Camping in New Mexico--December 5,6,7

We have been camping in New Mexico State Parks for the last few days. We started at Oasis State Park between Clovis and Portales. We arrived there after dark on December 4. We pulled into a boondocking site when we first arrived. After looking at a map and walking around the area, we moved to an electric hook-up site. Boondocking sites in New Mexico state parks have water hookups!

As you can see in the picture below, our site was nice. All electric sites have a covered picnic area and a grill.

The next morning we hiked their trails and talked with the rangers (one was retired army) before leaving. They are in the process of renovating the fishing lake. It is usually stocked with trout and catfish. This picture is a view of the dry lake.We drove from Oasis to Bottomless Lakes State Park near Roswell which was about a 2 hour drive.The lakes are not really bottomless, they range from 8-90 feet deep. They were originally formed from water passing through limestone (creating sinkholes). The picture above is one of Mirror Lake. There are 2 sides to the lake--the right side can support game fish, but the left one is too saline for fish to survive.

The next picture is of us at Lazy Lagoon. It is the largest of the bottomless lakes.

As you can see, the terrain is different than what we are used to seeing. We are at an elevation of about 3500'. There are some small hills in the area, but most of the area is flat.

We went geocaching Dec. 6. One cache was south of the campground and overlooked the park.

It was one of a series of caches hidden in each of New Mexico's 33 counties. We hope to get them all in the next few months. Joyce is holding the Chavez County cache.

After caching, we walked the 1.9 mile trail between the campground and the visitor center. We got back to our campsite too late to get the sunset picture. We were rewarded the next morning with a fantastic sunrise.

We used our coffee to toast to another adventure filled day of retirement.

December 7 is a museum day. We have to go see the aliens!