Rockhound State Park, NM

10/16/2017

Rockhound State Park is a few miles southeast of Deming, NM.  It sits on the slope of a section of the Little Florida mountains, volcanic in origin.  What's unique about this park is you’re allowed to wander the hill sides and take home up to 15 pounds of rocks ranging from Quartz, Agate, Opal, Jasper to Thundereggs and Geodes.

As is typical of New Mexico State Parks, Rockhound is a very nice park with large landscaped sites at a bargain price, $10 for dry sites and $14 for water/electric. It’s a small campground with 5 dry sites and 19 water/electric, 5 of those are reservable.  We wanted an electric site (forecast was for mid 80’s and the A/C might come in handy)  but none were available.  The camp host guided us to the ONLY site available, #2.  He said he’d let us know if an electric site opened up. We thought this was unusual for a Monday at noon, there’s usually plenty of sites after the weekend.  #2 turned out to be a nice site, backing up high on the hill side with a great view over the campground and the valley beyond.

Campsite #2.

After lunch we walked (down hill) to the visitors center to pay for the site.  As Joan was writing the check, the host walked in and told us an electric site had just opened up, #26.  As we found out, check out time was 2pm, we’d just gotten there too early.  #26 is a first come first serve site so we had to hurry and claim it before someone else beat us to it.  So, now we're hiking at a rapid pace (up hill) to claim #26 and move our camper yet again in the same day.  This pattern of moving multiple times in the same day was continuing from our previous stop at Cattleman Trail.

Campsite #26

10/17/2017

This morning we hiked the Botanical Garden, Thunder Egg and Jasper trails.  All totaled only about 2 miles if you count for the beginning and end of the trails being on opposite ends of the park.

View of the campground and valley beyond from Thunderegg trail.

Cactus Wren nest, no body home.

Can you see the grass hopper?

10/18/2017

Spring Canyon is part of Rockhound but 3 miles up the road.  There’s 2 trails, one easy (a little over a mile) and one harder (a little over 2 miles).  We decided to do the hard one first and then the easy one if we wanted more.  Well, the hard trail was all we could handle.  It was very step and rocky with sections that looked more suited to the Persian Ibex that were gifted to the U.S. from Iran back in 1970 and introduced into these hills..

Looking down canyon toward our starting point
from near the top.

Made it to the top, Wahoo.

Panoramic view of both sides of the mountain.

Driving out of the canyon heading back to the campground.

Storms brewing, it was fun to watch the weather until it
rolled over us.  First REAL rain we've had since leaving Florida in March.

One evening while eating dinner, we saw this strange
phenomenon where there appears to be two suns. 

Coming next, Back to Cave Creek Canyon, Portal AZ.