We pulled out of Deming at the break of dawn on Thursday and headed for Alamogordo where we had reservations to stay at the Alamogordo Roadrunner Campground. Lucky for us, there is no relationship between the Deming and Alamogordo Roadrunners. The Alamogordo Roadrunner is a wonderful well-maintained RV park I would recommend to anyone. It was still fairly early in the morning when we arrived at the campground, but our spot was available and we were allowed to set up early, thus giving us the rest of the day to play.

We took a sightseeing trip to the quaint village of Cloudcroft nestled in the Sacramento Mountains about 20 miles from Alamogordo. Cloudcroft is a tourist destination for thousands of visitors each year. In the summer, it is a place to escape desert heat and in the winter, a vast wonderland of winter sporting activities. I remember driving up to Cloudcroft as a kid while living at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo where my father was stationed, so heading up there with Chrissy and Opal was like reliving a small slice of my childhood.

We had a wonderful lunch of old-school burgers and fries at Big Daddy's Diner in Cloudcroft. If you want to find the best place to eat in a town at lunchtime, find the place with the most cars and pickups in front and it turned out Big Daddy's lot was full for a good reason. After lunch, we drove about 20 miles along a winding mountainous road with killer views to Sunspot, home of the National Solar Observatory at 9,200 feet above sea level.

Friday was the first of five full days we spent rockhounding in the Orogrande Mining District in the Jarilla Mountains, about 35 miles south of Alamogordo. The Jarillas make up a relatively small mountain range (4 miles wide by 10 miles long) that rises like an island to 1,200 feet above the surrounding Tularosa basin. The Orogrande Mining District, is a past producer of gold, silver, copper, lead, iron and turquoise. The list of collectable rocks and minerals is long; the most notable include: garnet (grossular & andradite), quartz, malachite, azurite, silicified chrysocolla, turquoise, pyrite, chalcopyrite, limonite after pyrite, hematite (including massive and specular), chalcedony, agate, large euhedral orthoclase crystals, galena, fluorite, diopside, epidote, magnetite and numerous lapidary rocks suitable for cabbing. Rather than bore you with a day by day explanation of where and what we collected at Orogrande, I'll just let the following pictures and captions do the talking.

 
I would be remiss if I failed to mention that practically all mines in the Orogrande and Hansonburg (featured on the next page) Districts are patented and un-patented load and placer claims. We had permission from claim owner, Eddie DeLuca (pictured on the left), to collect where we did. I strongly urge all rockhounds to obtain permission before attemping to collect on any mining claim, but especially those owned by Eddie because he does not take kindly to people stealing his stuff and you really don't not want to find yourself on his bad side.