On a recommendation, we made a reservation for two nights at Leasburg Dam State Park in New Mexico just north of Las Cruces. It is a beautiful spot with mountain views on both sides and great picnic shelters by each site. The showers have five hooks, but are lacking benches so I'll have to give them an A-. The weather has been perfect and we have been able to have our first (and possibly last) campfires of the trip. We are expecting burn bans in much of Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma, considering the devastating wildfires going on there.
Yesterday, we headed to Las Cruces first to get propane and a few groceries. Like Coronado searching for the Seven Cities of Gold, we ended up frustrated in the propane search. We had looked on line for the nearest source, but neither the online address or the different one in the yellow pages yielded any results. When I called the phone number, a voice said "What city are you in anyway?" and informed me that their company no longer had an outlet in Las Cruces. So it goes to show that even if Coronado had had the Internet, he wouldn't have been any more successful. Anyway, we did find groceries. After we returned to the campground, we visited the nearby Fort Selden, built after the Civil War to protect commerce and settlers from attacks by Native Americans and bandits. Interestingly, the displays said that more soldiers were killed by their fellow soldiers than the Indians.
The one thing the visit brought home again is how much we've romanticized our history to make soldiering on the frontier or being a cowboy an exciting life when actually it was extremely boring. Douglas MacArthur's father was the commandant here when Douglas was a small child. When the fort was abandoned in the 1890s, the roofs, windows, and doors were all removed from the adobe buildings, leaving the walls to gradually weather away.
We will be moving on today to Tucson. Butch has a birthday golf game lined up for tomorrow and I am extremely excited to attend the Tucson Book Festival on Saturday. Woohoo!
The one thing the visit brought home again is how much we've romanticized our history to make soldiering on the frontier or being a cowboy an exciting life when actually it was extremely boring. Douglas MacArthur's father was the commandant here when Douglas was a small child. When the fort was abandoned in the 1890s, the roofs, windows, and doors were all removed from the adobe buildings, leaving the walls to gradually weather away.
We will be moving on today to Tucson. Butch has a birthday golf game lined up for tomorrow and I am extremely excited to attend the Tucson Book Festival on Saturday. Woohoo!
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