I woke up well before sunrise at the Walmart in Deming, New Mexico.  I had some company:

I drove north to visit City of Rocks State Park.  We last visited the park in 2011.

This is the view from the approach to the park:

Going for a run:

I left City of Rocks and continued north into the Gila Wilderness.  The road was steep and serpentine, but there were great views:

At last I arrived at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.  This is our only unvisited National Park site in New Mexico, skipped so far because the road here is not drivable when towing our 5th wheel RV:

Also visiting today were three young full-timing couples:

I don’t think the visitor center has been updated since the 1970s:

I decided to run the trail to the cliff dwellings.  The dwellings were built in late 1200s:

I decided to drive the “no RVs allowed” section of Route 15 from the Route 35 junction to Pinos Altos.  The road is so narrow it has no center line and is incredibly steep and windy:

I continued south towards Lordsburg.  What views!

I continued west into Arizona, did laundry in Tucson, then continued northwest to overnight at the Walmart of Coolidge, Arizona.  See the trip map for today’s drive.

Early morning at the Cracker Barrel of Sulphur, Louisiana:

I drove into Texas to visit Big Thicket National Preserve:

Big Thicket contains at least ten distinct ecosystems, each driven primarily by how much drainage and flooding is present.  The area is a convergence of Western, Southeastern, and Eastern biomes:

I ran one of the trails that passes through a Cypress slough:

I continued east to visit Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park:

The park also preserves the nearby homestead of LBJ’s grandparents:

I drove over to Johnson City’s library to use their WiFi (my 2GB per month data plan is proving inadequate for this unplanned trip).  At closing, I asked for permission to overnight in the parking lot.  See the trip map for today’s drive.

The original plan was that Trish would fly back today from Tallahassee this morning and then I would drive back to New York over the next few days.  I realized a couple days ago that the big Salton City and Glamis Fly-In is coming up next week and I’m already 600 miles closer to California than I would be in New York.  If so, what’s another 2,400 miles, right?  Trish green-lighted the trip and so this morning, saying goodbye to Trish at the airport, I headed west instead of north.

The first stop of the day was the Chalmette unit of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, home of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, where Andrew Jackson convinced local Native Americans to help him defeat the British before expelling then from their lands on the Trail of Tears 15 years later.  Classy guy.

Another great visitor center:

British forces lost thousands of troops as they repeatedly threw themselves from right to left against the US fortifications built atop the berm to the left of the ditch:

The other end of the US defensive position, looking back towards the visitor center.  The British attacked from left to right here:

Next stop, the French Quarter of New Orleans to visit New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park.  I parked and hoped I would still have wheels when I returned:

The visitor center:

I continued west to overnight at a Cracker Barrel in Sulphur, Louisiana:

See the trip map for today’s drive.