Tucson and the Saguaro National Park

Wednesday morning we woke up at the gas station on the side of Interstate 10. It was a bright and sunny morning in the New Mexican desert and we had plans to drive west into Arizona to our next destination, Tucson. The weather forecast for southern Arizona called for snow later in the day, and I had trouble believing it. Snow…in the desert…on such a nice sunny day? We’d run into similar craziness last time we’d come through Flagstaff, AZ when we experienced a gorgeous sunny day followed by a morning snow blizzard, only to end in another sunny and warm afternoon. Well, we set out on the road hoping to be parked at our campground, snug and safe, by the time this “snow” rolled in.

The Land Of White Sands

After spending two days on the border of Mexico in El Paso, Texas, we headed back inland into the state of New Mexico. On this loop of our trip we're hoping to repeat as few locations as possible from the ones we saw on our last loop around the US, but White Sands National Monument was just so astounding last time that we couldn't pass through New Mexico without stopping in again. Although the afternoon we picked could have been slightly less windy (read: 40 ml/hr wind gusts), the park proved itself just as amazing as we'd remembered it. Instead of writing a long post about what all was so amazing, I'll let pictures speak for themselves.

El Malpais National Monument

After winning our big money at the Sandia Casino, we packed up our things and hit interstate 40 west to El Malpais National Monument. We’d called the park service earlier in the week asking about camping opportunities, and they recommended that we stop at the free BLM campground off of highway 117.

We drove in just before sunset, with enough time to find the brightly colored yellow cattle guard that marks the entrance to the Joe Skeen BLM campground. After a short drive down a bumpy gravel road, we circled the grounds and picked out our spot. This campground is very well developed for  its “primitive” status, although there is no water or other amenities.

We Paid a Visit to Albuquerque, Oh Wait, We Got Paid!

While visiting Albuquerque, we stayed at the Sandia Casino. The casino is located just north of town, right off of interstate 25. It’s a very large resort, with golf course, swimming pool, multiple restaurants and hotel, and a very spacious parking lot. We were instructed to park in the upper level, and when we pulled up, we were not alone. There were at least 10 other RVs already parked on the lot.

Exploring Santa Fe and Bandelier National Monument

After all the excitement of the last few days, we decided to take a day off. We booked another day at the RV park in Alamogordo and chilled in the air conditioning watching unending episodes of Weeds. (We have a bad habit of finding a new show on Netflix and then loosing whole weekends to watching season after season…). It was awesome.

Thursday afternoon we packed up, dumped and refilled, and then hit the road. Our original plan was to head straight to Albuquerque, but at the last moment we decided to check out Santa Fe.

Off to Roswell to Visit the Aliens

After visiting the Carlsbad Caverns, we drove another 50 miles to the Alien capitol of the USA,  Roswell, NM. We stayed the night with an awesome Couchsurfing host, Nadia.

Roswell is a quirky town of 50k people, the center for dairy farming, but most famously known for the Roswell UFO incident.

Carlsbad (BadASS!) Caverns National Park

Monday we left the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and crossed the border into New Mexico! This is our fourth state on this trip, after Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. We drove 50 miles through the Chihuahua desert to our next destination, the Carlsbad Caverns.

A visit to the caverns costs $6 a person, so we saved another $12 with our America the Beautiful pass. The entrance fee allows for self guided tours through most of the caves, but you can also sign up for a ranger guided tour through some of the more "decorated" rooms. These tours range from $7-$20. We decided to try out the free self-guided tours first and then if we felt like we hadn't seen enough, we would sign up for a guided tour.