Episode: 3830
Title: HPR3830: Into New Mexico
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3830/hpr3830.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:10:46

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3830 for Friday the 7th of April 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Into New Mexico.
It is part of the series Travel.
It is hosted by Ahukag and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
We move to another state, New Mexico.
Hello, this is Ahuka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in our ongoing series on RV Travels and now we move into New Mexico.
In Monday, February 21st of 2022, this was a travel day.
We started by threading on needle to get the RV out of the space we were in.
The car was parked where it was not supposed to be on one side and a concrete barrier was
on the other side.
But we managed to back in the truck, hook her up and get the RV out without any problems.
When it was off to Deming, New Mexico for the Sunrise RV Park.
As we traveled, we could see a gradual change in the vegetation.
Soaro cactuses are no longer seen, but yuccas are now common.
Deming is very near the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, the other major desert type, the other
being of course the Sonoran, which is what we were in in most of Arizona.
The Chihuahuan is the other major desert type in this part of the world and it is a very
windy type, at least where we were.
We knew we were in for it when the signs along I-10 warned about the possible dust storms
we might go through.
Winds here get up to 40 to 50 miles per hour with some regularity and the winds howled
all afternoon and evening.
Tuesday, February 22nd, we found a little gem in Deming, a local museum with a wonderful
and varied collection.
Some of it was Old West, a lot of it was the Mimbras Indians, some of it was military
from the area.
They had a fantastic collection of dolls and a nice bunch of quilts.
Some of the Mimbras bowls had holes in the bottom and we were told that these bowls
would put over the head of a deceased person and the holes were made to let the soil get
out.
You never know what you will find in a local museum and that's one of the things that
in our travels we've discovered we want to try and get to museums wherever we go just
to see what kind of interesting things we're going to learn about the area.
The other bit of fun today is that we found water under the sink, never a good thing.
After a lot of diagnosing, we figured out it was the spray hose that was leaking from
the head.
Now, we never used it so we just pulled the hose out and put the spray head under the
distrainer on the side sink.
That will stop the problem for now and we can put this on our general RV list for repairs
when we get back to Michigan.
If you want to see some stuff from the museum, we have photos for most of the days and
there are links in the show notes to my Flickr account where all the photos are stored
so feel free to check it out if you're interested.
Wednesday, February 23rd, we got out by 9 because we were told the wind is not so bad
in the early morning.
We went to City of Rock's State Park and there we saw some fantastic rock formations.
They were caused by volcanic eruptions millions of years ago and these eruptions were estimated
to be a thousand times as powerful as the Mount St. Helens.
The ash compressed into a type of rock called tough.
We saw some of that as well previously when we were in Arizona and then in the tough,
the cracks form, erosion takes place and now those beautiful formations are the result.
But the wind picked up continually while we were there which is not surprising because
that's how the erosion happens.
We came back after traversing the main rocks.
It was so bad that it was hard just walking back to the truck because the wind was blowing
sand and dust in our faces into our eyes and everything.
On the way back we had, as we driving back from the park, we had tumbleweeds blowing
across the road like a herd of small animals and we passed through more dust clouds.
When we got back to the RV we got an emergency notification on our phones about high winds
and soon the RV itself was rocking.
Then we got a second notification extending the wind warning for another three hours.
Kind of hope our next stop is a little less windy.
Wednesday, February 24th, we woke up to another very windy day in Deming but we packed up
and hit the road to Anthony, New Mexico where we're staying at the road host RV park.
This puts us in a convenient spot between Las Cruces, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas and
we'll be here for nearly three weeks.
We should find time to check out some interesting things in this area.
It is pretty windy right now in this park and tonight the temperature will drop below
freezing but then it is forecast to go up into very warm territory so I may get a chance
to use some sunscreen before this trip is over.
This is a lot better than the winter weather advisory notices I see for back in Michigan.
Friday, February 25th.
Today was cool and overcast so we opted for going indoors.
We went to the El Paso Museum of Archaeology which was devoted to exhibits and artifacts
from the various local Native American populations.
They started with the paleo Indian populations of some 12,000 years ago right up to the
present day.
This was a very nice museum.
We had a good time there and after a few hours in this museum we literally walked next
door to something called the Border Patrol Museum.
We probably wouldn't have made a trip just to see this but since we were there we looked
in for about an hour or so then it was back to the RV.
One thing we found interesting is that El Paso has mountains inside the city limits which
we had not expected but then again as we travel the southwest we find it is very mountainous.
But unlike in Colorado or New England other mountainous places we've been the mountains
are kind of plops down in flat plains.
I recall learning a cherry cava that was a place in Arizona that we visited previously.
The natives called these mountains islands in the sky which does kind of fit.
Saturday, February 26th.
Today is another taking care of business day.
We did laundry in the morning and after lunch picked up my prescriptions at Walgreens
and refilled an empty propane tank.
After that we relaxed for a bit before taking a walk out behind the RV park and that means
walking in basically some just some random desert landscape.
Sunday, February 27th.
We went to Messia which is an older town outside Las Cruces and we learned a little bit of
the history.
The bulk of New Mexico, Arizona and California were taken from Mexico in the Mexican American
War of 1846.
The border at that time ran just south of Las Cruces and a lot of the Mexican people in
the area did not want to be in the United States so they went over the border and found
it Messia.
When in the Gadsden Purchase, which was in 1853, a strip of land along the border was
bought by the United States and Messia was in that strip.
So I guess they ended up in the United States anyway.
Messia was a larger town than Las Cruces until about 1900 when Las Cruces started to overtake
it.
We went into the historic section of Messia to do a little sightseeing and found a craft
market going on in the town square.
But before doing all of that, we went to Messia Valley Bosque State Park.
There we met with a very friendly park ranger who told us all about the area and the wildlife.
We had seen a very small bit of water, barely more than a creek and he told us, yeah,
that's the Rio Grande.
Apparently the flow varies on different parts of the river and also varies with the seasons
so it can be more impressive in other times and places.
Of course, a lot of water gets taken out for irrigation and other sorts of uses.
So the Rio Grande in general should be called the Rio Picanio as far as I'm concerned.
It's not a large river at all.
The park ranger also explained that towns along the river discharge treated sewage into
the river and it did smell bad so I would not go in the river if given the choice.
Okay, Monday, February 28th, overcast and cool day, my knee was hurting a little so we took
the day off to relax.
Tuesday, March 1st.
We set out to go to a hiking trail in a park in El Paso but we had trouble finding it.
We may have finally found it, we're not sure.
It looked more like a vacant lot than a park so we decided to give it up as a bad bet.
And instead went to the Centennial Museum which is on the University of Texas El Paso campus
and was very nearby.
It had a very eclectic collection.
We started by looking at paintings done by Mexican or maybe Mexican-American artists and
they were sort of focused on the plate of immigrants.
Then we went upstairs to look at minerals, fossils, rooms about the animal life and so
on.
Like I said, very eclectic.
Then we checked out the Chihuahuan Desert Garden outside which was very nice.
The Chihuahuan Desert has different plants from the Sonoran Desert.
The Sonoran Desert is characterized by the Swaro cactus but the characteristic plant
in the Chihuahuan Desert seems to be the yucca.
So the day did not turn out the way we had planned but it was a good day.
Wednesday, March 2nd.
Today we decided to check out the White Sands National Monument.
It is north of Las Cruces about an hour from where we are staying.
We stopped at a roadside overlook at the top of the San Augustine Pass over the Oregon
Mountains where there is a Nike missile set up.
The National Monument, the White Sands National Monument is within the White Sands Missile
Missile Range and we were told that the monument would be closed on March 10th because they'll
be closing the area for a missile test.
At the Visitor Center for White Sands National Monument we watched a movie about how the
sand dunes were created, the wildlife lives there and so on.
The area is inside the Tula Rosa Basin which is a very low point without any drainage.
So when the rains come they dissolve calcite from the mountain rocks and this flows down
to the bottom.
Then the water evaporates and calcite crystals form.
Then the wind blows the crystals around and breaks them down in a very fine white sand
which accumulates into dunes.
We hiked a few trails but hiking on sand dunes is very taxing so eventually we'd had
enough for the day and decided to go back.
Thursday March 3rd.
We never got to the most impressive dunes yesterday so we went back.
We saw the white dunes stretch out all around us as we hiked the Alkalife Flats Trail.
We never to get to the end because it was a five mile trail up and down sand dunes but
we hiked in for a bit then turned around.
It is a fantastic experience to be out on those dunes.
It really looks like snow when you're looking around so that it feels like you're in a frozen
field except I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
These two days were not to be missed at all.
One of the interesting things about the white sands is that the sands are cool, they're
not hot.
You think they would be but they're so white that they reflect the sun instead of absorbing
it.
In fact, you could walk around barefoot and be perfectly comfortable.
If you get to New Mexico, you really need to check out the white sands.
That's the end of this particular episode.
This is Ahoca for Hacker Public Radio signing off and encouraging you as always to support
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