As promised, we did not get going early, departing around 11. I didn’t help the cause by missing a turn; it looked on the map like we could recover by continuing ahead, but the road kept getting worse and then turned into a sandy wash, so we had to backtrack.

The manager and Maid of All Work, Safphire (sic) was a whirling dervish in the kitchen and had the whole house fed in good style! Will and I packed up and rolled back down to Alamogordo, bundled up against the just-above-freezing temps. We then had to run across White Sands, poking along at 60 while the speed limit is 75… then down into Cruces.

We camped last night at Three Rivers forest service campground; we met up with Anna, who was an hour or so ahead of us, having gone on her own canyoneering adventures to the west. The wind was crazy, and it was cold — we could barely set up camp, and then had to figure out how to cook pizza!