Crossing New Mexico

Last Sunday, we left Homolovi Ruins State Park and headed east into New Mexico. We spent one night in Gallup at USA RV Park. It is a good place to stay for a night or two, especially when you want 50-amp hookups. Monday it was on toward Santa Fe. We have stayed in two different commercial parks there, neither of which we liked. This time we tried Cochiti Lake Corps of Engineers campground a few miles southwest of the city. We really enjoyed the park. It wasn't very full and we had a really nice site.



There is a pretty no-wake lake nearby and we had a good view of it from our RV.



We saw one unusual RV in the campground. I expected some young hippie-types, but this morning I found the occupant was a gray-haired senior woman and her dog. Who would have thought?



The visitor center had a really good map explaining where the water in the Rio Grande River comes from and what causes flooding downstream. Cochiti Dam was built after Albuquerque suffered severe flooding in the 1950s. We wished we had understood more of the river's origins before our time as interpreters at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge along the Rio Grande in Texas last year.



We really liked that campground and will probably stay there again, either to visit Santa Fe or as an overnight stop between Denver and Mesa. But there isn't much to do there unless you boat or visit Tent Rocks National Monument, which we do not intend to do. (See previous post.)

We did drive into Santa Fe for a very good Mexican lunch at the LaFonda Hotel on the plaza. The hotel has interesting painted glass panels around the restaurant and other locations near the lobby.



There are murals on several walls.



This is what our burrito plates looked like before we attacked them. John had the beef and I had the chicken filling.



We were able to walk up to the mezzanine level and see the restaurant from above. As you can see, it was very busy at noon Thursday.



The trip to Santa Fe and good food helped get us back in harmony with our world.

Today we left there and drove to Raton where we found another great campground. We are staying at the NRA Whittington Center which has two full-hook-up capgrounds. The sites are level and very large. We have a great view of the pinon-juniper landscape here and we have been able to watch a small herd of mule deer. There is almost no one here right now. It is a great place to stop, just 10 miles from Raton.



Tomorrow we are headed north, back to Colorado after nearly 7 months in Arizona and New Mexico.