City of Rocks SP and Pancho Villa SP, New Mexico

No blog last night due to lack of internet connection at the campsite, so you get two for the price of one today.

Tuesday
City of Rocks State Park is unique.  Many state parks are there because of some unique physical or historic occurrence.  City of Rocks is named for the rare pillars of rock that originated with volcanic pumice and ash deposits that are now above ground.  They do look eerily like some strange city buildings in a group with pathways all around them.  This park is rather remote, 10 miles or so from Silver City NM in the town of Faywood.  No visible sign of where Faywood is, nothing but open country all around as far as you can see.  Which out here is several miles.
During the drive we could see some dust storms creating a kind of haze on the scenery.  Wicked winds everywhere.  We found out later that I-10 was closed due to the wind. Gusts were predicted up to 45 mph.    That made the other roads a bit crowded.  We saw a few bicyclists who must have been wondering where all the truck traffic came from.  The trailer was a pain, buffeted by the wind, pushed all over the road.  I even watched some TT units being swayed by the wind.  Oh, yeah, that's why they closed the interstate!

Wednesday
No more wind!
Pancho Villa State Park is on the old Camp Furlong site in the town of Columbus NM.  This is the site of Pancho Villa's pre-dawn raid on the US town on March 9, 1916.  That led to the Mexican Punitive Expedition when 10,000 US soldiers under Gen. Black Jack Pershing spent 11 months in Mexico searching for Villa.  They didn't catch Villa but it was the first use of automobiles and airplanes in the US military.  Priceless experience for WW I another year later.  We checked out two museums and walked around town a bit.  Not much here outside of the history.  Nice park, nice sunset, nice open spaces.
We are 3 miles from Mexico, the lights of Palomas, MX shine much more brightly than anything on the US side.  This is a small town of 1600, 85% Hispanic.

City of Rocks:

dust storm

Callahan likes the view out the bedroom window

Pancho Villa:

The campground

View of Columbus from the park

Our camp

Several interesting items in the museum

Curtis JN-3 (Jennie)

Armored truck, precursor to the tank

Sunset at camp