Rattlesnakes and peppers

On Wednesday Kirk and I went to the ranchland east of town (one of Ted Turner's ranches is on one side of the road) where we were told we could look for arrowheads.  It was really red dirt, with not very many cows and lots of open land.  We were walking around looking for rocks and Kirk heard a buzzing noise (like a June bug, he said).  He looked down and there was a rattlesnake at his feet!  Luckily it let him jump away and it slithered into a hole (after I had a chance to see it too).  It was about 2 feet long, not too thick. We've been told by the locals that it's still pretty early to see snakes and they are not too active yet.  This event cured Kirk's desire to walk in the desert.  We high tailed it out of there and didn't look back!  Since then we've been only walking on the trails in the state park early in the morning. It's so nice that they are just across the street from our campground.  We drove down a dirt road which was the old route from Mexico to New Mexico (El Camino Real)- got out to take a look, walked a short ways, and Lexie discovered a cow watering hole and immediately jumped in before we could stop her!  Luckily for us the park we are staying in has a dog wash which was so handy!!  She sure loves the water!

Path to Escarpment- just before Lexie took a swim

On Thursday we drove down to Las Cruces with Joe and Nancy- they wanted to go shopping for a new TV since the one that came with their camper was not that great.  We took the state roads down there and stopped in the little town of Hatch, which is the world's chili capital.  We stopped for lunch at a little café and had some awesome Mexican food.  It was so nice to see green fields again, this is in the Rio Grande valley. Besides chilies they grow onions, corn, hay and alfalfa (for dairy cows).  There are also acres of pecan trees.  They were bare- they harvest them in November/December.  We wanted to stop at a winery in Las Cruces but it wasn't open.  We bought some Hatch chili wine at Sam's Club (red and green varieties, both are pretty good).