Pancho Villa State Park Update

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!!

Happy Holidays to everyone out there who are following us on our travel Blog!!!  It has been a little while since I have updated our fun here in Columbus, New Mexico at a State Park we have been hosting at for the past few months. We have about two and a half months left here before we head out to our next hosting job in Nevada….

Poncho Villa State Park

Click on Pictures to view better!!

Our next Host job in Nevada at Spooner Lake near Lake Tahoe.

We have been having lots of fun enjoying our time working and site seeing at the museum here in the State Park. A place that you can see the sun set and rise almost every day So beautiful..

  We have been working on cleaning up some trails, painting signs and now we are painting site numbers on all of the sites that have shelters. We are keeping busy, and at the same time trying to see some of the sites of New Mexico. Just a few nights ago we had filled over 200 small bags for a Luminaria light display at the park museum lighting it all up. It came out beautifully..

Jodi and I have visited one of many beautiful state parks around us. Rockhound State Park near Deming, NM. It is like night and day from where we are in Columbus, just up the road 25 miles are huge rocks and mountains. Here are some pictures we took. We are going to head up the road about 65 miles north to visit another state park called City of Rocks State Park in Silver City, NM. Will post some pictures when we get them for this place. Here are a few that I found online.

Rockhound State Park, Deming, NM

City of Rocks State Park, Silver City, NM

Pictures of City of Rocks from Online

It has been great weather here. We have temperatures of 30s to 40s in the morning and 50 to 60 temps in the afternoons. No snow like some of you in the north eastern parts and some southern parts like North Carolina…. Snow, rain, and flooding… We are thinking of all of you that are dealing with all that bad weather.. We are blessed to be able to run away from all the bad weather and find good weather. We have not gotten any snow yet, but we think its coming. Just a dusting of snow that will only be around for a few hours.. As I always do, here are some of our beautiful pictures.

Jodi and I want to wish you all a very happy, SAFE holiday. Merry Christmas and Happy New year to you all and stay in touch when you can… We do get and see your comments when you make them…

Mark and Jodi, the BOBBLE HEAD TRAVELERS!!

Pancho Villa State Park, New Mexico

Hello everyone, it has been a little while since I posted something, so I am going to post some new updates about where we are and what we are doing. We have arrived at Pancho Villa State Park in Columbus, NM. It’s a small town of about 1,800 people just 3 miles from the Mexican border. We are with 3 other couples volunteering at the State Park Visitor Center/Museum that happens to have a reproduction of a Curtiss Jenny bi-plane hanging inside.  They were used in a conflict here on the border with Mexico in the early 1900s.  For those of you that don’t know, the designer of the Jenny, Glenn H. Curtiss was from our hometown of Hammondsport, NY.  Cool coincidence.

We work a few hours a week running the visitor center and doing a little grounds work. We enjoy working at this park, and like it here very much.

The Museum that we volunteer at, Wow a Curtiss Jenny here in New Mexico.

We have a few pictures to post from our trip from the last post. We have put another 5 more states on our travel Map.  We have seen 23 states so far.

We stopped at a small RV park in Oklahoma called the Hideaway Bar and it was very interesting; a large parking lot with about 20 spots. We went to the local casino and broke even. It was funny, because we took a bunch of quarters in and found out that they don’t do quarter slots, you have to use bills, tells you how long it’s been for us both..


The Hideaway Bar was interesting as well. We had a drink and went to bed. They had a lot of locals there.

Next stop was Fort Sill Oklahoma where I started my Army career, and retired. Outside of Fort Sill is the Wichita Mountain National Wildlife Refuge where the Buffaloes Roam.  Great pictures of them…

A Long Horn…..

A small town, Medicine Park near the Fort Sill RV Park was a fun outing for an afternoon.

 

We stayed at the Fort Sill RV Park on the Army Post and got there just after a bad rain storm. It had almost flooded the park. I got some good pictures of the post. It brought back memories of the start of my military career and were I retired from. This is also the place I got to be a part of the United States Artillery Half Section of World War I… The old Artillery days with Horses and Cannons..

This is our Camp site at Fort Sill, OK

This is the Half Section that I had an honor to be a part of for two years at Fort Sill.  That’s me on the front left horse. (The Chief position of the Half Section Team.)

I am on sitting on the limber in the back, (a Cannoneer.)

And what I did in the Army was the BIG Artillery. The big guns, rockets and missiles.. 

This was one of many launchers that I was in during Desert Storm and OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom). It is a MLRF Multiple Launch Rocket System. It fires rockets, missiles.

Then we stopped at Van Horn, Texas where my first job after retiring from the Army and worked in this small town of 1,900. I worked at a Pilot Travel Center for about a year, and couldn’t do it anymore, because it was out in the middle of NO WHERE… Two hours away from El Paso. It was a good spot to stop and stay a day or two.

There is a hotel that Jodi and I checked out and had a cocktail, or two.. When I was working here years ago, the historic El Capitan Hotel was a bank and radio shack. Someone had purchased it in 2009 and restored it to the way it was in the 1930s.

We arrived here at Pancho Villa State Park about 3 weeks ago and so far we have gone over the border to Mexico and had a few Margaritas. The park had a car show of which I was one of 3 judges for about 15 cars and trucks. It has been nice and warm here, with a few cold nights and little rain. It should be a nice winter for us here. Will let you know. Here are some pictures so far of here in the park and Mexico.

Pancho Villa statue in Palomas Mexico, just over the fence, I mean “wall”. A store that is well known over the border called the Pink Store, with a lot of tiles and pottery, a restaurant and ohh FREE Margaritas! Salud!

The Wall/fence

Pink Store and Restaurant.

 

This is our RV home for the next few months. Love it here.

Our Camp Host RV Site # 44

1930 Ford Model A

1966 Ford Fastback

1981 Excalibur Classic

The 1955 Holiday Oldsmobile won Best Car in show…

We do hope all of you folks out there are staying safe, and with Winter upon us, keep safe and warm. Some of us are lucky enough to be warm all year round. We will be here for a few more months and in March we will be heading to Nevada. Our next hosting job will start in April at Spooner Lake, a day use area only about 6 miles from Lake Tahoe.. We are looking forward to our adventure westward…. Please stay in touch and stay safe.   Till next time we wish you a safe winter.   

Our almost every night Sunset that we can see from our site.

 

The Bobble Head Travelers,  Mark and Jodi