Southern Texas, New Mexico and Arizona Christmas / New Year’s road trip.
 

Toying with the idea of a road trip, last week of December and first week of January. Anywhere in Southern portions of Texas, New Mexico or Arizona. Would like to avoid the snow, but if it happens, it happens.

Could anyone recommend anything to visit, like Native American Reservation, Pow Wow, or interesting place to explore?

Not sure if it’ll materialize, but would like to do something in those 2 weeks.

TIA

in southern New Mexico, you could visit Gila Cliff Dwellings. A farther north, a bit south of Albuquerque is Salinas Pueblo, a ruin. West of Albuquerque is Accoma Pueblo where you can take a tour with a guide. There are also several rock art sites in southern NM.

Also in southern New Mexico are White Sands National park and Carlsbad Caverns NP.

I was eyeing White Sands N.P. too. Thanks for the info.

Where does your road trip start? Your own car or flying in and renting a car somewhere? Depending on where you are coming from, you could take a train to either Tucson or ElPaso and then use a rental car.

The trip could start anywhere, depends on the final interest. I was thinking train & rental or flight and rental, depending on the activities and deal availability. Could be Vegas, Phoenix or even Dallas at this point. I'm not planning on "Commando" style trip too, just a relaxing site seeing and traveling. There will be nothing that I'll have to do. General idea was to contain it south of I-40

Texas - BIg Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park are great but will be pretty busy between Christmas and New Years. Guadalupe Mountains NP, Hueco Tanks SP, Monahans Sandhills SP, Balmorhea SP, Fort Davis National Historical Site, Davis Mountains SP - all good places to visit in Texas. If you end up in the Big Bend area, there are some other cool non-park things to visit - McDonald Observatory, Museum of the Big Bend, the towns of Alpine and Marfa, cross the border to Boquillas, MX inside Big Bend NP...

Arizona - Chiricahua National Monument, Tucson (Saguaro NP, Sabino Canyon, Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum, Mission San Xavier del Bac), Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Phoenix. I know there are Native American reservations scattered all over but have no personal experience visiting any of them.

If you go to Guadalupe Mts. NP, go over to Carlsbad Caverns in NM. Also in New Mexico, you can visit Zuni Pueblo west of Albuquerque. Flying or the train are options for ABQ.

All the places mentioned by WhereAreWe above are great. Outside of Canyon Texas is Palo Duro Canyon State Park and the town itself has a really excellent Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. The Texas hill country is nice, like Fredericksburg, and Johnson City has some of the most amazing Christmas lights you'll ever see. The only Indian reservations I have been on, other than a casino outside Tucson, is northern NM.

As you noted snow is a possibility, but even worse would be an ice storm. We were in this area Christmas-New Years 2014-15 and there was a huge ice storm that stretched from Amarillo to Austin to Big Bend. Our reservations in Marathon and Big Bend were cancelled at the last minute. Much of West Texas had no power. By a combination of lucky timing and keeping an eye on the storm track we were able to alter our plans and mostly avoid it. Three days later there were still sheets of ice 1/4" thick, or more, on north facing areas in Alpine where we stayed for a couple of days. But keep an eye on the weather, which might dictate your route.

Big storms like this less likely in AZ or NM I think.

Thanks for pointing out the Ice Storm, didn't take that under consideration.But it'll be something I'll have to pay attention to on everyday bases. Where do we end up? It'll all depends on the weather condition. I have 2 weeks window to do something and I don't want to make any hard plans or bookings ahead of the time.

We will be driving from the Phoenix area to New Orleans next April. We will leave Phoenix on April 20 with the goal of reaching New Orleans early afternoon on May 1st. Would the New Mexico and Texas recommendations in this thread work for us on that road trip?

Why wouldn't it? As long as you'll pick and choose the places of your interests limited by the time frame of your drive & how much time you'd like to spend at each point of interest. Also, how far you are willing to drive per day/night would defy how far away you could detour from your planned driving route, so you could get there by May 1st.

Major difference will be the temperatures. You're looking at mid to upper 80s for highs. It will be cooler than Phoenix temps though.