Tuesday Nov 21, 2023 - Pancho Villa State Park to City of Rocks State Park

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Today was another Pancho Villa day! Breakfast in the van and then walked across the campground to the museum. On the way we chatted up the park volunteer host and peppered him with questions. He was from Colorado but had been serving as a volunteer camp host for a few years and loved it. We found out later through another volunteer that they have 3 camp host couples at this park, which makes sense since they also have the museum to watch over. And with 6 people they can take off on trips here and there and there are enough to cover for them. They get free campsites and the state gets the parks manned for free. Win-win.

We also asked about how many illegal migrants they see here. He says none, other than a car now and then that goes tearing by in an attempt to run through the border crossing two miles to the south. We agreed that something doesn’t add up between what we hear on the news and what we see on the ground here.

The museum is small but has some great stuff in it. Because Pancho Villa raided the town of Columbus in 1916, the U.S. immediately sent General Pershing down with 10,000 troops over 8-9 months to chase him south of the border. And it was the first time the army ever used motor vehicles (trucks, cars, motorcycles) and airplanes in a battle situation. Pershing broke up the “Villanistas” but never managed to capture Pancho Villa. He came back from Mexico months later and then quickly left for France after the U.S. entered WWI. 

Mexico and the U.S. and Germany had a complicated relationship at that time. The U.S. had claimed neutrality in WWI and Germany was funding one side of the Mexican revolution and trying to keep the U.S. busy so it would stay out of the war. Germany was actually paying U.S. arms companies for ammunition for Mexico!

The airplanes were really crude made by Glen Curtis and they were used for surveillance and delivering mail down in Mexico during the “punitive war”. The first 8 planes, JN-3 or “Jennies”, only lasted one month. The next 4 planes, JN-4s, were a small improvement but the third plane, the R4?, were much better. The very first use of airplanes by the military.

Next stop was to drive to the border, park and walk across into Puerto Palomas, the small town south of Columbus. The big attraction is the Pink Store, which is a fun tourist trap one block from the border. It’s a huge place with every kind of Mexican pottery, clothing, jewelry, etc you can imagine. Half of it is a big restaurant with a big menu and $4 margaritas. And a live Mariachi band that strolled from table to table (we tipped them). Deb picked up a few things she wanted and we walked around town a bit and then back over the border.

It was 2pm so we thought we would drive up to Deming and on the way to Deming we decided we might as well go another 30 minutes to City of Rocks State Park and check it out. Somewhere along the way we realized that we might as well stay up here at City of Rocks since we had nothing more we wanted to do in Pancho Villa State Park. Deb got on the reservation site and they had 5 sites left, so we decided to just ask at the park instead of register on line (extra $4 fee). The park ranger said the only way to get a site was to use the online service, and there was no way to not pay the $4 registration fee on top of the $10 site fee. That’s one perfectly good margarita at the Pink Store for God’s sake!

He said if we drove to the top of a small knoll just outside the park we could get cell service and make the reservation since they have no WiFi. Yikes!

Anyway, we got a site, parked and walked the perimeter of the park. It’s a cool collection of giant boulders and the camp sites are stuck into any little cavity they found among the rocks.

So here we are tonight eating leftovers and reading our books.