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.