Sunday was a cool but bright morning. We needed to go to the grocery and decided to go to Peppers, a relatively new super market at Florida and Columbus ave. Columbus is a town south of Deming about 2 miles north of the Mexican border. We decided to go to Columbus and see what was going on at the border. Columbus is a small town out in the desert as you would imagine a border town from the old west. We drove on down to the border and we found the duty free store on this side was closed on Sunday. There were very few people crossing from this side. There were a lot waiting to cross into the US from Mexico. It was an interesting procedure. The vehicles would be stopped and checked before they cross the border and then would pull across the border and wait until they were given the signal and then they would drive through what appeared to be a metal detector type device. They would then proceed to an area where they were checked again before being sent on their way. A few miles north of Columbus you would go through another checkpoint. The fence you hear so much about is quite evident in this area. It stretches for miles in both directions, as far as you can see. There is not river to cross along here, so I am sure the fence really helps the illegal immigration. There is a lot of rocks along the bottom of the fence that would have to be dug through to go under the fence. On the way back north we took several of the back roads toward the mountains. We found areas that had been surveyed and laid out in streets and apparently lots for sale. The streets had been graded and signs put up. There were some homes built and appeared to be lived in. Others were only partly built and were abandoned. Many of the streets were grown up with weeds and appeared never to have been used. Apparently someone had invested a lot in these developments that did not go anywhere. Possibly a lack of water or other services were not available, who knows at this point in time.
As we got closer to Deming we saw a sign pointing toward two state parks, Rock Hound state park and Canyon Springs state park. Our photo is of Canyon Springs state park. This is a day use park. It goes up a mountain draw and as indicated in the photo, there is a leveled off area with a place to park, a concrete patio with a shelter, picnic table and many have a grille. You can see the roofs of others on down the mountain. A very steep road but beautiful area with mountains on both sides.
Rock Hound state park is a campground for RV's and tents. Apparently it is for hunting rocks as there are several valuable stones to be found in this area. It appeared as if one was collecting rocks to be resold, maybe at Quartzite at the rock and mineral show.
We returned to Deming and made our way to Peppers super market and our groceries and back home after being on the road for several hours and seeing some really beautiful mountains and sights only found in the south west.