Our Last Stop in New Mexico, Part 5

When I was planning our trip, I ended up with a month to book between our stay in Alamogordo, NM and our planned 3 month stay in Tucson, AZ for the winter. We had a choice of traveling around Arizona a little bit before settling in Tucson or staying a little longer in New Mexico. I went to work researching our options and checked our various memberships for discounts.

We had joined Escapees 2 years ago but had never stayed at one of their campgrounds so I checked on the pricing of the one located in Deming, NM. It was very close to the interstate right on our planned route; definitely a selling point. I thought that by the time we got there, we would be tired of moving so often and need a spot to just relax for awhile. A quick call to them, revealed excellent pricing; a month was $275 plus electric. So even though I had no idea what was around that area to see or do, I went ahead and booked it for a month.

Dream Catcher RV Park, the Escapees park in Deming, NM is a fairly basic RV Park with all gravel sites. The sites were a decent size and since the park was pretty empty during our stay, we never had neighbors in the sites right beside us so we felt like we had quite a bit of space. We backed up to the desert so there was a view behind us; although the campground itself isn’t very scenic.

The RV Park is right off of the interstate with railroad tracks on the other side of the interstate and hotels on both sides of the campground. One benefit was the one hotel had a small restaurant/bar so we could walk over to it; very convenient! It seemed that most people came in to stay just for a night or two and then move on. It is definitely a great stopover for those traveling further west on I-10.

sunset views on the walk over to Leaping Lizard at the quality inn

Deming itself is a very small city and there were not many stores or restaurants in town. The only place we found to purchase groceries was Walmart. Even with few stores, restaurants or entertainment spots, we enjoyed our stay in Deming.

While there wasn’t much in town to do, we found enough to fill our time. The clubhouse at the RV Park was very nice and well stocked with puzzles, games and books as well as a few pieces of exercise equipment. They had coffee and sweets out every weekday morning which we took advantage of; we thought it would be a good place to meet others. While we met a few other RVers, we were often the only ones there. We definitely got to know the park manager and work campers who were all very nice. So far, we are keeping in touch with a few that we met there.

I hope you enjoy my sunset pictures. new mexico really delivered on sunsets!

Tim liked their pool room and we shot pool a few times. We also took advantage of the clubhouse to play cards. It was often way too windy to sit outside to play so having a nice building to use was great. We were there over Thanksgiving and joined the other RVers for the Thanksgiving Potluck. It was a small gathering with lots of good food. Much better than making a big dinner for just the 2 of us.

As for touring around the area, we found a few things to do that were fairly low cost. There were 3 state parks in the area and we visited all of them. Rockhound State Park was the one closest to us and we spent the least amount of time there. It was pretty windy the day we stopped there so it wasn’t the best time to be outside. I thought we might be able to drive through the park and enjoy the views but this park is more set up for hikers and rock enthusiasts. There are many trails that wind up the mountain slope with lots of rocks on the ground. If you like rocks, this is the place to go. There are a variety of rocks and geodes to search for as you hike up and around the slopes of the Little Florida Mountains (yes, that is the mountain range name even though we weren’t in Florida!). We weren’t really set up for that so we just drove through and looked around a little and then left. We thought we would stop back another time but we never made it back over there.

these rocks were huge and such unusual shapes

I really liked City of Rocks State Park. This park was half way to Silver City so we decided to do a day trip and visit both. It was a beautiful, scenic drive to City of Rocks. Their flier describes the park as a geological wonder and that was definitely true. The park gets its name from the incredible volcanic rock formations found here and the “city” is an area made up of large, sculptured rock columns that are separate by paths that resemble city streets. The rocks were formed about 35 million years ago due to a large volcanic eruption. Due to years of erosion, the rocks were slowly sculptured into the columns seen today. We enjoyed walking around the rock city and checking out the campsites available in the park.

this was one of the primitive rv sites; great views from these sites.

After the stop at City of Rocks, we headed up to Silver City to check out that town. I think if I went back to that area, I would stay closer to Silver City. There was quite a bit more to do in this town filled with many art studios, shops, and restaurants. We browsed around town, found a good place to eat and then walked through Big Ditch Park. Further north of Silver City, there is a large wilderness area with scenic drives, hiking trails and the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Our day was already too full so we didn’t have time to visit those sites. We have to keep those in mind for our next trip to the area.

We started back to Deming and decided to take a short detour to check out the Chino Open Pit Copper Mine Overlook. The Chino mine is the largest porphyry copper deposit in New Mexico. The pit is currently ~1.75 miles across and 1,350 feet deep. The overlook was surrounded by a high fence so it was difficult to get good pictures of this massive pit.

The last state park that we visited was Pancho Villa State Park in Columbus, NM. This park was established in 1959 as a commemoration of Pancho Villa’s raid on this border town and Army camp in Columbus on March 9, 1916. The visitor’s center houses an exhibit hall that provides detailed information about the raid and the subsequent response by the U.S. Army who sent troops commanded by General John Pershing into Mexico to pursue and capture Pancho Villa. The troops searched for Villa from March 1915 to February 1917 before returning to the U.S. One benefit of the search in Mexico for Villa was training the Army on new equipment like airplanes and motorized transport vehicles, which better prepared them to fight in World War I.

cactus garden at pancho villa state park

They don’t know exactly why Villa attacked the U.S. and the exhibit hall displays offered a few possible reasons. I was fascinated by the newspaper articles and research from that time period that showed a potential link to Germany. Germany funded Pancho Villa and tried various tactics in the region to create issues between Mexico and the U.S. in an effort to distract the United States from the war in Europe, and reduce funding and support of our allies. The park included a cactus botanical garden, remnants of the Army headquarters and Cootes Hill which provided a beautiful view of the Chihuahuan desert.

Deming had a very interesting museum, Luna Mibres Museum and Custom House. This museum housed exhibits covering the history of the area from the Mimbres, Native Americans who lived in villages along the Mimbre River about 1,000 years ago; the Mexican Pueblo’s basketry; Spanish and Mexican history of the area; to more recent local history including a cowboy exhibit. It was much larger than I expected and there was much to see in every room. You could definitely spend quite a bit of time in this museum.

this square on the main street paid homage to the mimbre and pueblo people

Deming had a vey cute lighted Christmas Parade the last week that we were there. I went to the parade with a few friends from the RV Park and it was quite enjoyable. It reminded me of the parades in my home town when I was young. The parade started with way too many and very loud fire engines and police cars; followed by very cute homemade Christmas themed floats and of course the local high school marching band. The floats and Christmas music definitely put me in the mood for the holidays.

the high school band; check out the mural on the building.

We ended up leaving Deming a few days early. It was starting to get a little too cold at night and high winds were expected on the day we planned to leave. I wanted to see Tombstone, so we were able to get a site at a park in Benson, AZ for a few nights before heading to Tucson. More on that area in the next post.

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Our Last Stop in New Mexico, Part 5

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