Truth of Consequences, and Elephant Butte are objectively cool places. They so effectively capture the blend of “roughness” that you find in this section of the country, as well as the artistic flare that is so present now, and in New Mexico’s history.

Truth or Consequesnces, originally called Hot Springs, literally renamed itself for a radio show contest for a radio show with the same name in 1950. It felt like yet-another New Mexico town that was full of character, and art.

Elephant Butte was where the campground we stayed at was located. It’s called this because there’s a big ol’ butte in the middle of the Hot Springs reservoir there that looks kinda like an elephant if you look from the correct angle. Yes, I did make numerous “Elephant Butt” jokes.

We picked this spot for a week to serve as a one-stop shop to check out Ruidoso, as well as White Sands National Park. Neither one of these places are close, but they’re each a day trip away, and this spot aligns well with our westward route. It seemed like a decent spot to park it while we checked out the southwestern portion of New Mexico.

As always is the case in New Mexico, the drive was anything but boring. There was a constant stream of southwestern scenery, featuring rocky hills, mountains, tons of Yucca plants, and this white-knuckle drive up a steep mountain grade on a road that was under construction near El Paso, on route 375. I don’t like driving in cities with my camper, so we always try to avoid them. In this case, that forced us me to unwittingly go over a mountain with my camper. In hindsight, I-10 through El Paso doesn’t seem so bad.

You can hear my little Tacoma running in a lower gear to make the climb. The speedometer was going up, and I wasn’t red-lining, which was about all the comfort I could have while going up this. Once we got to the top though, the view was something to behold.

While parked here, I met one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He was an older man, a prospector, with so many stories about his adventures and time spent in the mountains out west. Every time I shared a story about anything, he always had more information about the locale that I was talking about. If I had a dream to go see a place, he had 2 or 3 spots nearby where he had some history.

I met him while parked at the Elephant Butte campground in New Mexico, where he had spent the last couple of years living out of a truck camper parked right next to a gully. We happened to get parked next-door, and naturally found plenty of things to discuss.

He had phrase for “wanderlust” he used. He called it the “go yonders”. Such a cool dude. What a cool place.

The campground area we stayed in small, with little more than an access road and a circle adjacent to the water. Most campers were parked perpendicular to the circle, and backed in as-far as they could go. This campground is an older one, evidenced by the fact that we were strongly encouraged to use a water pressure regulator and a filter. Further, most of the campsites were very small, and our small (in today’s terms) 26′ camper barely fit into our spot. We were tucked in, and backed up about as far as we could comfortably go before we would roll over the edge into the gully just beyond our campsite. And we happened to be parked broadside to the wind.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in New Mexico in the Spring, but for the most part, it’s reeeeally windy, and our first night here was no exception. Our first night the camper was being rocked by the wind constantly, and I did not sleep well because I was absolutely convinced that the camper was going to somehow blow off the chocks and we were going to go rolling down the gully parked right behind us. A silly thought, considering how difficult it would be to move the camper with out we had it set-up, but one that I couldn’t seem to get out of my head that night. Fortunately, the wind subsided a little in the days that followed and I was able to calm myself down enough to allow sleep to come.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget this place, or it’s unique experience it offered. New Mexico is a lot of fun.