Goal: Valley of Fires, NM
Today was an easy drive of 97 miles.
We rose early, because we wanted to arrive early at our next destination. Valley of Fires is a Bureau of Land Management(BLM) Recreation area, with limited RV sites. Camping there is on a first come, first serve basis, NO RESERVATIONS!
We took 30 minutes to break camp this morning. 5 minutes longer than yesterday! The reason is that Rob took time to dump the tanks as we did not do so at Whites City. We still were on the road before 9:00 AM.
Climbing the foothills on US70 as we crossed a 5000 feet high ridge of mountains. We drove on US70 quite a bit on this adventure.
On the other side of the ridge were ranches with both Cattle & horses. There were also real trees (as apposed to shrubs) through the valley. As we rose to the next ridge the road side cuts showed the amazing colored layers of sediments.
As the photo above shows, the sides of the road have steep banks of soft sandstone, and other mineral layers. The sandstone layers have a variety of beautiful colored layers.
As we approached the small town of Tinnie, New Mexico, we saw a large number of long horned beef cattle. Most of the cattle we have seen so far on the trip has been Hereford or Angus.
Just after Hondo, we turned up US 380 and the road was rough and Tigger let us know!
After town of Hondo we turned up a narrower valley in to Lincoln County and past a historical marker for Billy the Kid. The next marker was for Lincoln County and the Lincoln County Wars.
Deryl was fascinated by the information on the historical markers, as one of her favorite John Wayne movies is “Chism”. The movie actually does a reasonably good job telling the history of the Lincoln County War. Hence after stopping to read the historical marker we chose to stop in the town of Lincoln to see more markers about Lincoln county war.
Capitan (next Town) is where Smokey the Bear lived his life after being rescued. The forest fire was in the Capitan mountain gap between Lincoln and Capitan.
Mountains have trees not just scrub bushes, and the forest has regrown since 1950 when Smokey the Bear was a cub. The road runs parallel to the Capitan gap.
A little further down the road, the road rises up over a pass into Corizozo, NM. That pass was over 7000 feet in elevation!
Large open plain
As mentioned above, US380 through Lincoln County is very rough. The road surface improved once we entered the valley. At the bottom of the grade was the town of Corizozo and the intersection of US54.
We got fuel in Corizozo to ensure we have enough to reach T.O.C. in a few days.
Valley of Fires Recreation area! There is only one word for it: Amazing! We arrived by 11:30 AM and picked site 7 of the 16 RV sites. There are a number of dedicated tenting sites also available. The rack rate for camping in an RV is $18 / night. With the National Parks Pass (we each have our senior passes) the cost for a water and electric site drops to $9/night!
What is also amazing about the price of this camping location is as follows: 1) the sites are spread out, 2) the sites are pull up to sites so every site has a view of the valley, 3) every site has a sunshade, a picnic table, a fire ring with grate for cooking, AND a charcoal grill on pedestal! This is in addition to water and electric!
And then the view is amazing! The valley floor is about 12 miles wide and 40 miles long.
We made a fire in the fire ring, and then cooked bacon on our flat top from the grill. We then lit a charcoal fire in the charcoal grill and Rob cooked lamb chops and zucchini.
After dinner we sat by the fire and enjoyed the stars.