I was back in the United States, camped in the same area where we had started out our adventure six weeks previously. I was planning my route east to Dallas as four days travel, with one day rest thrown in before I had to brave Dallas roads. It was to be much quicker travel than I usually do. Read on to see my “whirlwind” tour between California and Texas!
Thick canopy on the levee
My first stop back in the USA was a Walmart. It’s interesting that as much as I detest Walmart, it is one stop shopping. I hate shopping more than I hate Walmart, so Walmart usually wins out in my shopping choice. The USA shopping reminded me how spoiled we are for choice in first world countries – I found everything I needed, wanted, and then some. Baja definitely was always a matter of second choices or no choice at all, even if you went to multiple stores to try and maximise your selection. It wasn’t quite as an abrupt culture shock as you’d expect. Walmarts in the southwest part of the USA stock for the Mexican market, so there are a lot of the same goods I had gotten used to in Baja.
My spot to the left
It was nice to return to a previously camped at spot. I wasn’t worried about getting there late. Even if it had been dark, I knew the area quite well having explored it on foot during my first visit. I ended up camping in a slightly different spot to hide myself from view of a nearby trailer. This isn’t a bad area to camp, but with the lack of choice in the immediate area, you will get other people camped not too far away. Having the next day off was great after the long drive on Mexican highways. I also had time to plan my route and stops now that I was on my own.
A water treatment pond beside the Interstate rest stop
The following morning started with me up at dawn. I’m actually hating it less as I get older, I often wake up anyways at dawn. If I’m camped, I’ll usually drift back off to sleep for a while, but now I used that new sleeping quirk to my advantage to be up at at ’em to get to my destination for the day reasonably early. My destination was Indian Bread Rocks, a BLM area along the way picked more for being at a good stopping point rather than of interest for visiting. The drive through the south desert from Yuma to Tucson has some nice desert scenery, but nothing mind blowing following Interstates 8 and 10. I was surprised to see some dry agriculture east of Tucson. Arizona has more agriculture than I thought. Down here it was Pecan trees I was seeing.
Arriving at Indian Bread Rocks I was disappointed to see just how many RVs were around. All of the good spots coming into the day use area were taken. I ended up squeezing into a corner of the day use area. There were no signs saying I couldn’t park or camp there, even if there were signs close by… But I was only there for the night, my chances of being booted out were slim to none. I took a little walk to see if I could find some of the grinding holes the area was known for. These are holes in the rocks the natives used to grind corn way back when. I found none, but got some intel from Carolyn that there were a bunch on a little knoll down the way where the best camping spot was.
Sunrise over the the grinding holes
I was up early again the next day, and knowing my drive today was a little shorter, I decided I had time for a little walk to the knoll to at least see what most people came here to see. I walked back down the road, detouring into the desert to avoid the campers as I headed to the knoll. It didn’t take me a lot of looking to find the many holes worn into the rocks. There even is a little water puddle beside some of the holes. I’m sure the natives used this little rock basin water. A nice clean water basin right by your grinding rocks would be convenient for bread making.
World’s largest Road Runner statue? Perhaps. World’s largest Road Runner statue made out of recycled material? Most likely.
I still had a pretty long drive for the day so I didn’t linger too long among the grinding holes. Back at camp, I packed up quickly and got on the road again. My destination today was some free BLM camping near Alamogordo. The scenery today driving Interstate 10 to Las Cruces was plain old scrubby desert interspersed with the occasional bit of agriculture. Occasionally there were some mountains in the distance that might offer some interesting scenery for boondocking, but no exploring that when I’m travelling in a hurry. The rest stop just west of Las Cruces was a good place to stretch my legs. There is a nice view of the town from there, plus a touristic attraction: a very large Roadrunner statue made out of recycled materials.
Fire in Las Cruces
But there was more to see here too. It seemed there was a fire in town at the moment. I had seen the smoke ahead driving down the Interstate, and now from the viewpoint I could see that a good sized fire was smoking away in what might be a park or grassland. It at least didn’t look to be consuming buildings from what I could see at a distance.
Las Cruces rest stop
While I’m looking at the fire, a fellow chats me up about what might be on the road ahead. He asks me if I know of any border security stops open between Las Cruces and El Paso. Having not come that way, I tell him I don’t know. The fellow was friendly enough and moves on, but I’m guessing he was involved in people smuggling somehow. Border security stops are not always manned, so if you need to move a van full of illegal entry immigrants, some fresh intel on the post would be most useful.
Alamogordo boondocking
I moved on, having had a more interesting rest stop than usual for sure. My journey now starts taking me north. I depart the Interstate 10 for Route 70 northeast. I’m definitely in more desert terrain now. I even catch a glimpse of the White Sands National Park, with just a little corner of the white sand dunes being crossed by Route 70. I make a stop at the Alamogordo Visitor’s center, which has a free dump station, but alas, no potable water. That’s OK, I can stretch my tanks a few days to Texas where I will be able to fill up for free. I did have to backtrack to my boondocking spot, but it was worth it for the free dump station.
Example of potential boondocking
The free boondocking is called Dog Canyon Dispersed Campground on the googles, so it’s not exactly a secret. It’s just down the hill from Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, if you want to camp with services for money. At the current price of $14per night for electric, I’d consider the park if I wanted to be closer to the mountain hiking and not freeze if it’s quite cold. The area is quite popular, both park and boondocking. So I’m not surprised to have other people around me. I’m only here for one night, so I just pick a spot a bit more isolated and call it good. If you were willing to explore around a bit, there are more isolated spots nearby.
I had one longer day of driving to get into Texas. My goal was to camp somewhere free within a couple of hours of Dallas, where I would be driving to pick up my friend. I had been worried that Texas was going to be all pay to camp, but was pleasantly surprised that there is actually quite a bit of free camping. Boondocking is not a thing here really, it all is either free campgrounds, or something like a picnic ground where you are allowed to camp overnight. I was going for the latter, heading for Johnson Park on Lake Fort Phantom Hill, quite a mouthful of a lake name.
R82 Tunnel view
The start of the day driving out of Alamogordo on Route 82 through the Sacramento Mountains was definitely the most interesting driving so far. I had not expected to climb up so high, into trees, then into snow – it was still winter up here! There was even a short tunnel with a bit of a view I stopped at for a picture. Right after I took the picture, a truck went blasting past, passing someone on the double solids I’d just been standing on. The fellow being passed was not impressed and layed on the horn. It wasn’t a great move – the light at the moment was good, but it would be so easy to miss someone coming at you out of that tunnel ahead. But I always say it is better to have the crazy drivers ahead of you where they can crash into someone else rather than you.
I climbed back into winter, passing through touristy looking places like Cloudcroft. I wasn’t stopping for pictures of snow, in fact I wasn’t stopping at all until I couldn’t see snow anymore. Having been in warm Baja, I was not ready for cold snowy weather yet. But the highway did eventually drop down into rolling hills reducing to flat plains in eastern New Mexico. I did stop, right at the border with Texas. I was far enough away from the snow, but it was still a chilly day out there. My lunch stop was at a closed weigh scale that looked like you could overnight park at too, just east of Hobbs, NM. Certainly a weigh scale lot was nothing inspiring to explore after lunch, so east I went, off into Texas!
“Parking”
My first impression of Texas was ‘They have an RV park out here, in the middle of nowhere?”, as I passed the Stateline Cabin Hotel & RV Park, just past the border into Texas. My impression didn’t improve much. This part of Texas had three things: farming, oil wells, and windmills. This being Texas, everything was big. I amused myself driving wondering if I drove way out to the farthest oil pumper how long it would take before someone came and booted me off of some boondocking there. I will say that Texas does have some nice highways, including a lot of very empty twinned roads. I was nice and relaxed, with only the occasional oncoming car every couple of minutes, with no one coming up behind me for ages.
Lake Fort Phantom Hill
It was quite a while getting to my spot for the night. I was crossing nearly half of Texas in a day, spending a long time on flat plains before the terrain finally started getting some hills and valleys to break up the monotony. At least it was still light. The days were getting longer at this point, so a dinner time arrival did not mean sundown, at least for another hour. The place really did look like more of a day use park, but there were camping spots out in the grass, and no signs saying you couldn’t park overnight, so I picked my spot further away from the main events area and parked. I say ‘parked’ as I wasn’t going to put out chairs and look like I was camping, just in case.
I had a nice lake view, and there were not too many people around. I wasn’t expecting empty here, this was a park serving the town of Abilene, only a few minutes away from here. But things quieted down at dark, so there was no problems sleeping at night. I had planned my second rest day here, being by a lake was convincing me this was a good spot to stop for a day. A day of rest before having to brave Dallas traffic was my initial reason, but a lake is an even better reason to stay a day.
I explored around on foot for the day, walking to the RV park south of me, crossing the causeway to scope out some boondocking on the other side of the lake. But overall it was just a recharge day. I spent some time relaxing on one of the park benches, watching the kids play from a local Christian group that had come out for the day. I knew I was in Texas, I could hear the southern drawl from most of the voices around me. The day ended with a gorgeous sunset – big Texas style. Tomorrow was going to be pickup my friend in Dallas, and onto my next stopping spot, my friend’s – friend place, south of Dallas. Join me next time when you’ll see things did not go as expected down there.
