On October 3rd we drove on West Side Road from High Rolls to go to Alamo Canyon in search of the elusive rare poppy! It was on our DeLorme Atlas map book, but we didn't know it looked like this! It is a good thing our rental car didn't have a GPS unit in it, I don't think the company would have approved of us going on this adventure! :) We were surprised how much other traffic went along this road, which didn't seem to go anywhere. Those people didn't creep along stopping every 100 yards or so either; we ate a lot of dust that day! map...

We drove on West Side Rd. near High Rolls in search of a rare white poppy I had learned about at the Forest Service office the day before. We never found the poppy, but we sure picked up a considerable amount of dust in our attempt! Fortunately, a good rain in Las Cruces washed most of it off for us. :) One of the nice things about renting a car is learning what kind of car you wouldn't want to buy! I really didn't want to rent the PT Cruiser because it didn't have a trunk, but we had no choice at the rental agency. Our only other option was a Ford Explorer, which would have had worse gas mileage (and no trunk either). I like having a trunk so I don't have to carry my camera equipment everywhere, at 20 pounds, that pack gets pretty heavy! Photo by Ken Light