Saying goodbye to Caballo, we turn west at Hatch, NM and see all kinds and manner of Hatch Chilis. Some are drying on roof tops, some are hung in Ristas of many sizes, some lie drying on big tarps on the ground and some are still hanging on the plants in the fields. There are storefronts that have Ristas hanging among brightly painted Mexican pottery. Driving through these small towns is so very colorful and yet with the truck and RV sometimes, sadly, there is little room to pull off for pictures. I did, however, manage to snap one photo of a roof-top drying rack when we stopped for gas.
Proceeding west and then north, we reach our overnight destination, City of Rocks. All of the electrical sites were taken so battery power it is. As we are setting up the campsite, the wind is picking up, surprise…
The drive to City of Rocks was pretty much flat and semi-desert, then all of a sudden we see rocks that are standing on end, sorta like a messy Stonehenge. All of the campsites have been given names of constellations which was pretty cool.
These rocks are volcanic in formation and were sculpted in the shape of pinnacles or boulders rising as high as 40 feet. The park encompasses a one square mile area in the scenic Chihuahuan desert region, at an elevation of 5,200′. These rocks were formed about 35 million years ago when a very large volcano erupted. Then, erosion over millions of years slowly formed the sculptured columns we see today.
The rocks are so porous the wind can easily carve holes in them and just above Rosalita we saw a nest for someone (?).
Just about dusk the winds calm down and we eat outside watching the sunset, glorious. The colors seemed to stay brilliant for a long time making it really hard to decide which pics to ‘blog’.
In spite of a fantastic 48 hours in the City of Rocks, we were eagerly pulled to Silver City for a brief reunion with Trinidadio friends from a decade ago…
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