Ute Lake State Park, Logan, NM

We drove just under 100 miles today to get to our last New Mexico State Park, Ute Lake. We had never been here before, and will most likely never come back again, except possibly for an overnight stop. This is one of the least attractive parks we’ve seen in New Mexico, since there are no visible mountains, and not much in the way of vegetation. The sites are laid out so most of them have no views of the lake. The one good thing is that the pull-thru sites are so long there was no need to disconnect the car for the night.

We did take a walk around the park, and being windy and overcast today, the lake wasn’t  much to look at anyway. This place is obviously designed for boaters and fishermen, and I guess the weekends are busy but there are only a handful of people here.

We had been told by a friend that there was no Verizon service here, and we have no signal on the phone, but with the booster we are at least able to get a slow internet connection.
On our way here we took a short detour and drove through Tucumcari, another Route 66 town that has seen much better days. We heard the Dinosaur Museum is worth seeing, but no time for that today.
Tomorrow it’s Texas!

Santa Rosa Lake State Park, NM

We are now at Santa Rosa Lake State Park, near Santa Rosa, NM, a 130 mile drive from Valley of Fires. We spent a week here in 2009, but forgot what a nice park it is. We even have a distant view of the lake, and there are lots of trees, a nice change.
The winds have finally calmed, but we heard on the news last night that two national forests in New Mexico are closed, and more may follow. It has been so windy and dry this year there have been quite a few fires, and the state is trying to prevent any more until there is rainfall. All the state parks have a ban on fires of any kind, even charcoal grills. They are still allowing propane grills, though, I guess until someone does something stupid and starts a fire with one.
The lake levels are also down from lack of rain. Our neighbor told us the lake was 30’ higher last year at this time.

When we got back from a walk yesterday afternoon, we found Oreo on the dash sound asleep in quite an unusual position. Check out that back leg.  

And not to slight Quincy, he’s pretty good at relaxing, too.

Valley of Fires Recreation Area, Carrizozo, NM

We’ve endured another couple of extremely windy days at Elephant Butte, so when it looked like the winds had died down this morning we hit the road for Valley of Fires. a former New Mexico state park which was taken over by the BLM. This is actually our third time here, a small, pretty campground on a ridge overlooking the lava fields.
The winds did pick up along our 115 mile trip, but it was a tailwind for the last 50 miles or so. When we got out to unhook the car in the campground, what a surprise to see that our Protect-a-Tow, the screen which supposedly keeps rocks and debris from hitting the car, was completely gone! Apparently the bungee cord broke somewhere along our route. I found the broken bungee near the park entrance when I walked down to the pay station, so Jim got in the car and backtracked a few miles thinking it had not fallen off too far back, but no luck. I’m sure it is blowing in the wind somewhere in New Mexico.
We had cabin fever after the past two days, so we did take a walk after we got here, wind and all. There is a nice paved trail through the lava flows, but you can actually walk on the lava and explore wherever you like.

We even saw one cactus blooming. As dry as it’s been this year, not much has been in bloom this spring.

We will be glad to get to Missouri where it should be nice and green after all the rain they’ve had.

Truth or Consequences, NM

This was a big weekend for the town of Truth or Consequences, also known as T or C. It was the 62nd annual Fiesta and Renaissance Fair, held at the Ralph Edwards Park along the Rio Grande. There is a parade, poker tournament, bull riding, live music, duck race, junk boat race, arts and crafts vendors, karaoke contest, etc.
Also the Geronimo Springs Museum downtown had free admission all weekend, so we decided to make a day of it and head to T or C yesterday. Our first stop was for lunch at Cafe Bella Luca, a wonderful Italian restaurant which we’ve eaten at before. The grilled pizza is excellent, and the atmosphere is very upscale for the town. We realized it was the first time we’ve eaten in a classy sit down restaurant in a long, long time, and it was a nice change.
The Geronimo Springs Museum was just around the corner, so we stopped in to see what was there.

They have an interesting collection of things relating to the history of Sierra County, NM. There is a huge collection of prehistoric pottery and arrowheads displayed in a really creative and colorful way, a room dedicated to the history of Geronimo, an old log cabin, rocks, fossils, military displays, etc. This is the only picture we took inside the museum. Would you order a beer from that bartender?

There is also a room honoring Ralph Edwards, host of the radio and TV show “Truth or Consequences”, who challenged a town to change it’s name to Truth or Consequences in 1950, in honor of the tenth anniversary of the show. The town of Hot Springs, NM voted to change it’s name, and Ralph Edwards brought his show to town the first weekend in May, 1950 for the first T or C Fiesta. He returned every year for 50 years, long after the show went off the air.
We aren’t big museum people, and had we paid $6 each to get in would have been disappointed, but for free it was an hour well spent.
After all that culture we were ready for something different, so we went to the park to watch the Junk Boat race.

Here are the rules: “Junk boats must be made out of homemade or recycled materials -- pipes, styrofoam, beer cans, etc...but absolutely no boat parts, screws, or nails!”
The winners. They were way ahead of the rest of the bunch.

It was in the 90’s, and although they were going downstream there was a strong headwind, so none of them appeared to be having much fun.





We never did hear what the prizes were, but I have a feeling they weren’t much.
Although T or C is supposed to be a big retirement and arts community, it is a sad looking town, and one we can’t imagine living in. Maybe we’re missing something, but we’ve yet to figure it out.

South Monticello Campground, Elephant Butte Lake State Park, NM

Yesterday we moved about 20 miles north of Truth or Consequences to Elephant Butte Lake State Park, South Monticello Campground. This is our third time here, and we really like the spacious sites, nice views, and few other people. That will change over the weekend, though, since all the reserved sites are taken for Friday and Saturday. The New Mexico State Parks usually set aside about half of the campsites for reservations during the summer season, to give the locals a chance for a good site. Unfortunately what they’ve done here is put the two waterfront loops on reservation only, so those of us coming in without a reservation are stuck with the less desirable sites. We still have a nice view but we’re not as close to the lake as we’d like.

Oreo has especially been enjoying it. We have been really worried about him as he was barely eating last week, but we’ve been very diligent about his medicine, and for whatever reason over the past four days, he’s been eating like crazy, wanting to go outside, and interacting with us rather than just sleeping behind a chair. Hope it lasts for awhile.

While I cleaned dust and bugs off the rig yesterday, Jim drained and flushed the hot water tank. There weren’t as many chunks of white calcium deposits as we’ve seen on previous flushings, so we wondered if it is just permanently attaching to the inside of the tank now.
Today we took a long hike on the only trail in the park, getting off the trail at Three Sisters Point, a primitive camping area with lake access. There is an interesting little community of about 10 mobile homes on the road to the point. Took a few pictures of some things we saw there.
No, didn’t see any, just the sign.

You gotta love the Yellow Submarine propane tank.

And this truck was pretty well camouflaged.

These looked like some kind of skulls on the fence posts. It is quite an eclectic neighborhood.


We’ll probably spend a week here, then move a bit faster as we work our way to Missouri by the end of the month.

Caballo Lake State Park, NM

We are spending a couple nights at Caballo Lake State Park, about 20 miles south of Truth or Consequences, NM. It’s our first time here, and while we have a nice view of the lake, with the Caballo mountains as the backdrop, we’re not crazy about the campground layout.
Our view.

There are only a few very short trails here, but we walked around the park and over to the primitive campground, which is a huge area near the lake for boondocking or tent camping. There were some nice spots closer to the water, and down in the trees.

This spot even came with it’s own primitive chair. Jim tried it out and said it was pretty comfortable.

One more lake view from our hike. The wind has finally eased up a bit.

Just a reminder to use caution at the dump here. It’s a narrow road and there is a curb on the passenger side which caught our step when I went out of the rig, then the step would not retract. Luckily Jim was able to slowly move forward while scraping the bottom of the step until it came free, and it seems to be working fine now.

Tour of the Gila, Silver City, NM

The wind was “only” 25 mph yesterday so we took a 32 mile drive north to Silver City, a nice community of about 10,000 people near the Gila National Forest. We really liked the historic downtown, where the Tour of the Gila bicycle race was taking place for the 25th year.
This is a picture of a pedestrian bridge over the Big Ditch Park, which looks like a river. It was actually the original Main Street, but flooding in the late 1800’s dropped the street down 55’, so the town was rebuilt a block away. The ditch remains and has water flowing in it year round.

We used to follow professional cycling when we had a house and cable TV, so we were excited to be able to watch a bike race. Saturday’s stage was a criterium, where the riders go multiple times around a set course, in this case a 1.1 mile loop through downtown. We got there in time to watch the pro women’s race. They had to ride around 25 times.

The pro men followed but they went around 40 times, and appeared to be riding much faster than the women. We walked the route during each race so we could watch them at different points of the course. Amazingly there were no crashes on these tight turns.

The tires are piled up for cushioning in the event of a crash.

Western New Mexico University is located here, so we saw a couple vegetarian restaurants and health food co-ops. We tend to like small college towns. Makes for interesting people watching, with lots of wildly colored hair and tattoos. And cute dogs. This is Mesa, who carries her favorite toys with her everywhere she goes. Her owner was a character also, who had obviously spent too much time at the Beer Garden.

This guy had the right idea.

Since we were too early for dinner, we indulged in a Pantani Pink gelato, in honor of  Marco Pantani, a famous Italian cyclist who was a former Tour De France winner. He died in 2004 of a cocaine overdose. The gelato was sour cherry with bits of dark chocolate and it was excellent.
We had a really fun afternoon, and have put Silver City on our list of places to come back to. Next time we intend to visit the Gila Cliff dwellings.

More Rocks

We love big rocks, and especially love scrambling around on them. Besides the actual hiking trails at City of Rocks, you can walk anywhere in the rocks. We spent a couple hours doing just that yesterday, and this morning took a short hike around before the 48 mph wind gusts came.

 
It’s like going through a maze in places.
   
This is actually a tent site, and there is a picnic table under the balanced rock. How cool is that?

We are fortunate that our site is somewhat protected from the wind, and with all the rocks and vegetation, we haven’t had the blowing dirt like we did at Rockhound.

We had a nice visit this morning from Jerry, who is the owner of the red Lazy Daze. He’s an interesting fellow who's been fulltiming in a 22’ 1990 model, with two cats, for the past 6 years. He recently had to replace the engine in his RV, and he said he intends to keep traveling in it for the foreseeable future.
I forgot to mention that there is no dump station at this park, which means if you stay long enough it’s a 30 mile drive to the nearest RV park in Deming to dump tanks. They do have nice showers at the restroom by the Visitor Center, though. And we have pretty good Verizon cell and internet, but TV reception is not great. Now if this relentless wind would let up we would be much happier.

City of Rocks State Park, NM

We finally left Rockhound for City of Rocks, a very nice state park 30 miles north of Deming on the way to Silver City. After a few scattered farms, the scenery along the drive is rolling hills and grasslands.  As you enter the park, these rocks come into view. It is much more impressive in real life. The pictures just can’t capture it.

The view out our window. They have staggered the power sites and spaced them far enough apart that we can’t see our neighbors.

The rocks look like they were just dropped in the middle of nowhere, and the park has been built around them.

The rocks were formed from volcanic ash and sculpted by wind and water over millions of years. The park has done a great job incorporating the campsites among the rocks. This is an old red Lazy Daze in one of the primitive sites tucked in the rocks. We haven’t met them yet, but they have a nice private site.

We decided to take one of the hookup sites, since we are in store for more big winds tomorrow, and it is nice to be able to run the air while everything is shut up to keep the dust out. Monday and Tuesday at Rockhound, we were pretty much homebound, with 30-40 mph winds and gusts to 50. Tuesday was a complete brown-out, and when it was over we were coated with dirt, inside and out. They are predicting the same for tomorrow, but we’re hoping with the rocks and vegetation, maybe the blowing dust won’t be as bad here.
Yesterday we hiked the trail around the perimeter of the park, and up to Observation Point, for about a 4.5 mile walk. It’s fairly flat here so it was a nice easy hike. After two days of being holed up in the RV it felt good to get out.
Some views from the trail and lots of rocks.





The Visitor Center has an interesting walkway that appears to be a continuation of the road. It made for a good photo op.

Time to go for another hike since we may be stuck inside again for the next couple days. At least it is warm and dry, and no tornados like some other parts of the country.