Valley of Fires, Carrizozo New Mexico

The Valley of Fires is considered to be one of the youngest lava flows in the continental United States.  Approximately 5,000 years ago, a volcanic vent now known as Little Black Peak, located nine miles northwest of the windswept town of Carrizozo, erupted and filled the Tularosa Basin with many square miles of buckled, twisted basalt lava, part of an extensive flow up to 165 feet thick and over 45 miles long.

Valley of Fires recreation area is located three miles west of Carrizozo, New Mexico.  If you’ve seen the movie Cars, this is where Lightning McQueen was lost. We will be moving on through Santa Rosa and into Tucumcari soon.  Tucumcari is the town of Radiator Springs in the movie Cars.  This is also the country where Billy the Kid rode a hundred and sixty years ago.

From a distance, Valley of Fires appears as barren rock but when you walk through the nature trail there are many varieties of flowers, cactus, trees and bushes typical of the Chihuahuan desert. Animals include bats, roadrunners, quail, cottontails, mule deer, barberry sheep, and lizards.  It's also a virtual birdwatcher's paradise with great horned owls, burrowing owls, turkey vultures, hawks, gnat catchers, cactus wrens, sparrows and golden eagles.

We enjoyed our short stay at Valley of Fires.  It was dark, quiet, and very peaceful here; a stark contrast from Elephant Butte!

Below is what we saw as we rounded the moutain and began our decent into the valley.  The ribbon of dark area is the lava rock. You can just see the road cutting right through the lava field.  The Valley of Fires recreation area was on the far side of the lava flow.

Entering the campground

 Looking over the campground from the obervation hill

 There we are set up on Site 5.

Not a bad back yard view for $18 a day!

 Front yard, that's the lava field.

Looking to the north in the front yard we can see the nature trail going out into the lava field.

 We might see a black collared lizard!

This sight tube along the nature trail helps to locate Little Black Peak, the volcanic vent that spilled the lava.

Gari getting some shots along the nature trail

 Looking back up the hill at the campground, you can just see Pepe' & Penelope at the right.

 Sotol plants, not to be confused with Yucca, spring up out of the lava bed.

Steve examining the leaves of a Sotol plant.  They had little saw teeth along the edges of the leaves

A lava bubble that collapsed.  This was a common feature.  The collapsed bubbles formed caves and the bats live in there.

Looking back toward the campground from out in the lava field.

The plants seem to grow right out of the rocks!  The rock creavases capture water and soil and the plants move right in.

Kokopelli Shadow in a lava bubble

No introduction needed.

We walked up the observation hill and just after this picture a Whip Snake whipped by me; I jumped over Gari in the next picture!

Gari seconds before I jumped over her!

And that is the peaceful excitement at Valley of Fires!

BeDillion's Restaurant and Cactus Garden in Casa Grande, AZ

New Family and Old Friends

Cousins Joyce and Rob from North Carolina recently travelled to Cave Creek (Phoenix) AZ to visit Aunt Suzy and and Uncle Marty.  Suzy and Marty are from the Washington area near Gari's Yakima hometown.  Joyce found us in Benson, AZ, so we agreed to meet up in the middle in Casa Grande, AZ at BeDillion's Restaurant.  It all worked out great.  We figured out that Suzy and Marty were Gari & my Aunt and Uncle once removed by marriage.  It was a great experience for us getting to meet family we didn't know that we had.  We all had a great visit, a fine lunch, and a nice walkabout in the cactus garden.  It is a total thrill for us to meet family and friends as we roll around the country.  We meet a lot of new and very nice friends, but have moments of wondering if we will ever see anyone we know again.

After lunch, on the way back to Benson we asked my longtime family friends from Cincinnati, if we could stop for a short visit at their home in Tuscon.  We were welcomed with opened arms by Joan and Laura.  Their family took me in as a third son when I was finishing high school in Fairfield, OH.  It was so wonderful and powerful for me to see my old friends, especially since they are in such a great place and doing so well.  We visited for a while in the beautiful backyard.  The abundant birds in the back yard garden just swirled around us as we caught up.

The next day we packed things up in Benson and headed out for New Mexico before the end of the week.

Walking through the corridor into the BeDillion's Cactus Garden.

In the Cactus Garden

 Hiding in the shade of the Saguaro wall.

 

After lunch in Tucson with longtime friends Joan and Laura.  I am wearing my cactus antlers below.  :-)

 This mountain peak highlights my pointy head below.  :-)

Benson, Arizona

We are enjoying the cooler weather in Benson, which is about 3,500 ft higher in elevation than Yuma.  Benson is a small rural town, which also attracts a small retirement population as a result of the low costs, great winter weather and beautiful mountain desert scenery surrounding the area.  Benson is also convienient to Tuscon and various tourist attractions such as Tombstone, AZ home of the famous OK Corral Gunfight.  We have been recovering from the high levels of activity at Yuma so have taken a much slower approach in Benson so far.  We did make a day trip to Tombstone, AZ and incorporated a hike in the nearby San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.  There we saw a few more petroglyphs and had a little picnic at the San Pedro River.  We were given a tour of the park here by member Stella.  Stella gave us a fantastic tour of the park.  We like this park as much or more than any others that we have seen to date.And we had a special bonus, many cactus bloomed while we were in Benson.

On the way to Benson a stand of Saguaro cactus

 Coming douwn the hill into Benson.

 All set up on Site #73

We don't eat out often, but we decided to try the local Mexican place Mi Casa that we had heard good things about.  Well, it turns out this is one of those places that looks scetchy on the outside but the food is excellent on the inside!  It was like beining in a little Mexican adobe home, and the food was fresh, good quality, seasoned delightfully and presented with a flair.

When we came out after the meal the large planter pot out front was run over!  Below Deputy Dog Gari is on the trail of dirt.... the guy in a pick up parked two spots down from us.  We looked over our truck for damage, luckily found none and got the heck out of there!  You can see the big smashed pot below, and that pickup truck went right over the big pot and between our truck and that car on the right.  What a nut!

On our day trip to Tombstone, AZ we stopped at the Boothill Cemetary at the edge of town on our way in.

 Below are the graves of the McLaury Cowboys killed by Wyatt Earp and his brothers with Doc Holiday at the famous OK Corral gunfight.

 Another view in Boothill.

 Period stagecoach in front of the OK Corral on Allen St.

 Here comes another stagecoach, Tombstone is working the tourist angle hard.

Big Nose Kate was Doc Holiday's girlfriend.  This was the place to come many years ago.  In fact the cowboys killed in the OK Corral gunfight stayed here the night before they died.  Look.... here comes Kate now... oh wait tha's Gari!

 There's Steve tempting fate outside the Bird Cage Theatre... This was a famous brothel of the day.

 A work wagon on the edge of town.

 Tombstone was a mining town, much like Castle Dome it was a silver mining area.  This is a pit mine right in town on the coner of Toughnut and Good Enough streets.

This old miniing town was established becase of a determined miner named Ed Schieffelin.  The local folks told Ed all he was going to find out there in the desert was his tombstone.  It turns out Ed found silver, lots of it.  The city fathers later erected this monument in Ed's honor.  We drove out in the deseret to check it out

We left the monument and headed out on a hike to find more petroglyphs and the San Pedro River.

 Found the glyphs.

 This was a hot and dry hike...

 we finally found shade down at the river under the Cottonwood trees where we had a little picnic.

Parting shots with the cactus flowers.