2002-03 . . . Episode 3b - New Mexico - Out from Las Cruces

The longer we stayed in New Mexico, the more we liked it - the history, the colour, the people - BUT - we realize you can't do everything so it looks like this will not be our last trip here. Doing short trips from Las Cruces offered us the opportunity to explore just some of the flavour around there.

Las Cruces is now the largest and central city in the area but, during the Civil War, Mesilla was name the capital of both New Mexico and Arizona. It was the home of a lot of the "Old West" characters and where Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced. They have managed to preserve many of the buildings dating back into the mid 1800's and much of the feeling. It's now heavily dependent on tourism. There is a market in the Plaza twice a week and a fascinating collection of refurbished houses, store and streets.

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The Missile Museum, the While Sands National Monument and the White Sands Missile Range are east of Las Cruces. The public is not allowed on the Missile Range at all (there are some great stories about gold treasures hidden in the Range area that they expect will never be found) but the Museum has a exhibition park where they show off their misses of destruction.

The White Sands National Monument is a vast gypsum dune field that, on first encounter looks like the snow on the prairies (except it's a lot warmer). They actually close the park when they launch a missile but we missed that. It was fun crawling around the dunes.

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We started to travel west and north in hopes that we would get to the Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument. We got as far as Silver City and discovered that it took a full day to get up there and tour the cliffs and we just didn't leave ourselves enough time. Our alternate plan was to stay at Deming after we left Las Cruces and travel to the cliffs then . . . never made it . . . we have to leave somethings for next year, eh (Deming is famous for the duck races it has in September)!

Truth or Consequences is a small town north of Las Cruces. It used to be called Hot Springs because of the

 

 

 

 

 

healing mineral baths but became TorC after the program offered to pay a town to change it's name to Truth or Consequences to mark the show's 10th Anniversary. It actually has a great little museum that houses mining artifacts and a rather extensive collection of pottery from five or six different tribes and Fred did find the hat he'd been looking for since Arizona.

To get to TorC from Las Cruces, we took the back road through the chili growing areas. Now, there are red chilis and green chilis. Actually they are the same thing, except the green chilis are picked early and roasted. The red chilis are left to dry on the vines and then ground for powder or put into sauces. The red chilis tend to be hotter but the heat depends more on the variety. I didn't know this, but the heat comes from the veins rather than the seed. The red dried chilis are also used a lot for decorations, woven and hung on doors or made into wreaths.

We travelled up the Geronimo trail to an old stagecoach stop Cuchillo and would have travelled further but we ran into some snowflakes - not something we wanted to see.

We left New Mexico on December 7th with Jan and Fred (our neighbours from Las Cruces), travelled to an isolated RV Park (Tombstone Territories RV Park - Hwy 82) in the desert just outside of Tombstone, Arizona.