Across the valley from the pads at Leasburg Dam State Park, the spires of the Organ Mountains catch the first sun while the cottonwoods along the Rio Grande are still in shadow. The campground is on the river north of Las Cruces, a small place with a cactus garden among the desert plantings and a sky dark enough that the park runs night-sky programs after sundown. Its observatory opens once a month, so check the date against your week before you lock it in.
A motorhome here gets plugged in on the first afternoon and mostly stays put. Days run out to the mountains and back, the evening walk goes down to the river under the cottonwoods, and dinner happens at the pad with the air conditioner carrying the rig through the heat. Summer is hot enough that the electric hookup is what makes a family week work, and winter, with its mild days, is the season for a long parked stay.
Leasburg is a small campground, so reserve a hookup site through ReserveAmerica before you choose the rig, and build the week around the dates you get. If the park is full, or you're coming in late on the first night, Hacienda RV Resort in Las Cruces has full hookups and pull-through sites up to 110 feet, and it's an easy place to sleep before heading up to the river.
The Organ Mountains by day
The Organs fill the eastern skyline from almost anywhere in Las Cruces, a jagged wall of rock you'll have been watching from the pad every morning, and most days out of Leasburg end up pointed at them. Go for a hike in the foothills or just to see the spires close up in the late light, then head back to the river for the evening and the stars.
Aguirre Spring, the campground in a bowl under the spires on the far side of the range, sits at the end of a road that isn't built for a motorhome. That night under the rock leads the Las Cruces campervan page, and a campervan is the better fit if a tight mountain road or a trip for two is the plan.
White Sands makes the long day out, east over the pass on US-70 to gypsum dunes so white the afternoon glare makes you squint, and pairing it with an overnight at Oliver Lee is the campervan trip. City of Rocks, with its volcanic pillars standing up out of the grassland, and the Gila beyond it run west on the same campervan page, and from the Leasburg pad they're a long day each.
Elephant Butte Lake and the marina row
Up the Rio Grande, Elephant Butte Lake is the other place to settle a rig for the whole week. It's a big desert reservoir with the butte itself standing out of the water and boats lined up along the marina, and on a long stay you watch the light move across it from morning coffee to the last glow on the far shore.
The lake has been running low, so the shore below the marina is wide and pale, and the week here is about chairs on the sand, the awning out, and the boats as scenery. The state park's 144 water-and-electric sites are where a family settles in, so reserve the site before the rig, and aim for the cooler months when midday on the shore is comfortable.
For the rest of the state, the New Mexico RV page ranks the trips region by region, and Albuquerque covers the Balloon Fiesta in a rig.