We left northern New Mexico on November 2nd with the idea of high tailing it down to Quartzsite. The snow was coming in and if we had stayed we would have been stuck!
Our original route would have taken us across northern New Mexico through Farmington, then down through Shiprock to Flagstaff and head south from there. Something told us that perhaps we should take the long way. Head south through Albuquerque all the way down and then across southern Arizona to Quartzsite. It turns out we made the right choice! The night we left it snowed almost 8″ in Flagstaff and as that would have been our first overnight stay we might have regretted it!
Instead we took I-25 south to Elephant Butte Lake and decided to stop there for the night. New Mexico has some of the best state parks out there and this one was no exception. $14/night for power and water with a nice patio shelter and view of the lake.
Really nice area, beautiful views and gorgeous sunsets! What more can you ask for?
We were going to head out the next day on to Arizona but after checking the weather report we were expecting 25-35 mph winds and decided to stay put. We don’t like driving in high winds and as we were not in a hurry we hung around another day!
The winds got so bad that we had to bring our slide in. We were rocking back and forth and had some torrential rain at one point. We were safe and dry inside even if we were cramped up a bit! 🙂
After the storm passed it was still pretty windy but we caught this gorgeous rainbow from the aftermath! So pretty.
While this was a short stop on the way to Arizona, we would love to come back to this park at some point. We highly recommend it!
The next morning we got on the road. We didn’t have an overnight stop planned so we decided to drive until we got tired. We like to drive 300 miles or less per day so we kind of had an idea we would be stopping outside of Tucson. As we got closer I found a state park just outside of Tucson called Picacho Peak. It seemed like a good place to stop.
While the views were lovely, it was very close to the interstate with lots of highway noise and a train that ran right by the park. At $25/per night for electric only it wasn’t a very good deal, IMO. But, it was safe and the views of the peak were very pretty.
The next morning we headed on to Quartzsite! It was just a short 3 hour drive. But then we had to make a decision on where to boondock. After checking out a bunch of blog recommendations we decided to go with Dome Rock BLM. The Wheeling It crew highly recommended it and it was a great place to boondock for our first time in Quartzsite!
In our next post I will give more details on Quartzsite and our experience there.
