen but silver mining. Some 25 million dollars worth of silver came from the ground here during the heydays in the late 1800’s.
We continued about 15 miles south on AZ-80 until we turned west on AZ-90 back toward Sierra Vista. Just a few miles east of town, we pulled into the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. The riparian area extend more than 30 miles along the banks of the San Pedro River and is filled with massive cottonwoods and thousands of birds. We took our binoculars and cameras in with us and were able to add a few more species to our list of birds we have catalogued since the beginning of our journey in 2014.
As the sun dropped behind the Huachuca Mountains, we fueled Charlotte and did some grocery shopping since we are going into the relative wilderness of Southern New Mexico and West Texas for the next week or so. Shopping opportunities are pretty scarce in this part of the U.S. and being fully stocked gives us lots of meal options. We even picked up some DVDs for our viewing pleasure.
See some pix by clicking here

Today we returned to a lady’s backyard where the owner feeds the birds in a canyon southwest of Sierra Vista. We were here in 2015 and this place, actually called Ash Canyon Bed and Breakfast, is run by a lady called Mary Jo Balllator. She has organized the area behind her house with chairs in shade, chairs in the sun and numerous sources of food for the abundant variety of birds indigenous to this area.
There is a plastic jug on her gate where guests that have come to see the birds can deposit the $5 entry fee. We give a bit more but just because this place stands out in my mind as one of the best places in the U.S. to spend the afternoon wild bird watching. There are probably 20 varieties that Peggy and I spotted in a few hours and we are very lowbrow bird watchers. The only person around us was an elderly deaf guy who came over and asked if I had seen a white breasted hornswoggle or something and I indicated I had not. I would be unable to identify most of the birds here if we had not taken our Peterson’s Bird Guide with us.
This is a great place to spend the afternoon, particularly if you are the type that can refrain from making sudden movements and loud noises. Since I am as big as a tent and clumsier than Gerald Ford, I have to creep into and out of this great spot to avoid there being a big exodus of songbirds that won’t return until I sit and shut up for a while or leave. The sounds the birds make are fascinating. Each species has its own call and, after a while, you can hear who is close, even when you can’t see them.
Pix can be seen by clicking here

We had no fixed agenda for today so we did what we normally do in this situation; we picked a direction and went west. We turned out of our park and headed west on AZ-82, up over the local ridge and into some magnificent mequite grasslands that had many hawks lurking on posts and poles waiting for some scurrying yummies to come into view. One of the handsome raptors was nice enough to show us how predation works right as we drove by.
Soon we passed through the town of Patagonia. Outside town are large ranches with copious grasslands pocked with massive rock formations of all colors. We were guilty of driving too slowly for existing conditions as we passed through this little wonderland. We stayed with AZ-82 another 20 miles or so to Nogales, AZ, not to be confused with Nogales, Mexico, across the border. The ugly sheet pile wall installed by a paranoid senator right through the middle of town is plainly evident from most of the U.S. side.
We turned around before entering Mexico and headed back toward our park near Huachuca City. During the drive, we got a text from our daughter, Dana, who reminded us we were to get a rewards for some unknown reason so we drove into nearby Sierra Vista and pulled into Rodolfo’s, a Mexican food place. Their beef burritos are very tasty and Peggy was impressed by their beef tacos. To make sure we were adequately rewarded, we took some tamales, to go.
We got a few pix you can see if you click here

Two years ago this month Peggy and I visited this area on our way east. One of the places we enjoyed the most was the town of Bisbee so we returned today. We left Quail Ridge RV Park and headed south on AZ-90 until we got to the town of Sierra Vista. Once downtown, we turned east on AZ-80 and started a climb into the mountains.
There is very little air pollution here and the vistas are almost endless. As we climbed up to Bisbee, we found ourselves plodding along about 15 miles under the speed limit because the scenery along the way was stunning. Sunsets are pretty spiffy here, too. We finally arrived at the upper end of Bisbee.
Bisbee has probably the best space utilization and most bizarre zoning regulations of anywhere on the planet barring refugee camps. There is very little flat ground in Bisbee so all the houses appear to be built right on top of each other. Very steep and narrow one-lane streets slither between the residences although it looks like some houses do not have direct access to the street. Some of the buildings are built across the aqueduct that ushers the local creek through town. It appears like a city for Hobbits.
We stopped in at both the Bisbee Renovation and the local mining museum and they were both great. Peggy found many stores that had stuff she found interesting like glass ornaments, jewelry and copper things. Nearby copper mines are the reason for Bisbee’s existence, or at least they were before mining crapped out here. There is the gigantic Lavender Pit just at the edge of town, along with a pretty massive mountain of spoils. There are benches with liquids of many unnatural colors in the pit and visible from the mine viewpoint next to the highway. Swimming looks to be right out here.
We drove back home to Quail Ridge getting some magnificent views of the terrain and the vivid sunset. The temperatures have been pretty low at night since a few nights back when a big storm blew through the area. I have filled our (heated) on-board water tank and disconnected our outside water piping since it is dropping below freezing at night.
There are a few Bisbee pics (along with some other days’ photos due to ineptitude on the part of the operator) to see if you click here

It is the first day of 2017 and, again, we find ourselves on the road. We woke in Huachuca, Arizona, where there was a raging storm for a good part of last night. Fortunately, our trailer was warm and dry.
We stayed in the trailer for most of the day because the weather was an impressive mix of high winds, torrential downpours and dense fog. In the morning we could see the nearby rocky mountains. After a particularly noisy downpour the same mountains had a covering of snow. The outside temperature went down 9 degrees F in about a half hour. Later in the day, the heavy cloud cover started breaking up and by halftime of the afternoon football game there were big sections of clear sky and the nearby mountains were again free of snow. Things change very quickly here.
We will go exploring around this area tomorrow.