Episode: 3850
Title: HPR3850: New Mexico 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3850/hpr3850.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:39:35

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3850 for Friday the 5th of May 2023.
Today's show is entitled New Mexico Part 2.
It is part of the series Travel.
It is hosted by Ahukah and is about 14 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is.
We finish our stay in New Mexico and head to Presidio, Texas.
Hello, this is Ahukah, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in our ongoing series on RV Travels in the southwest of the United States.
We are picking it up now, Friday March 4th, and we had just finished two days of pretty
strenuous hiking at the White Sands National Monument, so we decided to take a rest day and
do the laundry.
It was a warm, comfortable day to go barefoot in shorts and t-shirt, and you know, isn't
that why you get out here and away from the Michigan winters.
But in the afternoon, the wind picked up and then we were treated to a New Mexico dust storm.
Now the mountains next to us disappeared.
That's what it's like.
And when I say they were next to us, I mean, they really were next to us.
Ah, Saturday, March 5th.
The info that we received, and this is similar to what we were told in Deming, is that the
winds pick up in the afternoon, but if you get out in the morning, it's usually fine.
So we left around 9 a.m. to go into Las Cruces to check out the museums.
And when we got there, we discovered that Main Street was blocked off to traffic so they
could have a craft and farmers market, which they do every Saturday.
So we checked out the market and walked through there and saw exhibits of artwork and crafts
and things.
And we got to the art museum and saw more artworks, mostly from local area artists.
It was a small museum, therefore a small exhibit.
But you go to local museums to get some of the local color.
Then we walked into the nature and science museum, which was pretty easy to do because
the two buildings were attached.
This museum had some neat exhibits aimed mostly at children, but it doesn't matter.
They had fossils and preserved fossil animal tracks from the Permian period.
Animals from the various desert locales and some exhibits about astronomy and light.
Then we went for a walk to check out the railroad museum.
It was housed in the Las Cruces Depot.
And they had artifacts from the age of the railroads, as well as several model train setups.
Then we walked back to check out the Brannigan Cultural Center, which is just across a courtyard
from the art museum, where we had started this.
First we saw photographs of a Chateatta, which is a Mexican form of rodeo, designed to
show off the skills of the Hacienda hands.
Then a very piercing exhibit about the Japanese-American citizens that were put in the concentration
camps around here during World War II.
The government eventually acknowledged that it was wrong to do this, but I hope Sunday
we might realize it is wrong before we do stuff like this.
But given what we've been doing recently to Mexicans, Asians, and Muslims, I doubt
we're going to get there soon enough.
Sunday March 6th, it looked to be a cool day when we got up, and we didn't want to do
anything outdoors.
So we took a day off.
You're good thing too, because the winds were ferocious.
The RV was shaking all afternoon.
I'm glad I didn't have to drive in it.
Monday March 7th.
We went to the Dripping Springs Natural Area, which is on BLM land, and is also part of
the Oregon Mountains National Monument.
We have a number of nice hiking trails, and we picked one to do.
It took us to Fillmore Canyon, and at the end was a trickle of water coming down the mountain.
When it's rainy season, that trickle is more like a waterfall, but right now it's pretty
dry.
We really enjoyed the hike, and we may come back and do another one.
Today was cool, but not too much wind, and tomorrow is forecast to be about the same.
That makes for nice hiking.
Tuesday March 8th.
It looked like a nice day and not too windy.
We decided to get an early start, and this time we went north to the three rivers Petroglyphs.
This is also in the Tula Rosa Basin, north of Alamogordo, and is a site of prehistoric
settlement where the inhabitants scratched pictures and designs on the rocks.
To see them, we took a hike up to the top of a ridge, and along the ridge, which is where
most of the best petroglyphs are found.
The site is on BLMland and is a national monument, so our national parks pass got us in
for free.
I just want to mention, if you have any interest in seeing the United States, a national
parks pass is wonderful, well worth the small amount you have to pay to get it.
After viewing the Petroglyphs, we took a short walk to an archaeological site that is excavating,
and in some cases, recreating the original settlement of the people who created the Petroglyphs.
Now, that all added up to an active day, so we headed back, and on the way, we of course
had to stop at the world's largest pistachio for a photo.
Pistachios and pecans seem to be the major products of southern New Mexico.
Now, the world's largest pistachio is a statue of a pistachio nut that is very large.
It's not an actual pistachio nut.
But if you want to see a photo, as always, links in the show notes to all of the photos.
We went to, on Wednesday, March 9th, we went to the El Paso Zoo.
It's a nice zoo.
Features a Chihuahamun Desert Botanical Garden has all the usual animals, but perhaps
a better selection of reptiles and desert dwellers than some other zoos.
We also decided we don't ever want to go back into El Paso, if we can help it.
The city traffic is just more than we want to deal with, and Las Cruces is much nicer.
Thursday, March 10th.
As mentioned before, Route 70 through White Sands is closed today for missile testing, so
we couldn't go north that way.
We still had trails to explore back at dripping springs, so we headed there.
The dripping springs' natural area is inside the Oregon Mountains Desert Peaks National
Monument, so again our passes got us in free.
We had previously hiked the Fillmore Trail to see a trickle of water.
This time we went to see dripping springs itself.
The trail is mostly well-graded gravel and goes consistently upwards, which is good because
it means the return trip is consistently downwards.
When you're hiking, you always think about stuff like that.
We saw a small herd of deer about ten animals just off the side of our path on the way up.
The trail also took us to the Van Patten Mountain Camp, which is now in ruins, and the
Boyd Sanitarium also in ruins.
We learned that Boyd rented the land from Van Patten, who once owned most of what is now
lost cruises.
But Boyd stopped paying rent, and Van Patten took him to court, and basically lawyers
fees bankrupted Van Patten and he died penniless.
The dripping springs turned out to be just a drain pipe out of an old and now filled in
cistern, and the water comes down from the mountain tops, so not in itself much of a deal.
As we returned, a deer crossed the path about fifty feet ahead of us and stopped to look,
which we also did until it took off.
Then we saw what we think was the herd that we had passed earlier, now up on the mountain.
So that was three deer sightings in one day, not bad.
We finished our trip by hiking to the cave on the site.
Now, it's not technically a cave, it's a rock overhang, but they call it a cave.
A hermit lived there in the nineteenth century until he was murdered, and the crime was
never solved.
That was a lot of walking in one day, and after making it back we were pretty tired.
So Friday, March 11th, the day started with high winds, then rain, which turned to snow.
We had done so much walking the day before, we were not planning to do much of anything,
and this weather just confirmed it would be an off day.
We'll be leaving the area soon, but we feel we've done what we wanted to do here.
And when it was good, Las Cruces is a place that I would be very happy going back to.
Saturday, March 12th, basically an errands day before we leave for Texas, laundry, all
of that kind of stuff.
Friday, March 13th, travel day, pack up everything, hitch up the truck, drive to a new location,
they get everything set up again, unpack, and settle in.
Travel days are tiring, and they don't really leave room for anything else.
That is why a wise traveler will plan on staying in one place for a week or so if not longer.
The Loma Paloma Park seems very nice with full hookups, level sights, and a social happy
hour every day at 4 p.m.
Monday, March 14th, well the surprise department showed up today, our toilet decided to run
the water continuously, that's not a good thing.
We found an RV repair place about an hour and a half away in Alpine, Texas that had the
part we needed, so we drove up, and then in discussion with the manager there decided
a new toilet with an added shut-off valve would make sense.
Since we were headed to Alpine as our next stop anyway, we scheduled the work for a week,
in other words Monday of the following week, and they'll come to our RV and do the work.
By the time we got back and did our shopping the day was shot basically, so what do you
do when something like that happens?
The place that we visited, the RV repair place, gave us a little cap that we could put on
the pipe that feeds water into the toilet, so first we turn off the water supply and then
disconnect the pipe bringing in the water, put the cap on, and then we can turn the water
back on, and then basically what we do is we fill up some gallon jugs with water, and
you know, you pour a little water into the toilet, do your business, and flush.
So that's basically how you solve that problem, so we did that for about a week.
Tuesday, March 15th.
We visited the local office for the Big Bend Ranch States Park and got some information,
so there is a state park and there is a national park.
We ended up getting to both, but this part of the trip was the state park.
Now a permit to enter is $5 per day per person, and it looks like they have a few trails
that we would want to get into.
It is getting hot early here, so our plan is to do an early start tomorrow and do one
of them.
Definitely shorts and t-shirts weather here.
After lunch we went for a walk to the hike along the Rio Grande.
The river is a little bigger here than in Messia, but still not very large, and we really
don't see any science offenses, so I don't know if anyone around here cares about people crossing.
I suppose they do, there's probably stuff I don't know about.
We did find out that one of the long-term residents of the RV park we're in is a Customs
and Border Patrol person.
The folks at the RV park seem to go to Mexico regularly to do their shopping because the
stuff is cheaper there, but yeah, I mean we kept being right along the border and just
really did not see any fences or any of this kind of stuff, so not quite sure what that
means, I'm just pointing it out.
So anyway, that was our foray into Texas.
We're going to talk about the rest of that in the next episode, but this is enough for
now, so this is a hookah for hacker public radio signing off and is always encouraging
you to support free software.
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