As I was saying earlier, El Paso is in a great spot if you like to be outdoors. Another great place that is only about two hours away is the Lincoln National Forest. You wouldn't expect to have such a large forest so close to El Paso, but it is there.
It's a great place to go hiking, camping, etc. And the elevation is high enough at some of the campgrounds (around 10,000 above sea level) that the temperature gets into the 40's during the middle of summer. A WONDERFUL oasis from the desert heat of El Paso.
My personal favorite town in the forest is Cloudcroft, it kind of reminds me of Sicily, Alaska from the TV show Northern Exposure.
If you go about 45 miles north of Cloudcroft you'll be in Ruidoso, NM where you can go skiing! I can't wait for winter!
The Gila Wilderness
Alright, I don't have many pics from the Gila because on my recent trip there I got started so late I had little time to stop before setting up camp... The Gila wilderness is Northwest of El Paso, and it one of the single largest forests/wilderness areas I've ever been to. The scope is just incredible:
The Gila Wilderness is somewhere in the neighborhood of 560,000 acres.The New Mexico Parks and Wildlife website says that there are three types of camping that you can do. 1. RV camping (I.E. Not really camping) 2. Semi-primitive camping at designated campgrounds. These campgrounds are quite nice and generally have restrooms and fire rings and 3. Primitive camping- go anywhere that isn't posted as private property.
Guess which one I did? I packed up the Jeep with my camping gear and my two furry tent-heaters and set off on a whim one thursday afternoon. I basically picked out a place on the map to head to and ended up in McKnight Canyon on a small portion of the Mimbres river.
McKnight Canyon road isn't really a road, there were several parts washed out by the river, heck, the river is actually the road in some places.
It was excellent, except for being woken up by lots of close gunfire at 2:00 in the morning. Since it was coming from nearby and the place was incredibly dark I decided to turn on the lights in the jeep, shine my flashlight around and hopefully let them know that I was there. Did the gunfire stop? Nope. SO, I packed up my camp and drove home (a good bit of it on 4x4 trails) in the middle of the freaking night... Hopefully the next trip goes a little better.
The drive there sure was nice though:
All in all, there are a lot of things that can keep you entertained around here. You just have to look for them. I'll add on to this as I try new things. The next few editions of this post will probably include things like going to Roswell to see Area 51 (Whichyou can actually see from the top of a few hills in the area), going to see the new Virgin Galactic Spaceport, some ghost towns, abandoned mines, etc... so stay tuned.
See, living in El Paso isn't the most terrible thing in the world. I'm actually starting to enjoy it.
-Stephen
Oh yeah, these are the two furry tent-heaters:
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