Discovering Eastern New Mexico

Discovering Eastern New Mexico

As you know if you’ve been following the blog, I’m a chile fanatic.  This time of year, everwhere in New Mexico is featuring Hatch Chiles, and Vicky has agreed to humor me by taking us to the annual Hatch Chile Festival this year. 


We’re staying for four nights at Caballo Lakes State Park just off I-25.  For the first 3 nights we almost have the place to ourselves.  We’re close to the lake, in an area with trees and open spaces, and with a full hook-up.  NM State Parks have to be the best value, with full hook-ups at the same price our would pay for no connections in a National Park.  There’s not a lot going on in the park, which is fine with us as we’ve come for the solitude.


The journey here was easy, passing the White Sands Missile Range and turning north just north of Las Cruces (which will be our next stop).  This is part of the Camino Real, the Royal Road used by the Spanish explorers.  We’re following the Rio Grande at this point.  Our first evening is a quiet one, exploring the park and looking (unsuccessfully) for the source of the deer droppings we see in the campgrounds.


We’re only about 20 miles from Truth of Consequences which, I discover, was named Hot Springs before adopting the name of the TV show in 1950.  I discover that Riverbend Hot Springs offers private tubs overlooking the Rio Grande at a reasonable rate, so we spend a relaxing hour in our own spa bath.  Vicky spends quite a bit of the time sitting on the deck between dips.  I also get out of the water a few times, but not as much as Vicky.  I will regret this decision later as I start to feel faint while taking my shower afterwards, but fortunately the nausea passes quickly.


There’s not a lot to do in “T or C”, as the 1,500 locals call it, but we do find a local restaurant with great chile cheeseburgers, and then spend the afternoon in the Geronimo Springs Museum.  This features about 15 rooms of exhibits from a pioneer cabin to historical features on the Apaches, and there troubles in the 19^th Century.  There’s a whole section on Ralph Edwards and the Truth of Consequences TV show.  In 1950 the show reached its 10^th Anniversary and Edwards offered to host the show in a town if it would change its name.  He was more than generous, becoming a local celebrity and visiting the town regularly for over 25 years.  The museum features mementoes of those years including a movie hosted by Edwards.  The movie includes a segment from the show, which I never remember seeing.


We enjoy a quiet day at the park, then decide to visit Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, which we saw on a sign off I 25.  It turns out to be 100 miles each way, so we are going to make a full day of it.  I check the gas tank in the car and discover we need to fill up first.  There are no gas stations near the park, but Vicky finds one at an RV park a few miles up the road.  I pull in and the price – over $1 per gallon more than anywhere else – floors me, so we decide to fill up at one of the small towns along the way.


The road takes us across the desert and up into the mountains – very scenic but also very twisty and in places narrow.  We take it easy and enjoy the journey, but by the time we come to the last small town that might have a gas station, we’ve decided that if there’s no gas here we’ll use Plan B and detour to Silver City.  We will up there and although we cold still go to the Cliff Dwellings, we’ll be too late for the ranger tour so we decide to check out Silver City instead.


This turns out to be an inspired decision.  We know ahead of time that Billy the Kid grew up here after his family left NYC, and right next to the Visitor Center is a log cabin.  Although it’s on the site where The Kid lived, his mother’s cabin was torn down in 1884.  This one was brought to the site by director Ron Howard for a movie shoot, and he donated it to the town.  So we’re still following the young outlaw!


But that’s not the big discovery.  Right behind the Visitor Center is “The Big Ditch”, a 50 foot canyon created in the late 19^th Century by major floods of the river which wiped out the town’s Main Street.  The story is that early settlers cut down all the trees in the high country surrounding the town.  This left an open channel for the spring high waters that had previously been absorbed by the forest, hence the devastation.


The city’s main street is now one block back from the Ditch, and armed with a pamphlet describing the history of many of the buildings, we spend a fun hour or tow learning about the “old west” architecture as well as some of the colorful characters in the town’s past.  Were also able to check out some of the stores and meet many of the friendly locals – they’re so friendly, in fact, that we’ll just leaving one store after 20 minutes or so inside when the owner turns up – we had the place to ourselves until then.


We enjoy coffee and another of those green chile cheeseburgers, then retrace our steps to the campground.  We’ve come so far west that we’re only 50 miles or so from Deming, which we’re visiting next week, but it would be along detour to go back to the park that way, so we get to enjoy the mountain ride again.  Don’t think I mentioned the 3 deer we saw at the highest point on the road on our way here.  Well, on the way back, the same 3 deer, who ran away when our car approached, are there again, and get to repeat the retreat!


Next morning it’s time to leave.  Just a short drive takes us to Las Cruces where we’ll spend the next 2 nights, but having settled into the campground there we hop in the car and head back up  I-25 to Hatch for the afore mentioned Festival.  Their advertising says that 30,000 people come for the 2 day Festival.  WE drive through the town passing many places where we can buy the local crop, and pay the $20 admission fee to the “Festival”.  Thanks, Vicky, for indulging me, but on reflection I wish we’d just bought some peppers in town.


The Festival is on the grounds of the local airport.  If the airport has runways or a terminal building, we don’t see them.  Nor do we see any source of shade, and it’s a hot day.  There are 2 performance stages.  We’ve just missed a ventriloquist at one of them, and the next act, a singer, is among the missing.  WE walk through the vendor area (lots of spices in jars and packets, as well as other stalls unrelated to the chile theme) and find the other stage.  There’s a food place next to the stage so we share an expensive plate of boring chile cheese fries while listening to an average Country Western band.


Time to return to Las Cruces, and I still didn’t get the chiles I wanted.  As we’re heading for the exit I do manage to get a large bag of hot peppers for $2 and a small bag of roasted chiles for $1.  So all is not lost!  But I did get to attend the celebration.  If we come to this area next year I think we’ll just come into town to buy the chiles and leave!


Our park in Las Cruces is pleasant and shaded.  We had planned to go to the Farm and Ranch Museum but many of the exhibits are outside and it’s hot, so we’ll save that for a cooler day.  We spend Sunday shopping for supplies and take in a movie, enjoying some quiet time.