City of Rocks

Hit the road early – well, 8:30 is really early. The plan was to take freeway through Las Cruces and then head north to City of Rocks State Park. I got to Las Cruces and Siri told me to head north. I followed her advice but it didn't feel right. I pulled off into a rest stop and checked my Mountain Directory West book which lists all the steep descents/ascents and other possible dangerous things in the western mountains. Siri wanted me to cross over Emory Pass. According to the directory “there are two bridges with 12'8” vertical clearance” My rig is 12'6” That is a little too close for comfort in my mind. Reading on “There are many 10, 15, 20 and 25 mph curves.” Add into that some steep grades and I'm thinking this might not be a good idea. I found another route and it was really flat and boring, but sometimes that is good.

City of Rocks State Park is about thirty miles north of Deming. It is in the middle of a flat plain but the strange thing is that there are all of these giant rocks just protruding up out of the ground. They are far enough apart from each other that there is space to climb through them all. It is almost like city streets – hence the name. There was a major volcanic eruption many millions of years ago which left behind all of these rocks.

There are some electrical sites but they were full when I got here so I went around to the back side of the camping area and found a really cool spot nestled right next to the rocks.

Miko and I went and crawled around the rocks for a bit. She is quite a rock climber and she seemed to enjoy it.

I finally was able to collect a New Mexico sunset which was pretty glorious.

Meanwhile, since I am not connected to electricity, my refrigerator switches over to run on propane. It started to go pfffft, pfffft, pfffft and then shut itself off. It sounded like it was trying to light but wasn't getting any propane. I pulled out the manual and it told me to clear the propane line per the instructions in the manual. Seems like they forgot to include that part in the manual. So, I have no fridge. I had a bunch of ice and put that in the freezer – hopefully it will last until morning when I can try to figure something out.