AZ to IL / Return to Winter

Driving from Wilcox, AZ to Three Rivers, NM | Visiting White Sands National Park | Camping & Hiking in Three Rivers Petroglyph Site | January 2025

This morning, we woke up to the sound of the cranes taking off for the day. We emerged from the van to watch them take flight, and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise. We still didn’t know where we were supposed to go next or when we needed to be wherever that was, but knowing it would likely be somewhere East of us within the next 1-2 weeks, we planned to continue our slow drive East until we were given clear directions. For today, we decided to drive to the Las Cruces area to do some camping and hiking near the Organ mountains.

However, as we made the drive from Wilcox to Las Cruces, we got several phone calls from different project managers with sort of back and forth conflicting information. By the time we stopped outside of Las Cruces for gas, we finally had our answer: We were still going to Ottawa, IL…but we needed to be there a week earlier than we had originally planned — 5 days from now. This would have been no issue for Curtis and Jess 10 years ago, when we used to do the whole AZ-IA drive in one go, 27 hours straight. But now, having to drive around 5 hours every day on a more direct route kind of felt like we were rushing to get back.

We quickly looked up what the direct route from here to Illinois would be, and were pleased to find that we could still get some new counties while mostly sticking to that route. For our first day, we decided to drive a few more hours to a BLM campsite that we had been interested in visiting for a while. Next, we looked for a place to stop for lunch and a short walk, and decided the obvious answer was White Sands National Park

This was our third time visiting the park, and it truly never disappoints. It’s dog friendly, easy to just get out and run around on the dunes, and the views are gorgeous. As I gazed out over the dunes, I wished that this would be the only ‘white stuff’ I would see this winter, but knew it was not meant to be. Just a few days from now, we’d be camping surrounded by snow. Oh well, today we enjoyed running barefoot through the sand and getting Charlotte excited enough to run along with us. We enjoyed a picnic lunch before getting back on the road.

We drove about another hour Northeast to tonight’s campsite, at Three Rivers Petroglyph Site. It was $20 to camp here, and though we could have probably found somewhere else for free we were ok with paying tonight — this was the first campsite that we had to pay for this year. We took Charlotte on a little walk around the campground, then Curtis set off on the trail to see the petroglyphs (the trail wasn’t dog friendly, so I sat this one out — it was also too cold and windy for me to enjoy being outside at this point.)

This next day, it was time to start taking the drive more seriously and close in on the miles between us and Ottawa. We drove US-380 East to US-70, then took some back highway roads to get a row of 3 new-to-us counties in the Texas panhandle. When we made it to I-27, we went North and then drove Northeast to tonight’s destination: the scenic overlook at Palo Duro Canyon that we had enjoyed over a month prior. The weather wasn’t quite as nice for us here this evening, so we mostly stayed in the van. The wind was strong and it rained a little off and on, but aside from that we enjoyed another quiet night here.

The third day of our drive was the longest, as we decided to make it all the way across Oklahoma and into Missouri. The first half of the drive on I-40 was familiar, one we had done several times when driving between IA and AZ. The second half was mostly new to us, on the I-44 Will Rogers Turnpike from Oklahoma City to the Missouri state line. We made one stop in OK City at a rest area where we were able to purchase a Pike Pass, as well as have lunch and walk Charlotte around. Then we pressed on into Missouri, a few miles East of Joplin to Robert E. Talbot Conservation Area. We decided to have a longer driving day today because we really couldn’t find any decent free spots to camp in Oklahoma, and getting this out of the way meant our last two days would be shorter drives and would allow for a little more fun. This conservation area was conveniently only a couple miles North of the interstate and had about 5 first come, first served free spots. Once again, it was a colder night, so we mostly just stayed in the van, besides letting Charlotte walk in circles around the loop.

On day 4, we had a much easier drive across the state of Missouri, mostly on I-44, and ended up at Klondike Park off of MO-94, East of St. Louis. The drive went by relatively quick and we got some new counties on the way, then arrived at the park in the early afternoon. It was $20 to camp here, and while they don’t allow RVs it seemed to be ok to stay in our van — but it was the off season, so we definitely weren’t taking a spot away from a hopeful tent camper. After we found a spot and settled in, we set out on a long walk around the lake, admiring the white sand on the shore, the high rocky cliffs, and walked a little bit of the Katy trail. While there was plenty of snow on the ground here, it was actually decent temperature-wise, so we were all able to enjoy this walk together. Curtis ended up going on another walk to look for letterboxes later, then I made dinner and we had our last night in the van for a while.

On our final day of the drive, we did a little cleaning and winterizing of the van before we set off. We drove through St. Louis, picked up donuts and a matcha on the Illinois side, then powered through the rest of our drive North to Ottawa. We took I-55 to I-39, picking up some more new counties on the way, then pressed on to I-80 and finally our home for the month, the Fairfield in Ottawa. We were welcomed by some familiar faces right away, though we know that Charlotte was the one everyone was the happiest to see. We settled in to our room, then ran a couple errands and picked up a deep dish pizza from Rosati’s.

And that was our very abrupt ending to our 7 week long Southwestern road trip! We’re so thankful that we had so much time to be where we love, to skip out on a month of winter and see both people and places that we love. I am overwhelmed by gratitude that this is our life, that Curtis has a job he enjoys that allows us to take trips like this. And the memories of these fun times in warm and beautiful places have carried us through the months that have followed, which have been mostly filled with work and your typical Midwest temperamental weather. More on that, coming up next!