Deming, New Mexico, a JEEP kind of place!

We hit the road out of Fort Stockton this morning at about 9:30… we were a bit late starting, but I had met this real nice guy from Ontario who stopped by to say hello with his coffee.  His name is Gerry and him and his wife have been full timing for 3 years now, and were heading towards Corpus Christi to spend most of the winter. 

As you head west out of Fort Stockton, there is not much to see really… it is very desert type land with the western mountains starting. 

Here is a quick pic Judy took form the cab of El Paso.  Those would be Mexican Mountains in the background.  There was quite a bit of traffic around El Paso this morning.  We also dropped an hour back again, as we hit mountain time!

This is typical of the landscape as you head west… mountain range after mountain range… love it.

Just as you pass into New Mexico, there is a big time cattle lot on the south side of the highway.  You could smell them today!

No this is not a giraffe… this is a larger than life statue of a roadrunner… again, in New Mexico.

Thanks to the time change this morning, we made it to Deming, New Mexico by 2:45 or so this afternoon.  I got the dish put up so I could record the hockey game tonight in Toronto.  It now starts at 5:00 our time…  thank goodness for DVR’s.

We pulled into the Low High RV Park, where we actually stayed last year for one night… check out all the cacti…  

While we were registering, I noticed we were real close to a bunch of mountains, so I asked the owners if there were any roads or trails out to them.  They were real good, and told us how we could drive out a dirt road to a trail and make our way up part of the mountain, however they warned us you would need a JEEP to do so!   No problem!  We happen to have one!  So off we went after un-hooking our Jeep from the motor home and taking the Burgman off the back of it.  I had sort of been itching to try out the Jeep off road a bit… so here was the chance…

OK, the fun is starting as the nice paved road above turns into a dirt road, however the mountains loom in the background…

They are a bit hard to see in this picture, however there are some flowering cactus  here, the tall squiggly plants in the centre of the pic… 2 of them…

Well that nice dirt road turned into a trail… and the FUN really began… truth was, we could not believe how good our Jeep actually is under these kind of conditions… it is good we have a skid package on our Jeep as we did scrape a bit here and there… but this Jeep is a bit of a Billy goat!  Judy only groaned a few times…

                                       

Success!  We hit the end of the trail, and felt we should not continue without one!  Signs did ask you to keep on the trail!  It appears in the picture below we are quite high, and we were.  We climbed about 1500 feet and did not really know it as we were navigating the trail uphill.

The Jeep navigated the trail even with our motto tote attached to the back… it is a bit of a pain to take off so I just left it on.  If we had time, we would have hiked to the top of the mountain… however we did not have the time.  If Al from the Bayfield Bunch was with us, he would have named all these mountains from his memory… he know them all!   I do not, and by the time I stopped at the office to ask, they had already closed for the evening…

A nice view from the top…

This is how close we got to the mountain, it was a blast, we both enjoyed it and we could not believe the Jeep actually made the trail… they are not kidding when they call this Jeep “Trail Rated”!

Back in the spring, we traded in our Pontiac Grand Am on the Jeep, and very happy now we did!  The Grand Am would have trouble clearing a pop can!

Here is the end of the trail… it was a beautiful afternoon, and Judy only gave me c _ _ p  a couple times for coming out here with only a quarter a tank of gas!   No, we did not run out!  Just adds more excitement to the journey!

Now I can’t wait to get into Arizona and California to find some more trails to climb in our Jeep!  It appears we picked the right vehicle! 

All in all, a great day we both really enjoyed… more to come!

Can’t forget to extend a big “RVlifeonwheels” welcome to t blaschke, and Donna – aka Froggi as two of our newest followers.  Welcome aboard as we travel the wild west!

Till tomorrow…