NM State Parks Spring 2019 Summary

Now that I'm home, it's time to summarize the experiences of the last six and a half weeks, including a comparison with Mom and Dad's weeks spent in the New Mexico State Parks during their retirement. It was quite nostalgic to visit many of the same places they loved so much. Richard even remembered which camp site in Navajo Lake Pine campground they liked to reserve. Unfortunately, site 4 is now designated as a camp host spot, so we couldn't camp in it, but every time I walked the loop with Hanna, I thought of them. Every time, I stood overlooking the lake, I thought of Dad taking his boat out and finding a favorite fishing spot. Every hour I spent reading, I thought of Mom relaxing in their fifth wheel while Dad was out on the water. And many of the sight seeing side trips Dale and I took were because I had read about them in Mom's journals.

Mom left a stack of journals where I rediscovered the excitement of their travels.

I didn't track all my expenses or mileage this year. After traveling in my Minnie for 3 years, I know what my gas mileage is (~7.5 towing my Fit), and my campground expenses were mostly covered by the annual pass I purchased for $225.

We camped in four state parks; Percha Dam, Bluewater Lake, Navajo Lake and Heron Lake, as well as a couple of boon docks outside the parks. We visited three more parks; Caballo, Elephant Butte and El Vado. My favorite campground was Heron, but the lake was so low we didn't enjoy the view much. That award goes to Navajo, especially since that lake has several arms and varying perspectives from the campgrounds and roads around it.

The best part of the trip was spending it with Dale. We really enjoyed camping together, each with our own Minnies, taking lots of trips to see the sights or running into the Walmart in the nearest town, walking the campground loops and trails, and sitting around an evening campfire making S'mores.

I really appreciated him accommodating my desire to visit certain locations. He might have wandered a little farther east or stayed longer in each spot if I hadn't been spurring him to move and discover a new adventure with me.

His summer plans are to mozy around northern Arizona, and try to find places to put his kayak in the creeks, streams and lakes there. I think I will try to escape the Valley heat and join him for a few weeks up in the mountains. Then next fall, I hope to head back east and drive the Nachez Trace Parkway end to end. Maybe I can convince him to tag along with me!

Maybe I can convince my readers to tag along too, via this blog!

Headed home

Dale and I left Navajo on Saturday morning, and drove south to Thoreau, where instead of turning east and driving into Bluewater Lake State Park, we kept going into the Cibola National Forest. Dale had boon docked in a nice location a couple of years ago, and we drove directly to his old site and set up camp. The road was a little rough, but doable with the big wheels on our Minnies. We spent a quiet night in the forest without seeing another soul, not even the four legged kind.

On Sunday morning, we said our good byes (for now), and I drove back to I-40 and turned west, while he made plans to turn east and back to the Bluewater Lake campground. I turned south on Highway 87 in Winslow, and made my way to Blue Ridge Ranger Station, and an overnight site next to Richard and Dianna. After Dianna and I took a nice forest walk, we had elk burgers for dinner, and I discovered they are delicious! Much chatting and an NBA basketball game filled the rest of our evening.

I made it home just before noon on Monday, to find 98° heat awaiting me.

She climbed up on the seat as we came through Mesa. She knows we're almost home!

Throughout the afternoon, I managed to get my Minnie put away in my back yard and emptied. I'm pooped! No walk for Hanna and me tonight.

Back to Navajo

After a wonderful week at the Heron Lake campground, Dale and I discovered the weather forecast had turned nasty and that area was in for cold and snow the next week, so on Sunday, we packed up and headed back to Navajo. We pulled into Pine campground and took two electric sites, with plans to hunker down a few days before the weather turned nice again. I discovered I have an electric heat setting on my heat pump AC, and it sure came in handy when the snow began to fall there!!

On Wednesday night, the campground began to fill with folks getting an early start to the long Memorial Day weekend ahead. At 10:30 p.m. some campers pulled in across the road from me and made raucous noise until 3:30 in the morning.

Dale and I decided it was time to move up the road to Juniper, the quieter non-electric campground. We found two great sites next to each other on the end of the far loop, and it was bliss for the next 10 days.

Waiting for graham cracker crumbs to drop

We mostly hung around camp for the week, walking 2-3 times each day and ending the evenings with a campfire and S'mores. It was lovely to just relax and enjoy being together.

On Thursday (May 30), we piled Hanna and ourselves into the car and drove north to Durango, Colorado. We had googled "things to do in Durango" and found a list of sites and attractions. We started at the Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum, wandering through a lot of artifacts of both the railroad, and also other historical forms of transportation. From there we went to Nini's Taquerio for huge delicious burritos. With full tummies, we made our way to the Animas Museum, which was also quite interesting, well worth the $4 senior price of admission. We drove another dozen miles north to visit the Pinkerton Hot Springs, a cool little pull-off site where warm soda water bubbles up and over the rocks creating streaks of color that cascade down the hill. The green and snow capped mountain behind it is the perfect backdrop.

By that time, it was mid afternoon, so we headed back south, meandering down the pretty road through the Colorado landscape.

The following weekend, a bunch of twenty somethings filled the campsites around us, and we knew it was again time to move on. Home was calling, chores and appointments are building up, and I'm longing to see my kids and grandkids again.

Exploring around Heron Lake

We spent a relaxing and pleasant week at Heron Lake State Park. Every day, Hanna and I walked all the campground loops and some of the trail that runs from the Visitor’s Center to the dam, passing through each of the five campgrounds along the lake shore. We monitored the small amount of activity in and out of the campground. It was a very quiet week; so much so, that I actually got spooked one evening walking a distant loop and came upon a man camped all alone in his car. I got to thinking about what a good place it would be for an escaped fugitive to hide out. Hanna and I hurried back to our Minnie.

There’s not a lot to do or see around Heron, but we did take a few day trips to explore the area. We stopped at the dam one day to have a look.

We drove over to El Vado Lake twice. The first time, we took the north road to Stone House Lodge, where Mom and Dad stayed one summer. The park is really run down now and the business is barely hanging on. We carefully drove up a dirt road to the north lake shore, but it is very low too, and there was really no beauty to see.

We explored the south end of the lake a few days later, where the State Park campgrounds are located. It was a nicer lake view, but the campsites are more out in the open. We both agreed we like Heron better for camping.

We drove back into Chama one day to visit the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, but it was not open for tours until Memorial Day weekend. We wandered through the town welcome center (nothing to see), and headed back to camp.

The last day before we left, we drove down to Abiquiu Reservoir. Richard has told us about how the rivers wind through these many lakes before finally supplying water to the city of Albuquerque, so we decided to see if the lake nearest there would be any fuller. It’s a pretty lake, but a treeless landscape. There was one sailboat, but otherwise the lakeshore was quiet.

On the way to Abiquiu, we stopped at Echo Canyon. This was the sightseeing highlight of the week and we just stumbled on it and decided to stop. I’ll let the photos show how pretty and how cool this place was.

I’d like to embed a video but I can’t from my phone, so here’s a link if you’d like to hear the echo.  

https://youtu.be/KQsIKAIlz54

We were planning to stay at Heron until Tuesday, but a nasty weather forecast forced us to move up our departure date to Sunday, when we skedaddled back to Navajo.

The Road to Heron

Dale and I packed up, hit the dump on the way out, and headed across Navajo Dam toward Chama and Heron Lake State Park. Now the road across the dam is a scary experience, even without a construction crew working on it. It’s a narrow two lane, with no guard rails and steep drop offs on both sides. Luckily, there is not much traffic on it. Usually. We started across, both of us straddling the center line until we came upon a pickup truck parked in the oncoming lane, sitting over the center line. There was just barely enough room to slowly squeeze past without falling off the cliff, but we both made it with at least a quarter of an inch to spare.

Google photo

It was pretty smooth sailing from there to Dulce, where we pulled into a small church parking lot for a quick potty break. The pastor saw us and immediately came out to welcome us and invite us to unhitch, set up camp and stay awhile. We tried to be as courteous as we could, while extricating ourselves from the “new best friends trap” he was attempting to create.

We filled with gas and groceries in Chama, before driving on to Heron Lake State Park. We pulled into the Visitor’s Center parking lot where I unhitched my car, and we drove through all the campgrounds to find the best sites and the best cell signal. We found two nice sites in Brushy Point where we both received 3 bars of LTE, dropped a lawn chair in each one, and went back to get our Minnies.

Heron Lake

Beautiful walking trails around the campgrounds. 

The lake is extremely low - unpleasantly so - but the campground is beautiful, with large, well spaced, level sites. There were only three other campers when we arrived and few campers came and left throughout the week. At one point we were the only two in the whole campground, and when we left, there was just a lone class B still there.

The weather was nice, but cool, the first several days, but turned more chilly as the week wore on. When the forecast called for snow the following week, we decided to load up on Sunday and head back down to Navajo, 1000 feet lower elevation, in search of warmer spring.

I’ll recap our sightseeing around Heron in the next post.

Navajo Lake (& Dam) State Park

Dale and I left Bluewater on the first of May and drove north toward Navajo Lake. The trip was about 150 miles, but we decided to split it into two days. We took Highway 371 to Bisti De-Na-Zin Wilderness, where we found an overnight parking lot. We hiked out through the hoodoos, exploring the interesting scenery. There were lots of photographers and hikers car-camped beside us, but we had a quiet night.

The next morning, we drove on to Navajo Dam and into the campground. There were very few primitive (non electric/water) sites, so we took a couple sites with hookups. It’s been a luxury that we have really appreciated since we’ve had some very chilly temps and a couple of nasty rainy days, so the electric furnace has felt mighty good.

Dale and I wanted to visit Chaco Culture National Historic Park, but reports of the terrible road to the site have scared us off. Instead, we satisfied our curiosity with a tour of Aztec Ruins National Monument. This well preserved ancient settlement was built and inhabited by ancestral Pueblo people about 900 years ago. Much of the village remains, and the largest “Great Kiva” (ceremonial building) has been fully restored and represents an important central sanctuary, which the native tribes believe are still inhabited by the spirits of their ancestors.

We killed a lot of time plus three trips to theVerizon store in Farmington trying to switch my carrier from AT&T. After finally jumping through a bunch of hoops, we discovered my iPhone 7+ is not compatible with Verizon. Since I’m not ready to buy a new phone this spring, I will stick with the plan I have for now.

Otherwise, we have filled our days with walks to the lake, hikes up the hill to the closed campgrounds above ours, and lots of reading and TV. It’s been a relaxing week and a half here where Mom and Dad spent so many wonderful summers in their retirement years. I can see why they loved it so much. It’s a great area.

On Monday, we will pack up and move to Heron Lake State Park. Dale has predicted I will love the campground (with the possible exception of spotty cell signal), so I’m anxious and ready to move over there for a week or so.

Sightseeing around Bluewater Lake

Roasting hot dogs

Dale and I have been at Bluewater for nearly a week. It’s been nice and cool most days, with overnight lows in the 40s. We have had wind and light rain the last couple days, putting a little damper on outdoor adventures.

One day, we hiked the Canyonside Trail. This trail is less than a mile total, but it’s a little rugged climbing down the mountainside, hiking along the stream, balancing on rocks and downed logs to cross the stream twice, and then climbing back up to the campground. But it was a very nice day, and there was beautiful scenery to enjoy. We found several swallows nests attached under the cliffs, but no other wildlife.

Zoom in to see the swallow’s nests attached to the cliff wall

We took a day trip down to Bandera Volcano and the Ice Cave. Visitors to this attraction can hike 3/4 mile up to the volcano (and back), reading interesting facts along the way about the history of the area and see many lava formations.

When we returned to the base, we then ventured a half mile down to the ice cave. This interesting cavern stays at 30° year round inside the mouth, but just 10’ back from the opening, it’s normal air temperature. The ice floor is centuries old and about 25’ deep. Visitors are limited to viewing the ice formations from a platform just above the opening of the cave.

Dale wanted to show me where he had camped last year on the west side of the lake, and also check out if I could get an AT&T signal over there, so one day we took Hanna and drove up I-40 to Thoreau and down the back road to the lake. There is just a very primitive campground there in the park, with pit toilets. But then we drove out along a forest road for a short distance and found the large, open, beautiful spot where he had disperse camped. It was outside the park, hidden from the road, and he said he stayed there three weeks because it was so nice for him.

Yesterday morning, we walked up to the dam overlook and just happened to time it when a maintenance worker was opening one of the spillway pipes. We saw first a trickle of black water come through the sluice, then a rush of brown water, and finally a clean gusher that shot out a few feet from the dam wall. Then we watched as the worker locked the door, climbed a ladder up the side of the dam, walked across the top of the dam, and disappeared out of our sight. By the time we got back to the trailhead, he was coming up the road in his truck. I’d like to go back to the dam overlook tomorrow morning to see if the water is still running or if he closed it back down today.

Today, we drove into Grants and went through the Mining Museum. Seniors get a bargain rate of $3, and that included a video and a walking tour of an underground uranium mine. It was quite interesting, with recordings from several former miners describing the process, different elements and areas of the mine as we studied the old equipment and remnants of ore left behind. The miners made a very good salary for their difficult and dangerous work, but many of them died from lung cancer after exposure to uranium dust for so many years.

We are heading out tomorrow for Navajo Lake. We’ll make a two day trip of the journey. I’m looking forward to staying again in a place Mom and Dad loved to visit in their retirement RVing years. See you down the road!