Thankfully the wind had died down the previous evening and it was a calm, beautiful morning for us to hike to Dripping Springs, located east of Las Cruces in Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument (managed by BLM with a $5 fee). The visitor center was closed, but there were restrooms and brochures available before we set out on our hike. The hike is an easy one - it's three miles round trip with less than 500 feet elevation gain. The Organ Mountains, over 9000 feet in elevation, overlook the trail as it travels through the desert scrub and low elevation pinon-juniper and oak woodlands on the original road used by horses and carriages over a hundred years ago. It was certainly advantageous to go early on a weekday morning - we saw only a few people and the deer definitely outnumbered the people. At the end of the trail are the remains of Dripping Springs Resort and Boyd Sanitorium. The resort was originally called "Van Patten's Mountain Camp" and was built in the 1890s and was operated until 1910 when Van Patten sold it to Dr. Boyd. When Dr. Boyd purchased the resort his wife had developed tuberculosis and he converted the resort into a sanatorium and added some additional buildings. Boyd sold the sanatorium to another doctor in 1922 and it shut down a few years after that. There is quite a bit to see of the old ruins and buildings, especially considering they are over a hundred years old. This was a perfect little hike to do in the morning before having lunch in Old Mesilla Village at La Posta De Mesilla (tasty Mexican food in a super cute building). Afterwards we walked around to check out the stores and take a look at the historic buildings. This was a cute area with some nice stores. We learned about pistachios the day before and here we learned about pecans - we watched a short video at Legacy Pecans and purchased some pecans to take home.

We didn't dilly dally too long because we still had to drive to Willcox, AZ with a stop at City of Rocks along the way. City of Rocks is a state park and named for its volcanic rock formations that resemble a city with its large rock pinnacles as high as 40 feet and the lanes passing between them. The pinnacles are ash-flow tuffs formed about 35 million years ago from a volcano eruption. In areas where the ash were hot enough they compacted and welded together. Subsequent cooling and contraction and geological activity created joints and cracks in the rock and over millions of years natural forces eroded the rocks into the cool pinnacles they are today. Driving across New Mexico on I-10 you would have no idea these volcanic rock formations were only thirty minutes away. The rocks seem to appear out of nowhere in the Chihuahuan desert. The park only covers a square mile, but packs a lot in. We walked a little bit on the Hydra Trail, which circumvents the City of Rocks and then spent time walking among the rocks, scrambling on the boulders, and checking out all the nooks and crannies. What a fun park! The campsites in the rocks looked cool too and it would definitely be a great place to camp. But not on this trip; after checking out City of Rocks we continued on to Willcox where we would stay for two nights to visit Chiricahua.