Rockhound State Park

Just a few miles southeast of Deming, NM we spent a night and day at Rockhound State Park. This is one place that allows you to actually take and keep any pretty rocks you may find. Up to 15 pounds! There has been many thundereggs found here...ordinary roundish looking rocks that, when cut in half & polished have beautiful sparkling gem geodes inside. 

Our rock collector enthusiast. Her favorites are the sparklies & clear quartz.
She didn't like the floss around her tooth, so she pulled it with pliers instead!

Up close of her pretties. The yellow pineapple thing is a bloom off a barrel cactus

We arrived at dusk, ate supper, showered (at more timer showers-argh), and went to bed. In the morning Shannon mounted & wired our new solar panels to reduce generator use and allow us to dry camp (otherwise known as boondock) longer.

cool mornings and evenings

We took a short hike behind our campsite up the Florida Mountains. Barren, desert, dry, hot. But the rocks were a little more colorful here than in other desert regions.

One of the bigger barrel cactus we had seen

Jasper Trail

Our campsite- down below- on the left. 
It's hard to escape the sun...can't imagine  how summertime would be!

After dumping and filling fresh water tanks in the RV, we stopped at the visitor's center on the way out. It had some impressive, colorful life-size pictures and displays. Annie picked up a brochure titled Desert Grocery Store. It explained how the Native Americans used the cactus as food & medicine...hot cereal, tea, oil, syrup, soap, & more. 

There are ibex living here, but we didn't see any. In fact we didn't see much of any wildlife, except an elusive lizard. We were again very close to Mexico!