[wbmiller3]

Here's a trip report for our recent excursion to SW New Mexico [with emphasis on the camping parts].

Departed Houston and drove to Balmorhea State Park in west Texas. This park is one of our all-time favorites with an incredible artesian spring fed swimming pool hosting fish, turtles, ducks, etc plus lots of folks happy to escape the surrounding desert. At our first gas stop I was doing a walk-down of the rig and noticed that I had lost the white "disk" out of the center of the tire cover! The shiny metal ring was cocked at an angle relative to the tire as if something had caught on the top of it and pulled it out. This is truly weird, I could understand it more if the bottom had been pulled out - that could be explained by it dragging or something. If it wasn't the first stop I might have thought someone had been trying to steal the tire. But, at least this problem had little impact. I will just have to get some kind of replacement cover if I can't find somewhere to buy the "disk". Balmorhea has electricity and water hookups so we filled the fresh water tank and the toilet since the next few nights would be boondocking.

Next day we drove on to the eastern side of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. The road up to the campground was sporty [steep grades, sharp curves, two lane blacktop with recommended speeds of 10 mph in some of the turns] but no problem negotiating it. I had planned to stay in the Iron Creek campground but both ends of the campground (where the turn-arounds are) were heavily snowed in and covered with icy frozen snow. I quickly reached my discomfort factor on trying to maneuver the rig in that, backed down to the entrance, and we retreated three miles down the road to the Upper Galinas campground. The only facility here is a vault toilet but the campground is right on the bank of a beautiful stream in the middle of ponderosa pine covered mountains. At night it got into the 20s outside but it was in the upper 60s in the days, very nice. We set the thermostat at 60ish and the heater kept it right around there all night. During the first night the "prime" propane tank ran dry but the autoswitchover worked fine. We seem to have gotten the knack of running the fridge on propane finally - nothing froze or spoiled this time.

After two nights we moved to the west side of the National Forest to the Bighorn campground just north of Glenwood. This is a small campground just off the road. Again the only facility is a vault toilet. We were able to find a nice spot to back into so that the trailer was surrounded by junipers and a dry wash. The campground is splendidly located for visiting the spectacular Catwalk National Recreation Area. As we passed through Silver City we refilled the propane tank at the KOA there. We had planned to spend two nights in Glenwood but the road to Mogollon and the high country there was closed except for local traffic due to serious issues with the road (we were told that it basically slid off the mountain). So after spending the day at Catwalk we moved on the next morning to Rockhound State Park just southeast of Deming.

Rockhound's "hookup" sites were full but the very helpful park host squeezed us in between his camper and the edge of the park, and ran a dropcord for us allowing us to charge up all our electrical gadgets (lantern, digitial camera batteries, etc). Nice to get a real shower finally! We didn't have water hookup so topped off the fresh water tank - this is when I noticed the leak at the tank inlet (see thread under "plumbing"). Spent two nights here rockhounding and stocking up on Mexican arts & crafts in Palomas, Mx., just south of here. Dumped the grey water tank for the first time on the trip before leaving here. It was still only up to the second notch on the digital display but saw no reason to haul it out of NM.

Next, headed back to Texas...couldn't get a site in South Llano River State Park in Junction, so overnighted at the KOA there. It's a nice park right on the river. Dumped the toilet here for the first time on trip - not bad for a party of three.

Last leg from Junction to Houston was uneventful. Plan to spend this afternoon giving the TM a well deserved cleaning inside and out.