Hello, New Mexico!

KOA at Van Horn, TX

We woke up this morning to the cool dry desert air of Van Horn, TX, having arrived after 10 the previous night in a hasty flee from a wildfire at our last camping spot.  Perhaps subconsciously I checked out the windows looking for smoke in the distance - maybe some lingering concerns from our predicament the previous night.

The KOA we'd rolled into the previous night looked black, and I think I only noticed the fenceposts and the electrical plugin as we hurriedly shut down the RV to prepare to sleep.  I woke up shortly before dawn to find a beautiful desert landscape.

Cheating!  Writing a blog while I'm driving!

After a short discussion about our activities for the next week, we decided that Texas was pretty much out.  We didn't have the energy to drive to Big Bend National Park, and the other places in Texas we wanted to visit (within a day or two's worth of driving) were pretty much on fire at this point.  Time to move on.

Rest Stop in Texas

We have an upcoming appointment with Carlsbad Caverns - some special tours we've reserved - for next weekend.  So, no matter what we do, we need to be back in Carlsbad, NM for the weekend.  Another piece of the puzzle is that we're tired.  Too much driving and excitement the previous day.  Time to find a new home base for a few days and recover.  We elected to move to a KOA in Las Cruces, NM.  Total drive time should be around 3 hours for the day.


The trip out was uneventful.  Not much wind, not too many trucks, some hills to keep it interesting.


I can't tell you enough what kind of relief I had when we finally made it to New Mexico.  We've spent an incredible amount of time in Texas on I-10, and most of it was wide open plains with lots of trucks and too much cross-wind.  The final drive in El Paso just 20 miles from the border of New Mexico was white-knuckled driving, and Texas' final parting shot, but we survived. 

New Mexico AT LAST

Did you enjoy your visit to the welcome center?