Benson to Las Cruces, NM

Oct 6^th

Since we planned a short drive today, we spent a relaxing morning reading and watching TV. Around 9:00 AM I headed in to town to the RV Repair place to find a bulb for our built-in night light in the WC. This place turned out to be the local towing company, auto garage and repair shop in an old, old adobe garage. But, they had the bulb! Simply amazing! With two bulbs in hand for a total of $1, I headed back to the coach and replaced the burned out bulb. Success! 

With that out of the way, we loaded the car on the tow dolly, brought in the slides, brought up the jacks and disconnected the septic, power, cable and water. After a final walk around we pulled out of the campground and headed for I-10 E and Lordsburg New Mexico.

Because of revisions to our stops in Arizona and recognizing we didn’t want to stay in El Paso and due to not having RV Parks that support big rigs just anywhere, we spent some time with the maps and internet to set a route that kept us from doing a 285 mile hop to get past El Paso. What we ended up with was a couple of short days, Buckeye to Eloy – 100 mi, Eloy to Benson – 100 mi, Benson to Lordsburg 109 mi and Lordsburg to Las Cruces – 114 mi and then a 168 mile drive to Van Horn Texas.

From Arizona to New Mexico in the blink of an eye

So today we drove to Lordsburg, NM. Very little traffic, light winds, an easy drive. The miles went by quickly and soon we pulled off the freeway and drove to the Lordsburg KOA. The normal process is to pull up outside the office, go in and register and follow the camp host to your site. The sign on the office said “Back at 2:00”, so we checked their site map and figured we’d just pull into a spot and register later.
Unfortunately, though there were plenty of sites, most were too short for us to do a “pull thru”. So we talked it over and decided to push on to Demming as that was only another 60 miles down the road.

TeePee at the Continental Divide Trading Post

We made one stop at the Continental Divide Trading Post to walk the dogs. Located on I-10 between Lordsburg and Deming, it offers tons of odd, strange souvenirs as well as (strange enough) fireworks. A few steps from the store are the remains of an abandoned gas station and a large teepee (which, as far as I could see, does not serve any obvious purpose). We walked through the "store" and Tina bought some postcards then we headed back to the coach to have lunch.

Continental Divide

Returning to I-10 we pulled onto the freeway and continued east - into more dust storms and major gusting crosswinds! As we crossed the Continental Divide the wind died down and there was little dust in the air. Surprisingly we had gotten up to an elevation of 4,585 feet. 

Ya Think?

The start of a dust storm

Then it was back to the high crosswinds and dust. With Tina checking the map, we decided to try and get past the dust so we opted not to stop at Deming but continue on to Las Cruces hoping to escape the high winds and blowing dust. Fortunately the dust storms were never as severe as the one we went through south of Tucson. But the gusting crosswinds really kept me on my toes to keep the rig in our lane!

On the pad at Hacienda RV and Rally Resort

With light traffic continuing to favor us we made it into the Hacienda RV and Rally Resort in Las Cruces right around 3:30 PM, we got registered and set up within 15 minutes of our arrival. It’s still very windy but at least there’s no dust. Taking the dogs for a walk we talked about our plans and after reviewing our route, it looks like we’ll only spend one night here and at the next couple of stops so we can get to the Texas Hill country. We want to spend about ten days in the general area between Odessa and Austin.

After dinner I finished the blog and photos and settled in to relax for the rest of the evening.

Miles driven today, 223. Total for the trip so far, 2,156 miles.

To see all our photos, go to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mjdolanski