Wednesday, April 27th – Carlsbad, New Mexico to El Paso, Texas to Las Cruces, New Mexico – Day 76
I will miss our parking lot camping site. It was free, quiet and had a good view of the stars. Of course, the guy screaming obscenities against someone else in their trailer late in the evening wasn’t ideal.
On our way out we stopped at the Guadalupe Mountains visitor centre to fill up our water and purchase a pair of hiking sticks. The drive past Guadalupe provided some spectacular views of the mountain.
Our next stop was El Paso, a 2-hour drive. Gen had fond memories of the El Paso salsa and taco commercials, so we decided to investigate.
We drove downtown to visit a free art gallery. The AAA Chihuahua’s baseball team had just finished a game and there was no parking anywhere. We proceeded to the scenic drive. There was a fantastic lookout from the nearby mountains. We got out of the car, walked to the lookout, and paid a quarter for each kid to look through the binocular stations. El Paso is crammed against the Rio Grande and on the other side is the mother city, Juarez. El Paso is very safe where Juarez is safe in the main areas but at times has been very violent.
We drove down the mountain and into a small town where we stocked up on ice, water, gas and Gen did a little shopping. We proceeded through the Mountains to Las Cruces which sat on the other side. We debated over and over where to go and what to see to the point we passed most things.
We finally settled on a hike to see an area where there were dinosaur tracks (or technically not dinosaur but ancient reptile pre-dinos). We learned when we got there that most of the tracks had been stolen or disfigured until the remnants were removed to a local museum for preservation. We decided to see the place where the tracks were. The hike was uphill and about three miles to the valley where the prints were originally found. We made it about a kilometre uphill.
On the way back, Charlotte was complaining something was poking her foot. After the third complaint, I looked at her shoe and found a 2cm long thorn sticking through the sole.
Our campsite was Leasburg Dam. There was no water in the river so the dam wasn’t being used but there was a small spring with a beaver dam in it. There were dry riverbeds everywhere and even the Rio Grande was a trickle. We arrived and while setting up we met Sue. She was the camp host and ended up giving us great advice. She also let us know there were sand toboggans available from the park office. We enjoyed the sunsetting over the mountains from our campsite.
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