Thursday Mar 2, 2023 - It was a chilly morning when we woke up, and as we left our campsite, it actually snowed! The drive to our next state park (Pancho Villa SP, Columbus, NM) was 2.5 hours and we hit some crazy weather on the way. It rained, hailed and of course it was windy. The campground is located on the site of Camp Furlong, and the site of the raid on the city by Pancho Villa (a Mexican General during the Mexican Revolution). There is a nice museum at the campground that we're looking forward to checking out.
Snow on the mountains, as we left, and rain/snow clouds above
We could see the rain falling ahead of us
The last part of the drive was directly next to the Mexican border, and the wall
Another bright yellow NM sunset
Friday, Mar 3, 2023 - When we woke up on Friday, it was a sunny, relatively warm day, so we headed to Mexico. It was extremely easy to get into Mexico, no one asked us anything...we just walked in. The town of Puerto Palomes is full of pharmacies, dentists and optometrists for Americans looking for cheap options. We walked around a bit and then decided on lunch and shopping at the Pink Store. It was a bit more involved to get back to the US, but only took about 5 minutes, waiting in line for the border patrol to look at our passports and x-ray our backpacks. When we got back to the campground we decided to bike around Columbus. It's a teeny tiny town, with 2 or 3 restaurants and one small shop. We stopped at the library and then back to our campground for dinner.
Our campsite is surrounded by cacti
The wind is sure blowing the flags on Coots Hill (view from our window)
The walk into Mexico
Some really huge pinatas for sale
2 beef burritos, 3 pan fried chicken tacos(so, so good), rice and beans, and a margarita
pretty window
shopping at the pink store
The Pink Store is actually pink
The Puerto Palomas sign
Campsite 13
bike ride down Main St.
nice bench in front of the library
Saturday, March 5, 2023 - We spent an hour this morning in the State Park museum, which was quite interesting. The campground is on the actual site of Camp Furlong, which was attacked by Pancho Villa's Villistas. Many of Furlong's structures are still standing in the middle of the campground, many with permanent overhead shelters to protect them from the sun and rain. After lunch, we decided to ride our bikes to Mexico. It was 3 miles to the border and there was a bike rack that we locked our bikes to (guess we're not the first people to ride our bikes to Mexico). The road from Columbus to the border was a little busy, but there was a nice wide shoulder to ride on. We walked the town again, and went into the pharmacy to see what it was like. We had heard you could buy all sorts of drugs only available by prescription in the US, but the pharmacy was very tiny, and it seems you had to ask the pharmacist for any drugs you wanted (so not sure if a prescription is needed). We hung out at the bar with some cheap beers ($3 modelos), cheap margaritas ($4) and really good chips and salsa. It was another fun day, and pretty cool to get to ride our bikes to Mexico!
we walked up Coot Hill...
for the view
Two Jenny's! The one behind us is a Curtiss JN-3 used by the Army in NM
Our site includes a structure from Camp Furlong that vehicles used to drive up onto to be loaded and unloaded
Almost to Mexico
locked our bikes and walked in
the border
the courtyard of the Pink Store
pretty door and I love the chili covered garbage can
Statue of Liberty lamp on the roof
a large bunny on the bar (although it's a bit hard to see with so much color in this room)
New Mexico welcomes us
We stopped to read the Columbus sign
Love the cacti at our site
I gotta take the sunset pics
such pretty colors
