2018-3 Texas to New Mexico and Arizona

2018-3

many rest stops along the way

western skies, wide open spaces
over 2063 miles of traveling

Texas

New Mexico

Arizona, Tucson

Badu city park

Campground: Badu park, Llano Tx. $20 city park. Full hookups. Parking lot style

Campground: The Landing Rv Park, Iraan Tx. A city park, $15 full hookups, nice spacious sites with concrete borders defining each site. Many sites currently reserved for workers in the oil fields, wind farms and a new solar installation going in.

Campground: Dalmonts Rv and Trailer Court, Las Cruces NM. $20 (rates went up to $25 but manager was kind enough to give me the old rate). Full hookups 50 amp, water pipes frozen.

Small little in town park.

Desert Diamond Casino

Campground: Desert Diamond Casino. Parking lot, free dry camping spot. Nice casino but not much for food, except the buffet.

Campground: Gilbert Ray county park. Tucson. 1 week limit, no reservations. $20.00, 30 amp electric, water and dump station available. Campsites are tight, but in the center of the Saguaro National Park, awesome location.

Gilbert Ray Campground

Distance traveled: 202 miles

Crossing Texas, and more Texas and more Texas....

The drive along hwy 29 and 190 was pleasant. Light traffic through rugged county. Large cattle ranches, sheep and a few goat ranches as well. I particularly like going over small hills or rises because just as I get to the top of the hill, I’m able to see the vast western landscape as far as the horizon off in the distance. Patches of cedar forests, then scrubby dry dead looking ironwood and mesquite trees.

I saw a number of deer crossing the road which I immediately slowed down for. If you see one there are bound to be more. The first instance 5 deer came dashing across the road. Each one, hidden from view and spaced out so that if I hadn’t slowed down, I would surely have hit one of them. Later a couple more showing off their agility to leap gracefully to the other side of the road and over the fences.

Even saw a couple of cotton farms along this back roads stretch of what to anyone would look to be barren inhospitable land. The small towns in between are spaced at great distances and it was a reminder to me to insure I keep the fuel tanks filled as I pass through these small rural towns.

As I got closer to Iraan Tx (named after Ira and Ann) I suddenly entered messa and butte country. Awesome in there size and scale as I find myself ascending one of the messa’s before arriving in the dusty town. The town has three Rv city parks scattered around town and except for the possibility of oil/windfarm or solar workers coming into the area of work, you’ll probably find a spot easily. This area once was considered the largest oil field in the world and is still active today.

a Texas rest stop, overnight parking permitted
felt bad at having not composed the picture well
freezing temps had something to do with that.

Distance Traveled: 164 miles

Winter weather entering New Mexico

Las Cruces NM

Van Horn Texas to Las Cruces New Mexico. As you may know, I don’t usually travel such great distances in a short amount of time. But traveling from Florida out to Arizona for the winter has placed me in the true travel mode. The weather has not been great as most of the country is now in a deep freeze. It sure has been for me on the road. Haven’t been able to hook up to water for the past week as the campground pipes are frozen solid as well as what water remained in my hoses.

Van Horn 

Van Horn, side street

Van Horn, church burned down, interesting gate

modern picnic shelter, Texas

As a full time Rv-er we learn to put up with these inconveniences, filling our holding tanks with enough water for use onboard and keeping the “basement” heated at night to prevent freezing of pipes and holding tanks.

With the cold weather I haven’t done any exploring or good picture taking. Having only taken a few quick pictures which I regret because I didn’t compose the shot as I normally would. Telephone poles, street signs, wires getting in the way and not taking enough time to go around and get a better shot.

Although I could be in Tucson already, I’m delaying my entry due to weather and limited places to stay until my campsite opens up Feb 1st. My goal was to dry camp for a week or so, but with the freezing weather, I’m putting that off for now.

New Mexico images

tumble weeds

Distance Traveled: 278 miles

Arriving in Arizona

There are some great stops along the way, but I decided to push on through and get to my dry camping spot (a stay of two nights) at the Desert Diamond Casino. I’ll also be meeting up with Lois Ann and Pete friends I met while leading the Travel Club at Desert Trails Rv Park. And I met up with them this past summer in Maine.

Desert Diamonds Casino and events center

Desert Diamonds, free camping

Solar Panel Update: Occasionally I like to give updates on using my solar panels. Pete reminded me that when using the inverter for a/c power, to turn the fridge over to gas only, so it doesn’t use up all the a/c power from the batteries. I’ve added a note next to the solar controller panel as a reminder.

Also I was concerned as to how well of a charge I’d have in cold weather, as I would need the batteries to run the fan on the propane furnace. As it turns out, batteries (and I have an expensive set of 4) don’t like below freezing. Well neither do I. As it turns out, the battery monitor will not permit charging of the batteries if the temperature gets below freezing or there abouts. So it seems that the batteries are of minimal use if I were ever to boondock/dry camp in really cold weather. Something to think about and prepare for.

I have one more night at the casino parking lot, with temperatures getting down to 34 tonight, we’ll see how well it does just above the freezing mark. Hopefully they’ll be able to charge up during the daylight hours for use this evening.

The batteries charged up fully even with overcast skies and moderate daytime temperatures. I was able to turn on the furnace a couple of times throughout the night, but couldn’t leave it running all night, as the batteries would not be able to maintain. For those not familiar with a furnace in an Rv, they run on propane fuel, but need d/c power to run the blower fan which take a fair amount of battery draining power.

Looks like they would work fine down in the 50’s and would be able to leave the furnace to run on and off throughout the night.

Distance traveled: 30 miles

to Tucson AZ

Arrived at one of my first locations while spending the next two months in Tucson.

Gilbert Ray campground, view from my campsite

Coyote Pause Cafe and shops

Gilbert Ray campground

Have a super great day wherever the trail leads you.