Souvenirs From The Road: Hi There New Mexico!

Sunday, June 26 - Happy birthday to Ron today! And yes, we are a little excited about leaving on a road trip to Utah!!! We ended a great weekend at Fentress with Amy, Aiden and James and even a visit from my cousin Susan. What a send off!

Aiden told us bye! Not sure if he understood we won't see him for 4 months!

Our destination was Lake Brownwood State Park, about a 3 hour drive away. We haven't been here in about 25 years, but it was a great place to start our trip. Full hook ups meant I could catch up on all the laundry from the weekend and our guests. We enjoyed a quick swim in the lake and a good hike off of our camping loop.

Lake Brownwood

Check out these flowers along the trail! Beautiful!

We struck off Monday morning for the New Mexico border. Although we are retired and have all the time in the world, truth be known I had made us reservations starting July 1 so we wouldn't be stranded over the July 4th weekend. So, we felt like we wanted to get on down the road a little quicker.

We stopped in Post TX at Holly's Diner. Great lunch in a dairy mart atmosphere, complete with carhops.

Cheeseburgers are recommended!

We found a really good campsite at Oasis State Park outside of Portales, NM. There is a really small lake here. Lots of locals fishing. We took a hike over the sand dunes. Great sunset. Beautiful stars. Yes, we are glad to be retired and living the dream!

Welcome to New Mexico!

Our campsite at Oasis State Park. Sites are great! Electric and water cost only $14 a night!

Hiking along the sand dunes.

It may look like water, but it is more like salt.

The captain on his walk.

How about that sunset!

Small but pretty lake.

The next day found us headed toward Santa Fe. We stopped off at Pecos National Historical Park. One of our goals now is to take the time to stop and explore any historical park we come close to. There is so much to see and do. And it's not any fun to just drive all day without seeing/doing/exploring somewhere you haven't been before. The park is located at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. It has a history of 10,000 years of Pueblo and Plains Indians, about 2,000 inhabitants. After our tour at the park, we drove on to Hyde Memorial State Park for the night. Didn't really realize that you had to travel through Santa Fe downtown to get there. Quite an adventure. I don't really recommend this park if you have a big rig. The electric sites are right on a highway, that dead ends at the Snow Santa Fe Ski Resort. Never could figure out why so much traffic! It is pretty and there are all kinds of hiking trails in the National Forest.

The remains of a very large church built at the location.

Our park service busy at keeping up with restorations.

Inside the remains of the church structure.

Found this teepee on a hike at the park that evening. Seemed to be currently in use.

On the road to Ski Santa Fe.

Sangre De Cristo Mountains

Don't think you could lose this RV!

One of the items on my bucket list is to visit Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The problem is is that there is not a good campground anywhere close by. There is a campground at the park, but you have to realize it is a long bumpy road to get there and not recommended for mid to large rigs. So, we decided to drive on up to Aztec and take in the Aztec Ruins National Monument. Pretty awesome place. From the late 1000s to the late 1200s the Pueblo people planned and built a settlement here that included large public buildings, structures and ceremonial buildings. It was a pretty cool master plan that was set out by the first builders. It is near the Animas River.