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Author: Jerry

Tombstone, AZ

Tombstone, AZ

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A nostalgic trip into the past … Ed Schieffelin was briefly a scout for the U. S. Army headquartered at Camp Huachuca. Schieffelin frequently searched the wilderness nearby looking for valuable ore samples. When friend and fellow Army Scout Al Sieber learned what Schieffelin was up to, he is quoted as telling him, “The only rock you will find out there will be your own tombstone”, or, according to another version of the story, “Better take your coffin with you, Ed; you will only find your tombstone there, and nothing else”. On finding silver, Schieffelin filed his first claim and fittingly named his stake Tombstone. Soon, word got out, more claims were filed nearby and the town of Tombstone was born. It became one of the last boomtowns in the American frontier and at one time was one of the largest cities in the western United States.

On the evening of March 15, 1881, three Cowboys attempted to rob a stagecoach en route from Tombstone to Benson, Arizona. The driver Eli “Budd” Philpot and a passenger named Peter Roerig were both shot and killed. Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp and his temporary deputies and brothers Wyatt Earp and Morgan Earp pursued the Cowboys suspected of the murders. This set off a chain of events that culminated on October 26, 1881, in a gunfight in a vacant lot owned by famous photographer C. S. Fly near, not at the O. K. Corral as popularly known, during which the lawmen and Doc Holliday killed Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton. This incident known now as the gunfight at the O. K. Corral is likely what the town is now best known for.

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Rodeo, NM

Rodeo, NM

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As we traveled south and west through New Mexico and Arizona we found Rusty’s RV Ranch in Rodeo, NM and decided to stay there for a week. We weren’t too sure what to expect as Rodeo is literally in the middle of nowhere but we were intrigued by the idea of a ‘Dark Sky’ location. It was also a chance to visit some of the nearby small towns of Rodeo, New Mexico and Portal and Paradise in Arizona.

Rusty’s has a unique layout for the park. The pull-thrus are each 200′ long and each one supports 2 RV sites. Unlike other parks, the RV’s are in separate lanes instead of back to back. Due to the length of the pull-thru there ends up being plenty of privacy between RV’s sharing the pull-thru and the distance between adjacent pull-thrus is far so there was plenty of room. Being a dark sky location had it’s challenges for us as they didn’t want any white outside lights on at night. It was so dark you could get lost walking around at night – even if you stayed at your own site. The reason for all this is that about half of the people staying in the park were amateur astronomers and astrophotographers with very large expensive telescopes. We found that the more sophisticated ones could be operated from inside their coach and could even be programmed to aim at points of interest automatically throughout the night and record what they saw. Some of the pictures we saw were fantastic. Unfortunately, it was pretty cold on the few nights there were clear skies while we were there so we didn’t spend a lot of time outside looking at the stars ourselves.

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Elephant Butte, NM

Elephant Butte, NM

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After spending some time in northern New Mexico around Christmas we decided we needed to move further south where it would hopefully be a bit warmer. We thought the Elephant Butte area looked pretty good and we were surprised we could get a month there on short notice. Elephant Butte got it’s name from a small Butte that is now in Elephant Butte Lake. After looking at it several times, we can see a slight resemblance to an Elephant head but we think you probably need to smoke something to get the full effect. You can see for yourself in the picture. You may also notice that the lake looks low. It’s only at 3% capacity. Drought and lack of snow in southern Colorado has taken its toll on the Rio Grande river that flows into the lake.

We really liked the Elephant Butte Lake RV Resort where we stayed for the month of January. We had a spacious deluxe site with a concrete pad for the RV and room for the truck beside it. It was nicely landscaped for a park in this area and had a lot of activities within the park particularly for longer stays. In looking around the area, we definitely picked the nicest park but we did find another one on the other side of town that deserves an honorable mention – Cedar Cove RV Park. If we come here again that might be an option as well.

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Winter Camping – Lessons Learned

Winter Camping – Lessons Learned

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When we bought our RV we had an option to add an additional Arctic package that we opted not to get. Without the package our RV was already rated to be able to survive 0°F temperatures without a problem and we really didn’t think we’d be staying in weather that cold anyway. Also, with the package we would have had two floor vents for the additional furnace capacity and we really didn’t like the idea of floor vents since without it all the vents were above the floor in cabinetry. On the other hand, the package also included additional insulation for the water pipes which might have been good to have.

As full time RVers with relatives in Colorado our thoughts about never going to really cold places in the winter was maybe a bit short sighted. In our first winter we decided to go to Colorado for Christmas and as luck would have it, the warm weather the area was enjoying before Christmas was forecast to change. In fact, we decided to stay in Capulin, NM and there was already snow on the ground when we arrived about a week before Christmas. Low temperatures were already in the mid-teens and low 20’s and this provided a good opportunity for us to figure out how to survive cold weather in our RV. We had been in freezing temperatures at night before but daytime temperatures had been above freezing. Now we had several days of temperatures below freezing.

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Lafayette KOA Holiday

Lafayette KOA Holiday

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Starting with this post we are changing the order of our campsite posts and will be putting the rating and other information about the park at the end of the post and the hopefully more interesting text at the top. Let us know what you think about this change…

Although we typically only look at KOA parks for overnight stays, we stayed at the Lafayette KOA for one night on the way to New Orleans and for nine nights on our return trip so we could plan our next few months of travels. We also needed to get caught up on some other things we had been putting off like maintenance items in our RV which was a challenge with all the rain. KOA parks tend to have a lot of family friendly activities that we don’t usually take advantage of and you pay for those amenities so they tend to be expensive. On the other hand, KOAs are often easy to access from major highways. This makes them quite convenient for short stays.

The Lafayette KOA (actually in Scott, LA rather than Lafayette) was a nice park built around a pond. It had many amenities for families as well as a new area in the back of the park which was much nicer than some of the other areas within the park. We stayed both times in the newer area.  

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