Why I Make Reservations Four Months in Advance

We drove out of Texas yesterday, finally. When I was plotting our route to get to Arizona and back to our original itinerary, I saw a state park near Deming, New Mexico that looked intriguing. Of course, two weeks in advance there were no spaces available, so we’re staying in a commercial RV park in Deming.

But since we were taking another day off from driving we went up for a day trip to City of Rocks State Park.

We visited their Desert Botanical Garden…

and walked a trail through the huge boulders that are made of ancient volcanic ash.

In many places the trail was delineated with rocks as it wandered through these columns.

The area was quite expansive. The main group of rocks was about a mile long.

There were a few outlying formations.

There were many…

fantastic shapes…

and almost impossible positions.

Even the sky was putting on a show.

Outside this area of rocks…

the land stretched empty.

We saw quite a few sotol plants with spent flower stalks.

And these were large plants.

And we saw one of my favorite birds, a road runner.

We ate lunch at one of their picnic tables amid almost total silence.

There were campsites nestled around the formations.

And had I been able to make reservations early enough we could have camped here…

and not here.

And by the way, I did get online at 5AM and managed to get reservations at three of the four National and Provincial Parks in Canada I was hoping for.