Week 33 - Southern New Mexico - 04-01-2007

Greetings from New Mexico!

This week we took advantage of our Elks membership. We spent three nights at the Silver City Elks Lodge in New Mexico. From there we took a 130 mile round trip motorcycle ride to the Cat Walk in the Gila National Forest. It was an invigorating 2.3 mile hike up the cat walk among some beautiful waterfalls. There are hundreds of feet of cat walks where you are right above the river.

Then we moved on and came upon this campground called the City of Rocks, with great places to hike and climb. We spent one night there. The rocks are amazing. There are hundreds of them, some as tall as 40 feet. The visitor center says that they are the product of a volcano and millions of years of erosion. However, there is no volcano near here. They say it eroded away. Funny that a volcano, hundreds of feet tall is gone and these 10 to 40 foot rocks are still here! Maybe, just maybe, God created these interesting rocks?

Pete should have paid more attention to the signs!

We spent a night at the Elks Lodge in Alamogordo, NM and went to the Calvary Chapel Church on Sunday morning. We were told not to leave until we saw the Dunes. So we took a motorcycle ride to the White Sands National Monument at the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert. Here, great wavelike dunes of sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert and have created the world's largest gypsum dune field. We watched people riding snow-disks down the dunes. We planned a picnic lunch on the dunes, but it was hot, so we took advantage of the many shaded spots.

Heading to the Elks Lodge in Carlsbad, NM, then into Texas to Big Bend National Park

Love, Pete and Ellen

The mind of man plans his way. But the Lord directs his steps. Proverbs 16:9