March 23, 2026
Elizabeth refused to wake up.
I mean, that’s a normal day for me. But waking her up while we were sharing a hotel room with my parents was a new experience, I won’t lie. Admittedly, our prior day in Ruidoso and Cloudcroft had been a real barn-burner. Anyone would need a little extra sleep after that. And my parents are early risers. But still.
When she did wake up, it was 8:00 am on her final day joining my parents and me in the desert Southwest. She was flying back from El Paso to OKC at about 5:30 pm, which left us with most of a day to enjoy between Alamogordo and El Paso. As we had been discovering day after day, there are a lot of really, really neat places in this far corner of the country. Lush mountain forests, huge dunes, and big piles of pistachios as far as the eye can see. So why not find some granite-looking peaks that wouldn’t be out of place in the Sierra?
The Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument was established in 2014 by President Obama following several years of legislation to protect the area being stalled by House Republicans. While several mountain ranges are included, the most prominent and impressive-looking are the Organ Mountains, a big slab of igneous granite peaks that look out of place in the desert-and-limestone ranges all around it. The Organ Mountains are located just east of Las Cruces, accessible by a mountain pass that we had driven just two days prior when heading into White Sands. After a quick Holiday Inn breakfast and checkout, the four of us got into my parents’ Ford Edge and made the hour-ish trip southwest across the desert, back-tracking past White Sands, to do a short hike in the mountains.
We broke through the mountain pass at about 10:00 am and arrived at the visitor center at the foot of the mountains at 10:20. A very weak cold front had moved through the day before and while it wasn’t “cool”, or even “average” out there, it was a little bit less brutal than the rest of the week. The view right at the visitor center was spectacular.
Southern New Mexico??? Are you kidding me???
It was also refreshingly quiet at the national monument. The visitor center was just a single room staffed by a nice (but extremely quiet) old man with limited exhibits, but plenty of water. We chatted briefly with the old man to confirm that our preferred trail – the Dripping Springs Trail – was good to go, strapped on hiking boots and backpacks, and set off into the morning sun.
At 3 miles and about 450 feet of elevation gain, this was no one’s idea of our most strenuous hike ever. Still, the NPS made us work for it. The entire thing was paved in what felt like an excessive amount of gravel, which meant your feed slid a little with every step. Plus, that masked the sound of any rattlers lying in wait just off the trail. This was more than made up for by the panoramic views offered from the trailhead onward. On the one side you had New Mexico’s own Tetons, and on the other you had a huge slope leading down to the second-largest city in the state in the valley far below. Plus there were some rocks that Elizabeth immediately took to calling “Colorado Springs rocks” because they reminded her of Garden of the Gods.
There was one spot a little under a mile into the trail in particular that drew a “wow” from all four of us.
Foot traffic wasn’t zero, but it was pretty light. Apart from one “walking club” group of ladies, it seemed mostly like the people out there were hardcore hikers, travelers, or nature lovers, which is understandable on a warm Monday morning.
Dripping Springs itself lived up to its name – or more accurately, lived down to its name. The spring housed a rather piddly trickle of water that was caught up and above our sightline in a cistern before spilling over in wholly unconvincing fashion, to disappear into the dirt below almost immediately.
Yet what was really cool to see was the diverse array of desert and riparian plant and animal life that crowded into this little “oasis” environment. Everything below the immediate mountainside had been pure desert – chaparral at most, and even more barren when the terrain became foreboding. This, on the other hand, felt a little more wild.
Those buildings are from an early mountain resort that was built near the spring and used as a luxury stay by NMSU students. Nearby someone built a tuberculosis sanatorium, because somehow wherever there’s something beautiful there’s always TB patients too. A little bit of history, some surprisingly great views, and no snakes in sight – the Organ Mountains were a strong contender for “most pleasant surprise of the trip”.
We finished up the three miles in perfect time to head down into Las Cruces for some lunch. Acting on a recommendation, we decided on Andele’s in town, a legit Mexican restaurant with el pastor tacos as a specialty and a salsa bar that you could walk up to. I got the carne adovada and it was divine. Elizabeth got enchiladas and all was right with the world. For a relatively lengthy trip to New Mexico, it was funny that our last meal in the state was the first one where we got some authentic Mexican food!
With a little more time to kill before we needed to drop Elizabeth off in El Paso, the four of us headed into the old downtown of Mesilla, once the capital of the Confederate territory of Arizona and now a sleepy neighborhood with some gift shops and a cool-looking Catholic church.
Everyone had time for a little more gift shopping, because one can never get Wyatt too many postcards, right? I also got a book on the border conflicts of the Rio Grande Valley and was almost immediately mortified and disappointed to realize the book was about Texas, not southern New Mexico.
And one last thing before we said good-bye to Elizabeth: ice cream! Both Elizabeth and my mom had received recommendations to get some custard at a local chain called Caliche’s, and we’d seen them all over southern New Mexico. It felt wrong to send her back to work the next day without at least some ice cream. My dad was excited and reasonably pleased to try the green chile sundae (I disagree. It was not very good), while I stuck with the more sedate banana pudding sundae. With the sun once again beating down on a hot afternoon, it made a nice postscript to Elizabeth’s time with us.
Unfortunately, it was now time for her to say good-bye if she wanted to make her flight and get into work on Tuesday. We retraced our steps back from Las Cruces into El Paso and managed to survive the hectic traffic in and around the airport to drop her off. I hope (and think) she had fun with the short 48-hour trip; it certainly isn’t the same going to fun places without her!
As for my parents and me: we began the final phase of our desert adventure by going eastward about 2 hours from El Paso to White’s City, New Mexico. This region is home to Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns National Parks, which I first visited with Elizabeth way back in 2018. There are almost no services whatsoever out here; the drive between El Paso and White’s City is almost the most desolate stretch of road physically imaginable. This of course meant we needed to get three meal’s worth of Wal-Mart ready-to-eat entrees for tonight and the next day in El Paso. My tortilla soup tonight was pretty decent, though not a patch on what Andele’s could do.
The hotel (motel) at White’s City Inn is what I would describe as “passable”. My bed is clean even if the bathroom door has a tendency to trap people inside it. For the next 36 hours, it will do.
Time to finish this trip off on a high note!
