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.