Willcox, AZ

We arrived into Willcox, AZ Saturday, March 7th and stayed 4 nights.  This was our first Daylight Savings time that we did not have to change clocks - "the girls" liked this as it didn't delay their feeding and treat times.

The land was pretty flat and we had lots of sagebrush that
kept collecting around our site,
(maybe there was a little help for the picture)

We had a busy three days here.  The first day we went into historic downtown Willcox and since this is where a lot of the Arizona wine makers get their grapes, we had to do a little tasting.  We tasted at three wineries.  Coronado Vineyards, Keeling Schaefer Tasting Room,  housed in the old Willcox Bank & Trust building and Zarpara Vineyard.

So much of the town is closed on Sunday, so we just walked a few blocks of the downtown area, walking by Marty Robbins Museum (first country Entertainer to receive a Grammy and a country artist I grew up with as my parent's played his music), and Rex Allen's Statute.  Many of the buildings in this town were from the 1880s and the railroad had a huge influence on the town, therefore the Historic Railroad Avenue Park is where they hold many of their festivals.

On Monday, we drove to Tombstone and walked around the town.  Many shops and tourist attractions that would have been interesting if we would have had more time.

Wyatt Earp, Deputy Marshall of Tombstone.
Took part in the gunfight at O. K. Corral.  

We then went onto Bisbee, doing lunch in the Copper Queen Hotel, which is Arizona's longest continuously operated hotel.  Pictures below are of the town of Bisbee.

Copper Queen Hotel

We had a 2:00 reservation to tour the Bisbee Queen Mine Tour.  Bisbee was once the richest mineral site in the world, mining silver and copper.  They mined from 1880 to 1970s.  Our tour took us 1500 feet into the mine.

On Tuesday, we took the motorcycle up to the Chiricahua National Monument - Land of Standing up Rocks, named by the Chiricahua Apache Indians.    We hiked a couple of trails, but just enjoyed the scenery throughout the park.  The rock formations started with the eruptions from the Turkey Creek Volcano that spread ash over 1,200 square miles, and has continued to be sculpted by the forces of nature today.

On Wednesday we went onto Tucson, Arizona where we will be for two weeks.  We drove through the Texas Canyon, which again had beautiful rock formations.

Las Cruces, New Mexico

We arrived into Las Cruces on Feb. 26 with plans to stay one week.  We looked for a park away from the freeway and train noise.  We found a park called Sunny Acres and since we were going to be here for a week, they gave us one of their larger sites.  It was so quiet - we heard a little bit of train noise, but very minimal.  Really nice park and the staff was very friendly.

Craig found a guy who does motorhome detailing and since it had been one year, we had them treat the roof, polish wheels, wash and wax the motorhome and trailer.  As soon as it was all done and looking beautiful, it started raining.  You can only imagine Craig's reaction?!

We did some wine tasting at the following locations.  We discovered that New Mexico's wines are very good and our wine cabinet  is once again overflowing.

St Clair - Largest Winery in NM

La Vina - Oldest Winery - no picture


Sombra Antiqua - Oldest Vineyard, this was probably our favorite.

Luna Rossa - This was a winery and pizza place and they did their wine flights differently than we had seen.  You mark the five wines you want to try in your flight, and they assemble the wines on this wine tree in the order you list them.

We went to the Las Cruces Farmers & Crafts Market and also took in the following locations:

Historic Mesilla:

Truth or Consequences was named in 1950 when Ralph Edwards with the NBC production was looking for a town to broadcast their show of Truth or Consequences.  They were looking for a town to change their name to T or C (the town was previously called Hot Springs) and since airing the original show, they came back every year for 50 years to celebrate the anniversary of the city's name change.  T or C also is home to the world's first civil spaceport in Spaceport America.

Elephant Butte was named for what some people can see is the image of an elephant on the tip of the mountain in the second picture below.  We were too far away to get the image.  The Elephant Butte dam was the largest dam in the US when it was built in 1911 - 1916.  Since then Hoover Dam became the largest.  Elephant Butte Lake is the largest lake in New Mexico.

Caballo Lake is just down from Elephant Butte on the Rio Grande (the fourth longest river in the world) as well.

Hatch, known as the "Chile Capital of the World".  As it was winter, we couldn't buy fresh chile's but we did buy some dried Hatch green chiles and a very hot red pepper powder.  Hatch is also known for the world famous Sparky's burgers.  It was warm when we drove through and so we did not stand in line for their famous green chile hamburgers or barbecue food, since we had "the girls".   They have many large ornaments outside on both sides of the street as seen below.

The Mexican food is so good here that we went to multiple places.  We went to one place that was well known for their barbecue and mexican food, so Craig ordered a combination plate of mexican food and I did combination of barbecue.  We enjoyed sharing and it was all good.

We went into El Paso and went to one of their oldest mexican food restaurants, L&J Cafe which is El Paso's oldest continuously family run restaurant, established in 1927.

While traveling into El Paso, it was raining a little and another road sign we had never seen - Watch for Ponding Conditions.

We also have a second cousin that lives in Las Cruces so we enjoyed having dinner with Tyler and his girl friend and getting caught up with Tyler's life and plans.

We also got new tires and wheels for the trailer.  The tires that were on the trailer were starting to wear and so Craig wanted to get heavier duty tires on it.  Also, the wheels that were put on were upgraded when we ordered the trailer, but they were not holding up so we updated them as well.  Due to the tires taking longer than we had expected to come in, we extended our stay by two additional nights.

We enjoyed driving through the Organ National Monument, one of the newest monuments, designated in 2014.

From there we went to the White Sands Missile Museum Range.  To tour the missile park and museum, we had to be cleared to go in via background checks as it's an active military base.  This is the largest overland test facility in the US, covering 3200 square miles of test range.  The first nuclear device was tested here in July 1945.

We then spent some time in the White Sands National National Monument where the gypsum sand has engulfed 275 squares miles of the desert.  The sand was so powdery and very white.

There is a snow capped mountain in the background.

We then went to Alamogordo and Tularosa to some pistachio farms and wineries.  We went to Heart of the Desert, the McGinn country store which has the world's largest pistachio and the Arena Blanca Winery and then we went onto the Tularosa winery which was our favorite of the three.























So many places to see in New Mexico since this was our first trip into the state.  Another trip we will go north to Albuquerque and Sante Fe, to include the Gila Cliff Dwellings.  Just glad we didn't go north this trip as it was snowing in Albuquerque.