We awoke at Bonita Canyon Campground and started the morning with the sun on the Massai Point Nature Trail. Many of the rhyolite hoodoos are still in the shade, but the formations these silica-rich extrusive igneous rocks create are mesmerizing. Among the crevices of some ground stones is the exoskeleton of a cicada. We’ll finish our visit with a moderate hike with more tree cover and tightly clustered hoodoos; this park has the densest collection in the world from a volcanic event about 27 million years ago.

Further down the trail, we watch a Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly feed on an Indian paintbrush, a flower that fits the preferences of the Papilionidae family of tubular, nectar-rich blooms in shades of pink and purple. Even more engaging is trying to capture a decent photo of a Mexican Jay that jumps from rock to branch and back again. We’re a little over an hour from our next state, and it’s time to get going. We are only in New Mexico as long as the Rio Grande is wide (though it runs through the entire state), and we enjoyed the afternoon walking along its riverbank.

We stop in Las Cruces and meander around La Llorona Park, just two miles from the World’s Largest Chile Pepper in front of the Big Chile Inn. From there, it’s only a half hour to the Texas state line. There’s a sign posted, Playful City USA, which the non-profit Kaboom! donates when a city expands, improves, and guarantees access to play areas, especially for low-income children. We stop in Sierra Blanca to admire their courthouse and read the history of Victorio, an Apache chief, vs retired General Byrne, who was killed in his stagecoach.

The US and Mexico gathered 5,000 soldiers to hunt Victorio down and put an end to his raiding career in the southwest. Byrne was born in Ireland but reinterred in Fort Worth (random fact). The other sign discusses the joining of the Southern Pacific and Texas & Pacific railroads that would connect the West Coast with East Texas in December of 1881, after over a decade of construction. The Atrium Inn will provide our bed for the night. At this point, we are about 40 percent of the way to San Antonio from El Paso and have another 280 miles past the Alamo to exit Texas on the other side.