According to the forecast the weather today was supposed to be cooler and very windy, a good day to ride in the Jeep on the primitive River Road. As it turned out it was a clear, warm and not windy day but that did make for a beautiful drive.
The River Road is 57 miles of sand and gravel and was quite rough in places. We have this very nice tour book for the road that was published in 1980! All day long we thought it was a bit out dated - you think?! By the end of the day our odometer was off by 7 miles and we only took about 4 miles off the trail. It made it rather difficult to locate some of the sites mentioned in the book.
We learned about the ranches, mines and homesteads of the area from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s; we learned about lechuguilla (a type of yucca plant), creosote bush and ocotillo bush; we looked for snakes, hawks and golden eagles (saw the hawk), and we looked at lots of mountains, dikes, arroyos, washes and, of course, the Rio Grande River.
The Mariscal Mine processed mercury or quicksilver which is used in preparing drugs or as a detonator in explosives. Even though the River Road did not really follow the Rio Grande, it was close enough that we drove or walked to the rivers edge a few times. Some of the mountains and mountain ranges were the Sierra San Vicente, Mariscal Mountains, Red Dike & Black Dike, Santa Elena Canyon, and the Chisos Mountains.
At the end of this 6 hour drive (with stops for lunch and nap) we still had 55 miles to drive back to the RV. It has been a very long day.
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