My husband and I were driving NM Highway 9 from El Paso to Rodeo early in March. When we came to Hachita, 45 miles west of Columbus, Hal, who is an incorrigible "wonder where that road goes," drove through the small village. In so doing, we discovered a most unique church, Saint Catherine of Sienna. It was locked, so we drove on and stopped at The Egg Nest for lunch. When we talked to the proprietor we asked about the church. He said, "If you want to see it, I have the key," then pointed out the copy of its history. Totally intrigued now, we borrowed the key and drove the few blocks back to the church.

The rugged Old West town known as Lordsburg is located in Southwest New Mexico's bootheel by Interstate 10, 24 miles east of the Arizona border. The Lordsburg of today is a quiet community compared to its earlier shoot-em-up days. Life was lively and sometimes perilous around 1880 when the Santa Fe Railroad was constructed and Lordsburg was founded.

Cotton and cowboys, cacti and copper, cavalry and coyotes, chile and coatimundi - and the Chiricahua Apaches. All these help characterize the most southwestern part of Hidalgo County, called the Bootheel of New Mexico, where you will find the small communities of Playas, Animas, and Cotton City.

Put on a cowboy hat, grab a miner’s pick, and get out your birder’s field glasses. You may have need of them when you explore the three neighboring villages on the border of Arizona and New Mexico’s boot heel - Road Forks, Rodeo, and Portal. As you travel east or west on Interstate 10, turn off at the Road Forks exit in New Mexico. It marks the I-10 junction with transcontinental Highway 80 and then continues on to Rodeo. Take time to visit Road Forks, settled by the G.H. Porters around 1925 and further developed by the late John Graham whose family still own and operate several businesses there.

For travelers on I-10 in Southern New Mexico, there's an escape from the truck traffic and even from the 20th century: a side trip to the ghost town of Shakespeare, located about three miles south of Lordsburg. Because this place is privately owned by the Hill family, a visitor has to catch one of the weekend tours (Call ahead to schedule).

Sometimes the unseen hand of fate descends to arrange a unique opportunity. When visiting Steins (pronounced Steens) Railroad Ghost Town, just off I-10 in southern New Mexico near the Arizona state line, I had the chance to take a rare photograph.

Located in New Mexico's remote boot heel region, Skeleton Canyon begins in the Peloncillo Mountains on the western edge of the Animas Valley and heads northwest by west to a point where about seven rugged miles later, it meets its south fork in nearby Arizona. Tradition has it that the canyon, called Cañon Bonita by the Mexicans, takes it name from the ambush of a Mexican pack train by Curly Bill Brocius' gang of cutthroats in 1882. According to the story, fifteen Mexicans were killed and their bodies left to the scavengers. For years thereafter, their bones provided grisly souvenirs.