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Category: Places We’ve Been

Places we have been.

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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Silver City, NM

Silver City, NM

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We stayed at Rose Valley RV Ranch in Silver City. We really liked this very rustic park at 5900′ elevation as well as the surrounding area near Silver City. We were located near the back in site #61 so we had wide open views of the surrounding mountains and trails behind us. There was a historic cemetery next door where Billy the Kid’s mother is buried.

The historic downtown area of Silver City has a lot of history and was a bit more upscale than what we found in Elephant Butte or Truth or Consequences. Western New Mexico University has a big campus here and no doubt contributes to helping the town thrive. The town has a artistic and eclectic vibe with lots of art workshops with over 20 galleries, boutiques, gift shops, restaurants, etc. We really enjoyed strolling these historic streets, seeing the sites, and sampling all the espresso shops!

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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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Capulin RV Park

Capulin RV Park

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We stayed in Capulin RV Park for 2 weeks in December leaving the RV here while we drove to Colorado to spend a wonderful few days at Christmas with our kids and grandkids.

We arrived in Capulin a week before Christmas so we could experiment with how to operate in the extreme cold weather including finding ways to reduce our propane use so we wouldn’t run out while we were away in Colorado. Many days here started out with single digit temperatures, negative degree wind chill and rarely got above freezing for a high. It was just miserably cold weather but it offered a good opportunity to figure out how our RV works in this kind of weather.

Our camp hosts, Mark and Michelle, were extremely nice and kept the park very clean. They went out of their way to make sure we had everything we needed and were comfortable during our stay. We would definitely camp here again because of their hospitality and willingness to watch over our ‘home’ while we were away. However, the 21 mile drive each way to Raton and back for gas, propane, groceries, etc. made it a bit more remote than we would normally choose (especially since the highway was closed several times for ice and snow storms). We were so glad to leave the area and get back to a bit warmer weather further south.

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