NM, AZ – May 2023

Wow – what an absolutely amazing sunset view!  I was extremely fortunate to secure an awesome site at the Las Cruces, NM KOA that provided these spectacular views.  It was quite fitting too as during my stay, I reached and celebrated my 5th year RV Anniversary.  So, as I was sipping a glass of wine looking out upon the sunset darting behind the Organ Mountains, I reflected on what has been an amazing five years of full-time RVing, while I contemplated entering into my 6th year hopeful and eager to continue this incredible lifestyle for many years to come.  Now this is living!  For now, here’s what I’ve been up to these past few weeks.

Las Cruces, NM

First and foremost, I was very happy to reconnect with my former coworker Allen and his family.  When I was here in Las Cruces back in Sep of last year, I shared a wonderful meal with him at his home.  This time, I hosted the dinner at the RV site, complete with a campfire and S’mores.  It was great seeing him and his family again.  Thanks for coming out and spending the afternoon here at the KOA.

Speaking of the KOA, I sure did have an amazing site here.  The campground is situated up on a hill, and has a few of their sites (though they are back in’s – argh!) which sit right on the edge of the hill offering the most spectacular unobstructed view of Las Cruces and the Organ Mountains.  It was also a deluxe site complete with a pair of nice Adirondack chairs, an outdoor dining table, and a really nice fire pit.  Though I had arranged for a pull-thru site when I made my reservations back in Feb, I quickly realized these upgraded back-in scenic sites were the place to be.  So, I inquired as to their availability during my stay, and as luck would have it, one of them was open.  So, I paid the upgraded site fees, and took the next 30 minutes wiggling the RV backwards into my site.  It was a pain in the a$$ to be sure, but the rewards were so worth the effort as I got to enjoy 7 glorious days of these spectacular views.  This is living large!

There was certainly a nice variety of Roadside artifacts to check out in the area.  Just down the road from the campground at the Elephant Ranch Bar, this very large spotted pink pachyderm guards the corner of the parking lot.  Normally, if you come out of a bar and see a pink spotted elephant, it’s time to let a friend drive or call an Uber.  Not sure about here though.  Next, a propane refill tank got a makeover to look like a rocket ship.  Very cool!  Lastly, at the Big Daddy’s Flea Market, this giant man and oversized bull hold advertising signs promoting the market.  These can be seen from far away, so I guess they are doing their job.

Next, I visited the Veterans Memorial Park in downtown Las Cruces.  It was a beautifully done park, with various sections dedicated to specific wars.  They even had a giant wall with breakouts of each conflict from the Revolutionary War all the way thru to the Persian Gulf war, with details of when the war occurred, how many were involved in the conflict, and how many US deaths there were.  The dedicated section on the Vietnam war even had a helicopter overhead.  It was a really beautifully done memorial park.  There was one strange element however.  There was a sign there that read “No Jumping Balloons Allowed Beyond This Point”.  I had to ask Allen what a Jumping Balloon was, and why they were specifically called out as being prohibited in the park.  Turns out, lots of weekend events and celebrations are held in various parks throughout Las Cruces, and often times they include Jumping Balloons – aka a Bounce House.  I still thought it odd though that of all the things in the universe that could be prohibited and put on a sign, this was their choice.  Not dog poop, not skateboarding, or even not walking on the grass.  They prohibit bounce houses!  Hard to believe those are so prevalent and so bothersome that a sign is necessary to control and limit them.  Too funny!

Ok, before I go further, I need you to indulge me to get on my soapbox for a minute.  As a techie, I subscribe to lots of email lists for various things. One such list is for tech items that are on clearance sale.  I got an email that had a phone case marked down from $50 to $5.  It seemed like a nicer case than the one I had, and was advertised to be compatible with magnetic chargers which I use.  It happened to be in stock at the local Best Buy, so, I ordered it online for in store pickup.  It has been quite a while since I’ve been inside a Best Buy, so I figured I’d walk around a bit while I’m there.  Sadly, what I saw was area after area with little to no product on the shelves.  It was kinda sad.  Anyway, I picked up the phone case, and went on my way.  While I was in the truck and before I left, I put the case on my phone.  It looked great, but when I tested it on my MagSafe charger, it would not attach.  So, despite it claiming to be compatible, it was not.  So, I put the case back in the box, and went back into the store to return it.  The customer service rep attempted several times to scan in the box for the return, but alas no luck.  She indicated it can take up to 24 hours for the transaction to fully get into their system, so she suggested I come back the next day to do the return.  How absolutely ridiculous is that!  So, between the shrinking inventory and insane customer service, it’s no wonder that brick and mortar stores like Best Buy are getting whooped by the likes of Amazon and other online options.  Good grief Best Buy – get your act together if you want to survive!

On a more positive note, I did actually have a terrific experience later in the week.  As I was driving around playing tourist, I was interrupted by the thumping noise of what had to be a flat tire.  I pulled off the highway and as luck would have it, right into a Walmart Auto Center.  The technician was very pleasant and quickly showed me the nail that had punctured through my tire.  He feared it would not be fixable due to the type of tire it was, and the extent of the damage that had been done while I was driving on it flat.  Further, he did not have a tire in inventory of that size and type.  So, he pulled off the wheel, removed the tire, and confirmed that it was not repairable.  Sadly, I did not have access to my spare (a story for another day), so I was kinda stuck.  He suggested I call around some tire shops to locate a replacement tire, that I could pickup via Uber and he would mount it.  After several calls, I located a replacement tire at Firestone, and asked about them delivering it to me.  They agreed, but the only issue was they did not take credit cards over the phone.  So, the store employee brought me the tire, I paid him using an iPhone cash app, then he in turn paid for the tire when he returned to his store.  Now that’s customer service!  The Walmart tech installed the new tire, and I was off and running back on the road.  So, truly an interesting juxtapose customer experience with multiple stores.  Well done Walmart and Firestone!  As for my spare, I need to get on that soon so that I have access to it in the future.

As I’ve noted before, I tend to prioritize Roadside America sites that do not have pictures so that I can go there, take some pictures, then submit them for their use.  One such picture-less entry was for a museum that contained artifacts from the Hermit of La Cueva.  The Gadsden Museum is not open during regular hours but rather requires you to schedule a tour.  So I sent an email and made arrangements for a Wed afternoon visit.  And what a visit it was!  The museum is not really a museum in the traditional sense, but rather a private families collection of 19th and 20th century artifacts contained in a private residence.  Proprietor and tour guide Keith Bird is the sixth generation owner and caretaker of the home and its contents.  And what an amazing historian he was.  He had such interesting stories of his family all the way back through his great, great, great grandparents.  His family even had personal interactions with both the Hermit and even Billy the Kid.  Mr. Bird was very gracious with his time, and spent over two hours on the tour.  Due to personal privacy, pictures inside the home were not allowed which is unfortunate as the vast collection of items were very interesting indeed.  The one exception was outside the home in an outbuilding that contained a replica of the jail that Billy the Kid had escaped from in Lincoln, NM.  The building structure is the replica, but the steel cell wall and door is the real deal authentic one from the actual jail.  How cool is that!  As I was leaving the museum and thanking Mr. Bird for his extreme hospitality, it dawned on me that I would have attempted to visit this museum when I was here in Las Cruces back in Sep.  Then I remembered!  I asked Mr. Bird if by chance he had been hospitalized back in Sep of last year.  With a puzzled and surprised look on his face, he confirmed that to be the case and asked how I knew that.  Turns out I had reached out for a scheduled visit back in Sep, only to be told that he could not do any tours at the time because he was in the hospital.  Fortunately he fully recovered, is in good shape, and back to doing tours that he enjoys so much.  Thanks Mr. Bird for a wonderful afternoon learning about you and your family.

Speaking of my visit here back in Sep, I also remembered that back then I drove to the nearby town of Hatch, NM to see a bunch of Roadside attractions, and to enjoy the very famous Green Chile Cheese Burger at a place called Sparky’s.  Unfortunately, my poor planning resulted in me visiting Hatch on a day that Sparky’s was closed, so I missed out on the burger.  I figured I’d take another run at it, but this time, verify that Sparky’s would be open for business.  Besides, there were a few new Roadside items there, including one that had no pictures so I figured I’d knock those out as well. And what a treat it was!  A juicy burger covered with chopped up green Chile’s all sitting on a homemade bun – absolutely delicious.  Their seasoned fresh cut oversized potato fries were amazing also.  It’s no wonder there is a long line out the door to get into this place.  Was so worth the drive back up there to enjoy this local cuisine treasure.

The last item for me to report on from my Las Cruces stopover is related to the Rio Grande River.  As luck would have it, traveling from the campground into the town of Las Cruces would take me on a bridge that crosses the mighty Rio Grande.  I knew it was the Rio Grande only because it had signs that so indicated.  I guess normally anytime that I would cross a river, I wouldn’t think I’d pay particular attention to it.  But come on – this is the famous Rio Grande!  Even at that, I likely would not normally have given this a second thought but for the fact that there was absolutely no water to be seen anywhere.  Nothing by dirt – blowing up in the wind where one would presumably see a raging river.  But alas, there was no raging, and there was no river.  Just the dry riverbed absent of any life.  So I guess that it was this oddity of missing water that intrigued me, and caused me to stop on one of my passages to take a few pictures.  I wondered where upstream the water had stopped, and why.  Was it pesky beavers that dammed up the water, or perhaps was it related to the overall significant drought that is plaguing the southwest in areas like Lake Powell and Lake Meade.  I looked at Google Maps to see what fed the river and saw Elephant Butte Reservoir was upstream.  I had visited the area around Elephant Butte last Sep when I was here, and saw then the absolute chaos that was the pure depletion of water from that reservoir at the time.  Given the state of the downstream river here in Las Cruces, it would appear things have not improved much since then.  It’s really sad to see.  I’ll be visiting the Lake Powell area in the coming weeks, and look forward to seeing the conditions up in that area.  Hopefully, this region can get some drought relief soon!

Tucson, AZ

My next major stop brings me to Tucson, AZ.  I’ll be here for two glorious weeks taking in the sites and connecting with friends and former workmates.  But before I can do any of that, I have to deal with a little issue that occurred during my travel here.  I-10 is notorious for being sketchy in some places, and it would appear the stretch from NM into AZ contains some of that sketchiness.  Lots of pot holes, bumps, and other poor road conditions makes for an earthquake like ride for the RV and its contents.  As I was setting up in Tucson, I noticed two of my pantry shelves were at an unusual angle and definitely not looking normal.  It would appear from all the bumps on I-10 that the shelves, which are free sitting and  moveable up and down, had jumped off their support clips.  In all my travels thus far, this is the first time this has happened, so the bumps must have been more severe than normal to have caused this.  The only fix was to completely empty the shelves, reposition them back onto their supports, then put the contents back in.  I couldn’t recall the last time I had fully cleared out and cleaned up my pantry, but based on the dates from several of the expired items contained therein, it would seem that 2017 would be the date.  That also happens to be the timeframe that I purchased the RV, so the real answer is I have never fully cleaned out the pantry.  So this little travel incident afforded me a long overdue opportunity to review and purge it and its contents.  Eight kitchen bags of expired stuff later, my pantry was clean and refreshed, and my RV was around 150 pounds lighter.  A definite win-win!

On a beautiful sunny Friday, I added another check to my National Park list by visiting Saguaro NP.  I’ve actually visited Tucson many years ago (pre-retirement) and had visited several area attractions including Saguaro.  It was as magnificent as I had remembered.  BTW, the “g” is silent and it is pronounced (sah-WAH-row) – which I learned when I was corrected by one if the park rangers.  The park consists of 92,000 acres made up of two sections – one 10 miles east of Tucson, and the other 10 miles west of Tucson.  It was President Herbert Hoover that established the Saguaro National Monument in 1933 on the east side, then President John F. Kennedy added the Tucson Mountain District from the west side, and renamed the east to Rincon Mountain District.  In 1994, congress combined the two districts to form the Saguaro National Park.  These pictures are from the Rincon district to the east of Tucson.  It is filled with amazing Sonoran Desert landscapes, fauna and flora, and of course the giant saguaro cactus. This district has 128 miles of hiking trails, 6 rustic camping areas, and an 8 mile paved loop road from which to view much of the beautiful park from the comfort of your air conditioned vehicle.  There were several pull outs along the way to stop and take what could only be described as breathtaking photos.  Truly a unique and amazing park not to be missed if you are in the area.

On Saturday, I got to visit with a dear friend and former coworker who I’d not seen in over 20 years.  It would be back in my early post Air Force career when I joined a company called ViPS that I would meet and work with Helen.  In fact, she eventually married one of my early bosses named Kevin.  Not only was Kevin my boss for many years at ViPS, but he was also one of my most treasured mentors who was largely responsible for teaching and grooming me for what would become my IT career.   She and Kevin left ViPS in the late 1990s, and relocated here to Tucson.  I had actually attempted to visit with them when I was in Tucson back some 10 years ago, but as bad luck would have it, they were on vacation to Florida at the time I was here.  Sadly, Kevin passed away in 2017.  It was wonderful catching up with Helen again after all this time.  She has an absolutely beautiful southwestern style home sitting on several acres with desert landscape and beautiful mountain ranges in view from any direction.  We enjoyed a terrific lunch, and reminisced about the good old days.

Next, I took a day trip down to Sierra Vista (about 70 miles south east of Tucson) to visit with some former coworkers, and to take in some sights.  I had a nice lunch with Tempest and Sondra at a wonderful local Mexican place.  We chatted about work mostly, where each filled me in on the more recent IT escapades going on in the company.  It was certainly great seeing them, and all the shop talk was a refreshing reminder of how fortunate I am to be retired!

While in Sierra Vista, I had to take in one of their more notable claims to fame. The McDonald’s located on E Fry Blvd has the distinction of being the first in the world McD’s to get a drive-thru.  In late 1974, the commanding officer at the nearby Ft Huachuca Army Base imposed a new rule precluding soldiers from eating in a restaurant while they were dressed in their fatigue uniforms.  Fearing a significant loss of business, the then owner of this McDonald’s recognized the need to come up with an alternative way to serve his military customers.  Thus in Jan 1975 was born the drive-thru!  Besides the outside sign noting the special achievement of this location, the inside had a small history area with pictures from back then, and even the large fiberglass Ronald McDonald that was the drive-up speaker used to take and confirm orders.  Now this is truly McDonald’s history.

While in Sierra Vista I also visited the Henry Hauser Museum.  Henry was once the mayor of Tucson, and was instrumental in in the town’s preservation of history.  The museum opened in 2000, and contains archival materials, memorabilia, and artifacts associated with Tucson.  One of the things I was looking forward to seeing there was reported to be the original sliding window from the first McDonald’s drive-thru.  Sadly, that piece was not on display at the time, but rather was in storage.  But I did get to see a nice collection of fossils and dino bones from millions of years ago.  Fun Fact – The Sonorausaurus (a relative of the better known Brachiosaurus) is noted as being the state dinosaur of AZ.  One of the only fossilized ones to ever be discovered had been from here in Cochise County.  One of the hind legs from that find was on display in the museum.  I never knew there were declarations for official state dinosaurs.  My research to find out what Florida’s state dinosaur was turned up nothing.  Oh well – so let’s get on that Gov D.

On my way back to Tucson from Sierra Vista, I took a bit of a detour to visit Tombstone, AZ.  I had been there before many years ago, but forgot most of what I had seen.  But once I arrived, I quickly remembered why I had forgotten.  It’s pretty much a one-horse town (population 1,300) with tourism being its primary source of income.  It was very much a pay-t0-play place with many attractions – each requiring some sort of an entrance fee.  There were many Roadside America items there, but again, many were kinda cheesy, and required anywhere from $5 to $10 admission.  So, I decided to skip all those and simply take a few picture of the town street where the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place, and a few other spots like the town courthouse museum.  Most notably was a picture of a statue of Wyatt Earp, and a house sitting in the area where his house once stood.  So, I got a couple Roadside items checked off.  As I was driving out of town, my eye caught a glimpse of what looked like a very interesting store.  So I turned around to check it out, and it turns out to be what I thought I had seen – the Trump Store.  It was closed at the time, but it certainly did have an interesting picture of him front and center on the store.  Too funny!

Before I wrap things up, I wanted to share with you an event that occurred back at the home base earlier this week.  On Mon 5/22 early evening, a wicked thunderstorm passed through my little home base community of Saddlebag Lake.  Torrential rain, marble sized hail, and wind gusts approaching 50 MPH were reported.  Area flooding occurred in several portions of the community.  In fact, two units across the street from me likely suffered some water damage as seen in the pic at right, top.  That stump you see in the right side of that picture, half way underwater, is actually my stump on my lot.  Since I have my RV with me, there was no threat of any water damage for me, and my shed is several feet higher than the area flooded here in this picture.  So, all good for me.  Sadly, the three flagpoles at the entrance to the park were snapped like twigs.  Fortunately, there appears to not have been any overall significant damage in the community.  Mostly just leaves, branches, and debris scattered about throughout the park.  We did loose both power and internet services during the storm – both of which have reportedly been restored.  However, my internet and connected security camera remain disconnected and inaccessible.  I’m not sure what’s going on there, but hopefully something I can get resolved soon.  I’m certainly glad I did not ride out this nasty storm in the RV – that would not have been fun at all.

Final Thoughts

Well, I’ve got another week here in Tucson, but I think I’ll end it here.  I’m definitely enjoying my travels and sightseeing, and catching up with friends.  I want to thank my brother David and SIL Debbie for this edition’s comic.  Thanks for sharing this seemingly all to close to home meme.  🙂  For my northern friends and family, it looks like you’ll be starting to enjoy some nicer weather, and able to spend some time outdoors.  I wish everyone a happy and safe Memorial weekend, and don’t forget to honor and give thanks to those who have died while serving in the US armed forces.  Till next time, be well and safe travels.

I only show a sampling of my adventure pictures here in the blog, and do so mostly in collage format for brevity and ease of reading. If you want to view an album containing individual full fidelity and hi-res images of all my travel pictures related to this specific blog, click the image below. Enjoy!