The winds of Spring

Corinne Boondocking, Family, Las Cruces 2 Comments

We were told by our Las Cruces realtor that “Las Cruces has its windy season this month and next.” I believe he meant April and May. But I remarked back; “And come May, you will again say Las Cruces has its windy season this month and next.” It certainly seems that way, we have seen our share of wind!

Valley of Fires

After having the purchase offer on the Las Cruces lot accepted, we headed north towards Albuquerque. The builder we have been working with suggested we take a slight detour to see the Valley of Fires Recreation Area. I was up for something touristy after all the property searching we had been doing. Let’s go!

From blm.gov, “Valley of Fires recreation area is located immediately adjacent to the Malpais Lava Flow. Approximately 5,000 years ago, Little Black Peak erupted and flowed 44 miles into the Tularosa Basin, filling the basin with molten rock. The resulting lava flow is four to six miles wide, 160 feet thick and covers 125 square miles. The lava flow is considered to be one of the youngest lava flows in the continental United States.“

It’s pretty scenic. There is cheap camping WITH power in the Valley of Fires, with every site having a view. We did just a quick drive through, but we WILL be coming back. My new knee and I even managed a short hike to the top of a small hill with a lookout.

We just had to take a picture of the Blue Flame with the lava field in the background to send to our builder.

Throw-down of the green chili cheese burgers

Our builder, Kelly, made another recommendation. After the Valley of Fires, we would be going through the small town of San Antonia, New Mexico. There are ONLY two restaurants there, and they both serve great green chili cheeseburgers. Little did we know how famous this little town AND the green chili cheeseburger are!

New Mexico may be the “Land of Enchantment”, but it is also the “chili capital of the world.” The city of Hatch, just 41 miles north of Las Cruces, is where many of the green chilis are grown. Driving through Hatch when they are roasting chilis is an aromatic experience!

On our way to Albuquerque, we stopped at the first of the two restaurants, the Owl Cafe.

This unassuming cafe was the hangout for the atomic scientists working on the atomic bomb during World War II. They asked for hamburgers, what they got were hamburgers with green chilis. The rest is history.

Here’s my green chili cheeseburger. Being a wimp, I asked about the heat in the green chilis. I like some spiciness, but don’t want them to kill me. I opted to have the green chili on the side. I put a few on the burger.

On our way back from Albuquerque, we stopped in San Antonio again, this time we ate at the Buckhorn Tavern, right across the street from the Owl Cafe. GQ Magazine voted their green chili cheeseburger the 7th best burger in America.

Welcome to the Buckhorn Tavern. You can see the Blue Flame in the background, parked on the shoulder of the road. Thankfully it was a wide shoulder.
Here is the Buckhorn’s green chili cheeseburger. This time I got brave and put most of the chili on the burger. It was good!

It was only after we had tried the two cheeseburgers (and voted Buckhorn’s the best) that we learned what a big deal the green chili cheeseburger is. New Mexico has a Green Chili Cheeseburger Trail. Chef Bobby Flay did a “Throwdown” with the owner of the Buckhorn Tavern (Discovery+ or Food Network, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, Season 6, episode 12). Spoiler: Bobby didn’t win.

All in all, we had good burgers and learned a few things bout green chilis! Below is a short (2:49 minute) video about the two restaurants. You can also view it at https://youtu.be/viDEeI03hpU.

Albuquerque

Finally, we made it to Albuquerque, where my Dad now lives, close to my brother Jim and his family. I hadn’t seen Dad since April of 2020, and that was from a COVID safe distance. It was good to give him a hug and see how he was doing. Unfortunately for Dad, I had a list of errands we needed to run. After three days, I think I wore Dad out, but we got it done! Errands and this picture were about all we had time for!

This is the only picture I took of the two of us. Oh well! We will probably be back in the Fall. I’ll try to do better then.

Rusty’s RV Ranch

We were in need of some down time. Therefore, we headed to one of our favorite places on earth, Rusty’s RV Ranch in Rodeo, New Mexico.

Welcome to Rusty’s.

This was our fifth visit and it felt like coming home. We pulled in and were greeted with “Howdy. I guess I better turn up the temperature in the hot tub.” They remembered us and our fondness of a 103 degree hot tub!

Rusty’s is a dark skies park and one of the resident astronomers remembered us from a previous visit (the Blue Flame DOES stand out). In fact, this astronomer was able to get Jim into another astronomer’s onsite observatory (called the Astro-shed) that Jim spent an afternoon assisting with two years ago (read that post at https://rv.cjsquare.com/2019/01/rustys-rv-ranch-again/). You can read all about the observatory build and its owner/builder/RVer Michael, at https://turtleherding.com/2019/06/astronomy-shed-build/. He’s really done an amazing job and can tell the story much better than us.

Taking a hike on one of Rusty’s trails, you can barely pick out the Blue Flame.
Sunrise from the hot tub. We were in it at 6:00 a.m. most mornings.
Not to be outdone, sunset from the hot tub.
Rusty has a fondness for critters. She now has three black swans in her pond. They are very tame, you had better have some cheerios with you when you walk by!

Remember that wind we talked about? Rusty’s RV Ranch had wind to spare. If you take a look below at this screen shot from the weather station in the Astro-Shed, you can see the temperature as 83.8 degrees. But with the wind chill, the “feels like” temperature is 68.5 degrees. Jim says he now understands the statement “But it’s a dry heat.”

Deming, New Mexico

After a week at Rusty’s, it was time to head back to Las Cruces to finalize the purchase of our lot. We broke up the trip by staying overnight at the Lescombes Winery in Deming. This is a Harvest Hosts location (join Harvest Hosts for a small fee, find places to spend the night for free, spend all your campground money on wine/beer/souvenirs instead).

There was PLENTY of room in the parking lot. When we looked out the next morning, there were five of us parked here.
We had a very pleasant wine tasting and some flatbread in the tasting room.

After the wine and some food, we took ourselves back to the RV to give in to food comas. It was very breezy and we had all the windows open (rather than running the generator and turning on the air conditioner). Jim was outside reading, I was inside the RV. Then…remember those winds I was talking about? Wait for it….

DUST STORM! Not ours specifically, but it could have been.
Photo Credit: Josh Bachman, Las Cruces Sun-News

The wind kicked up and we were ‘attacked’ by a dust devil, suddenly sand was blowing into the RV through all the openings, especially the windows. LOTS of sand. I jumped up and closed the windows on the windy side for all the good it did. Jim was outside and almost got blown over. The dust devil only lasted 3 to 5 seconds, but it took us hours to clean up after it.

This is what our bed normally looks like with nice clean sheets.
This is what our bed looked like after the dust storm. We removed the duvets and were left with a sandy mess on what used to be a white sheet.
Oh, you want to see that a little closer? You can see where we picked up the duvet (no sand) and were the duvet was not covering the sheet (LOTS of sand). Ewwww.
Same goes for one of the rugs near the door. I pulled the right edge of the rug to the left (upper left corner of the picture), and you can see the amount of sand deposited in the RV within seconds.

We spent the rest of the evening sweeping, wiping down, and getting out clean bedding (thank goodness I had some…Thanks Amy H. for reminding me of that). So a word to the wise….if you are in a dirt parking lot and it’s windy, close the windows. Trust me.

Las Cruces one more time

The next morning we left the dust of Deming, and made our way back to Las Cruces and RV parking at the Elks Club (cheap) where I almost immediately took advantage of being on shore power to use the vacuum to clean up the rest of the sand, dirt and dust. I still am cleaning for that matter. Oh yes, we also closed on our lot. We now own property in New Mexico. After the closing we commented to our realtor and title company officer that now we were official New Mexicans. They said “no, when you got ‘attacked’ by the dust devil, that was your official christening to becoming New Mexicans.” Most christenings that I know about use water. But when you don’t have water and only sand, I guess you use sand!

Good bye FOR SALE sign! You are ours now!

With the closing behind us and some good progress on the new house plans with the builder, it’s time to leave New Mexico. Onward to Texas! We have a daughter about to defend her PhD dissertation.

Good bye (for now) New Mexico. Hello Texas.

Speaking of Janelle’s dissertation, if anyone wants to watch her defend, I can provide you the Zoom link. Just send me an email or a message and I’ll get you the info. Her defense is June 3 at 10:00 CDT.

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2 thoughts on “The winds of Spring”

    1. Corinne Post author

      Actually, I could do without the dust storms. That picture of the dust storm was actually taken right down the road from where we are building. I’ve learned…keep the windows closed.

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