New Mexico, border thoughts

I'd never given much thought to New Mexico.  But as it turns out, there's a lot of there there.

After crossing the border into the US, we spent 4 days in a rented RV on the New Mexico/ Arizona border on the fringe of the Chiricahua Mountains.  I saw my first cardinals (male and female) in the flesh, did a hike to find some pictographs,  saw some interesting rock formations, saw the Milky Way, and enjoyed 4 days without travelling a whit.

It's a pretty corner of the world, and one I wouldn't mind visiting again.

But....I was always very conscious that we were close to the US border here.

It was a little creepy. We saw Border Patrol trucks patrolling every day that we were in the region, often more than once.  The few casual conversations we had with the developer of the "Astronomy Villages" in the region touched on "Mexicans" and illegal immigration within a few minutes.  There were signs along the highway in the Chiricahuas warning you that there were illegal immigrants in the area.  And on our way out of Las Cruces on our way there, and again when we headed North from Las Cruces after our visit, we had to pass through a checkpoint where the only question was "Are you a citizen?".  And somehow, "No we're Canadians" wasn't enough to prompt any interest in us, or even a request to see our ID.  Racial profiling anyone? Which is particularly ironic given that this part of the world was Mexican until the mid-19th Century and that there are plenty of American citizens that are ethnically "Mexican" in the region as a result.