The City of Rocks and The Big Dirt Highway

If you every find yourself in southern New Mexico, you should try to spend a night or two at the City of Rocks State Park.  It's like a natural Stonehenge!  Don't be put off by the giant stone male genitalia near the entrance.  (hehe) 

We spent two nights camping in Baba G: the first at a water/electric hookup site (sort of parking lot-ish and not really our ideal kind of spot) and the second at a dry camping spot on the outer loop of the campground:

Since our lone solar panel had already impressed us with its output, we knew we would have no problem staying at a site without hookups and still being able to run lights and computers (and even the coffee grinder in the morning!).  It's so nice to be able to camp out in the more remote tent-camping-like sites and pay cheaper fees too!

We had a great campfire in very close proximity to Baba G (sorry, Mike...).  And during the days, we took a couple of nice hikes to check out the main attraction.  Yup.  Rocks.

While the scenery is mostly drab brown, the rock formations are striking, as were some of the smallest of the wildlife:

Gorgeous, aren't they?!  And flightless: obvious once you notice the tiny stunted wings.  They are either flightless adults (maybe locusts) or the last instar (larval form)... [maybe Ace and Kathie can ID these: all we've gotten is wrong answers so far!]

After City of Rocks, we headed northwest a bit to Silver City, which was intended as a quick stop before we visited a Buddhist couple with an off-grid piece of land where they suggested we might be able to start offering classes.

Thus begins the tale of the "big dirt highway," as it was called by the female half of the Buddhist couple.  We had explicitly asked whether she thought a big, old RV that did not like hills could make it to their place, since it was fairly deep in the Bear Mountains of the Gila National Forest.  We asked this before we even decided to head south from the Jemez Mountains.  Her answer was a resounding yes, so imagine our surprise when we determined (3/4 of the way into the mountains) that Baba G had absolutely NO BUSINESS driving on that crazy, bumpy, steep (up and down), awful forest road.

Yeah, that is SO not a road for our RV!

So, we stopped at the bottom of a really long, steep hill, parked Baba G, and took the car up the next big hill to the last turnoff to the Buddhists' place.  It was a no-go, even for the Civic!  There were giant ruts in very soft red earth: we would have gotten everything we owned stuck in there.  :(  So, we turned the car around, got back to the RV, took a deep breath... and started the slow drive back out again.

Once we made it back to Silver City, we decided we were too frazzled to even cook dinner... so we ordered some Domino's pizza, wolfed it down, and then with our proverbial tails between our legs, headed back to the nearby Walmart parking lot, where we spent the night before bidding a not-so-fond adieu to New Mexico the next morning.

Up Next:  Arizona Adventures!