Life off grid

Day 7
Roswell NM- Las Cruces NM

Crisp air and low temps greet us in the morning. That's good news for the 22 year old pick up truck that will be towing our home across the mountains. Today is a big day for Betty White. So far travel has been good but nothing has really tested whether or not she has the chops to keep up with the new kids on the block. Highway 70 east out of Roswell and across the Organ Mountains is a formidable test. A $60,000 diesel pickup would handle this without a blink. Our $6,000 dollar bucket of steel is going to work for it. As the mountain grade increases to 6% she kicks down into 2nd gear. For the next 4 miles it is pedal to the floor and 3,500 rpms of 454 fury. It's a tense 6 minutes as she gives it her all to pull 15,000 pounds with the aerodynamics of a brick against a 20 mph headwind to 7,500 feet in elevation.

The mountain crest comes into sight as I ease off the throttle. You did good kid. As a reward of keeping the motor in one piece we coast down the backside of the range and into White Sands National Monument. On the west side of the mountain the wind speeds increase from a storm moving through. It looks nasty.

After checking out the visitor center a woman approaches me in the parking lot. She ran out of gas and saw the bike in the truck. High hopes of a possible gas can prompted her to talk to us. We gladly gave her the 4 gallons we had to make it the 20 miles back to town. She insisted on giving us $20 for saving her from a tow. That's a new one. Time to move on.
Nearly 6 miles into the dunes we pull over at a picnic area for lunch. The ugly storm is literally across the dune from us as we gaze out the windows. Not wanting to miss the opportunity we head out to walk on the dunes (it's encouraged, people go sledding here) before the weather decides otherwise. Pets are also allowed out on the Gypsum. Typically you get pictures of Eli, but today Katie grabs the cat named Tibbs.

A few minutes with our toes in the sand is enough. Sprinkles start and then it gets worse. The slides are pulled in quickly. We make it to the truck before a downpour hits. It's an odd place to be. It was here an old sea bed dried up and left Gypsum on the ground. That ground was then picked up by a mountain, broken down again by melting glaciers, and left here for modern day folks to gaze upon the spectacle. Oddly enough the monument is a very small piece of the dunes. The rest of it is an active missile testing site for the US Armed Forces. 

The storm passes as quickly as it started. On the way out I glance down at the gas guage in the truck and have a realization. We're almost out of gas. The nearest gas station in the direction we are heading lies 47 miles away. Huh... the irony. Leaving the visitor center we head back the way we came to a gas station 20 miles down the road only to fill up and drive back through white sands to make it to our next camping spot.

A few miles out of the way is a BLM trailhead that allows boondocking for 14 days. We grab a spot for the night and set up. Katie informs me she can't find the orange cat we had out on the dunes but insists he was inside when we left. Yeesh, that would be almost two hours of driving back through the mountains in order to look for a cat in the desert. We take a deep breath and start a methodical search. I push the slides out and she starts opening drawers underneath the bed. Out pops Tibbs shaking, but alive. A sigh of relief for what could have been a bad situation. Now it's up to me to finish the setup in light drizzle. Cold weather is on the way in tonight. I fire up the generator and we cozy up inside with the furnace running for the night. At least the view is nice.