2006/03 Southwest USA trip (AZ-MN) - Rockhound state park |
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We eventually found our way south to Bowie and joined the freeway for our crossing into New Mexico and back to the town of Lordsburg, where we’d been two weeks before. After an Internet session at Lordsburg, we thought we’d look at the mines just south of town. There are umpteen dead mines down around the ghost town of Shakespeare, so we thought we’d look through the mine dumps for malachite and azurite, both found at copper workings. There was still one mine open though and it wasn’t clear whether we were trespassing on their claim, so we quickly collected a couple of nice specimens, and moved on, looking for a campsite.
As it was still cold and wet and we weren’t going to get anywhere before dark, we decided to move 60 miles on to Deming and Rockhound state park again, where we at least knew the terrain. We would also be able to pick up good drinking water there. The weather wasn’t great when we got to Deming, but it was a whole lot better than the -20F that we’d seen on the Internet forecast for Minneapolis that evening! As usual, the Rockhound park was full, but we found a spot in the overflow area and that was good enough.
Saturday February 18th
It was a cold and blustery morning in New Mexico, but we were just on the southerly edge of the cold front that had invaded the 
Midwest and put Minnesota into a deep freeze, so we could hardly complain. As we were in Rockhound Park again Sandie insisted on a little bit of rockhounding, but we didn’t really want to be climbing way up on the mountain like we did last time.
This time we stayed out of the wind and worked the stream beds looking for anything that might have been washed down the mountain. This sounds simple, but the stream beds are dry and full of every kind of cactus: cholla, prickly pear, and barrels, so picking up rocks requires care and agility! We found much the same sort of stuff as we did last time, mostly yellow and orange jasper and a few large rocks that might be geodes and worth sawing in half.