Las Cruces and Old Mesilla Village, NM

Monday, October 13, 2014

Late this morning we left Deming arriving in Las Cruces about noon.

As we are getting closer to Las Cruces we can see the Organ Mountains.  Interesting looking mountains.

Here we are parked at Sunny Acres in Las Cruces.  We have an end spot that is nice and wide.  This park gives good discounts to Escapees members.

As you can see the gravel roads are nice and wide also.  We did use the laundry facilites and they were nice also.

Since we arrived early, after lunch we decided to go to the Old Mesilla Village and look around.
Mesilla ("Little Tableland") is the best-known and most visited historical community in Southern New Mexico. Since its' beginning, around 1848, Mesilla has had a major influence on the economic, cultural, historical, and political life of the Mesilla Valley. From the Gadsden Purchase, to the Civil War, to the Butterfield Stage Coach Trail, to the trial of Billy the Kid, to being a lively social center in the 1880s--Mesilla has been a prominent part of the rich history of the Southwest.

This is the square.  It was decorated festively.  We are not sure if something was planned or happened the weekend before.  The bleachers imply some event.

This is the church in the background of the above picture located on the far side of the square.

This Billy the Kid gift shop was on one corner of the square.

This is looking down one of the side streets off the square.  Pretty dead.  Some of the shops & restaurants were closed.  We thought maybe it was because it was Monday.  Who knows???

This little bar & grill with an outdoor patio was open.  It was on another corner of the square.

There was all kinds of neat Indian pottery in the stores around the square.

Unfortunately this picture is not as sharp as could be, but the pottery was too unique to leave out.

The picture above and below are 3 walls of crosses in one store.

All these crosses and I did not find one I had to have.

I liked a lot of these items.  It is great to live in a coach without many places to hang stuff.  That means I can't buy "stuff".

This is a lizard I liked.

These frogs and lizards are so colorful.  It is a good thing I can't buy.  I did really enjoy this store.

Another store had all these turtles and frogs.  The frogs below are doing yoga.  These are pretty cool also!

Aren't these yoga frogs cute!!

Farm & Ranch Museum in Las Cruces, NM

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

The Farm & Ranch Museum was recommended so we decided to go.

This fully restored buckboard was at the entrance.  Pretty neat!

There is a huge outdoor display of machinery and animals.

Here are a few of the black angus on display.

And here are a few long horns.  They are still young based on the size of the horns.

This acorn fan was in the horse barn.  As I looked at the pictures we took, we did not take any pictures of the horses on of the fan in the horse barn.  Connected to the horse barn was a room that displayed the art of saddle making.  It was interesting also.

The pictures above and below are large areas of various old farm equipment.

The photo below is a manure spreader or also known as inspiration for a political speech.

Inside the big museum was a lot of original equipment and many many pictures.

Above and below are a couple of restored carriages.  Aren't they beautiful?

Here are some more restored buckboard wagons.

This stage coach was completely restored.  Lots of great history in here.

Look at the detail carved in this sconce.  And the vase.  Both are so beautiful and so old.

This is an example of a general store in the early 1900's.  It looks very similar to the one we saw in Chloride, NM and forgot to take pictures of.

This is some of the hand tools that would have been in the general store.

This is a pictureof the cowhands at the chuck-wagon out in the plains.

We found the museum very interesting.  We were glad we went.  It was not free admission, but military were free and seniors were $3. 
 

Rockhound State Park, Deming, New Mexico

Sunday, October 12

We decided to go to Rockhound State Park just a short distance south of Deming.  We thought we would see what kind of interesting rocks we might find.

Notice the sign says "rockhounds" are encouraged to take home up to 15 pounds of rocks.  We decided in another 30 years there would not be much left IF everyone took home 15 pounds.

These are the Florida Mountains we hiked into.

From the visitor's center, this is what you see of the campground.  It does have 30/50 amp electric with a dump station and water available.

As we headed off on our hike this group of people was in front of us.  We were aslo impressed with the size of the bolder that had rolled off the mountain.

There was lots of prickly pear and barrel cactus everywhere.

We took a short break here.  Tic is looking down on the campground.

We did not make it up to the top of the rock cropping you see.  We were told to find the good geodes we would need to go up there.  We decided we would not know what a geode would look like anyway so did not go up there.

This is a good view of the whole campground.  I don't remember how many electric sites there were, but all the sites were a nice size.  This would be a great park for rockhounds.

We saw this lilly around the whole Deming area a lot.  We were told this is a jimson weed and it is poisonous.

We collected a few rocks and took them back home with us.  However after trying to clean the outside and not making much of a difference we decided not to keep them.

Gila National Forest and Cliff Dwellings

Saturday, October 11

We left early this morning headed for the Gila Cliff Dwellings.  According to research it was going to be a 2-3 hr drive from Deming.

The drive up into the Gila National Forest on the way to the dwellings was beautiful.  It was about 9am when we stopped to take this picture on the west side of the road.

This is another stop up the road.  Again we were looking west because of where the sun was.

 This view is facing southeast.  It is about 10:30am.  We were at about 4700 ft elevation.

This is from the same spot as above only facing northeast.  

As we turned to leave the area, we saw this bear scat.  We were glad we did not see the bear.

The white in this picture was a grass or weed.  With the dew on it, it glistened like snow.

More New Mexico blue skies.  We are still headed up in elevation.

I think we have reached about 7200 ft elevation.  We thought the low hanging clouds were pretty.

More low hanging clouds below where we are standing.  

We are at the trail head to the cliff dwellings.  There is a guide at cave 1 that will give up more information than we would get on a self guided tour.  

This is the view up river from the middle of the above bridge.

This is the view down river from the middle of the above bridge.  It appears a fire went through this area also.

We are almost up to the dwellings.  I believe you are seeing cave 1 & 2.

If I remember correctly this is caves 3, 4 & 5.  I think there were actually 6 caves.  We only got to go into 2 of the caves.

This picture and the 2 pictures below are of cave 1.  We did not get to go into cave 1.

The wall to the left side of the picture was rebuild by the historical society to help protect the inside of the dwelling.

They had to half way fill the door/entrance because poachers kept going in.

This is cave 2.  It was the largest cave.  We did climb up and into the cave.

This is looking from inside cave 2 out.

This is from the top of the ladder looking towards 2 other rooms in the cave.

This room had 4 walls that were all plastered over the rock.  It is presumed this was a ceremonial area.  The picture below shows how big the whole room was.

Unfortunately past visitors have scratched names in the walls.  What a shame!

Behind the ceremonial room you can see two other rooms.  Tic walked down to the sign and got a picture of a pictograph in the farthest cave.  This may be considered cave 3 you are looking at.

Here is the pictograph.  According to our guide there are not many pictographs left because they are painted on the rock.  As layers of rock fall off the pictographs are lost.  These natives painted pictures as opposed to etching/carving pictures into the rock.  Carved pictures are called petroglyphs.

Tic took this picture back into the cave from the same point as the picture above.  You can see there are several room inside the main part of the cave.

This was a room they presume was for storage.  This room was loaded with dried ears of corn.  The baskets you see were in this room also.  Look how tiny the corn ears are.

I think this is cave 4.  We got to go in it also.  It was very large also.  They are estimating that about 50 to 60 people lived in these caves.

I think this is cave 5.  We definitely did not go into this cave.  Looks like there are at least 2 rooms here.

I think this is cave 6.  We did not go in it either.  You can see how big it is though.

As we started down the hill, we saw this lizard.

At one point on the trail down we could see the visitor center and its parking lot.  This gives a perspective as to how high we climbed and this is part way down.  Can you imagine living in these cliffs and having to go down to farm corn and get water?

As we got in the car to leave, this lizard was on the rock right in front of the car.  It turns out these lizard are plentiful here.

We took a different route back to Deming.  After we came down out of the mountains we came upon the City of Rocks State Park.  This rock cropping just popped up in the middle of this high valley.  You can see some RVs camped there.

This is just a unique cloud formation we saw as we were getting closer to Deming on the way home.  It was a long but fun day!