Burgers and Rocks

We bid farewell to Cochiti Lake and its fine campground. Today was primarily a travel day. We are backtracking down I-25 to eventually end up in Silver City on the weekend, but today's destination is the City of Rocks State Park.

First stop was the Whole Foods Market in Albuquerque (One thing I've learned on this trip is how to spell Albuquerque). We needed a few provisions—vegetables, chicken, cheese, yogurt, milk and cookies.

Then it was serious highway time ... until lunch time. We just happened to be approaching the San Antonio exit at that time and remembered a discussion with a volunteer at the El Camino Real Museum about green chile cheeseburgers in San Antonio. There were two places in town, the Owl and the Buckhorn. One used to be the best in the state, then the other was featured on the Food Network. We just drove into town around noon and picked the one with the most pickup trucks parked out front, the Buckhorn. Rated #7 in America, according to their sign. Number 7?

It turned out that this must have been the new champion. Bobby, the cook, "smacked down" Bobby Flay in a Food Network burger challenge. The top line on the menu was their signature green chile cheesburger, so what could we do? Fries with that, please. It was a messy, but good, cheeseburger. In our estimation, it could have used more cheese. The fries were pretty good, too.

Thus satiated, we lumbered back onto the highway to Hatch, Chile Capital of the World, where we left the Interstate for two-lane blacktop through some of the flattest landscape I've ever seen. The road was dead straight as far as the eye could see. It was pretty windy by then, a crosswind of course, and we could repeatedly see big dust devils being formed out in the desert.

A brief digression: one of the things we've seen here and in Texas has been industrial dairy farms. We passed several today. It seems to be the application of bad beef raising to dairy. There are big stockyards filled with dairy cows, just standing around in the dirt. They have large sheds full of enormous bales of hay to feed the animals, but they aren't allowed to graze. Not my Easterner's image of a dairy farm. I think I will stick with our local dairy, Hornstra Farms, even if it is a little more expensive.

We finally pulled into City of Rocks State Park late in the afternoon, a strange assemblage of huge vertical rock formations sticking out of the surrounding desert. Much of the camping here is in among the rock formations. Even mid-week in the early spring, it seems pretty popular. We went around the rocks a couple of times and could not find a site that was relatively flat and large enough for Speedy and the trailer. We finally ended up taking the last site in the RV area overlooking the rocks. It was available for only one night, but we will be off to the Gila National Forest tomorrow.

After a hike through the rocks, where you can wander around at will, between and over the formations, we settled down to have dinner and watch the sunset over the rocks to the west and lighting up Table Mountain to the east.

Photos