Back to New Mexico
We left the Carolinas in mid March. We spent a week at a Village Creek State Park in Arkansas. It’s a nice park that is well cared for and has a nice quiet campground. After that, we stopped back in at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. We really enjoyed our stay back here in the fall and it was even better with cooler weather for this stop. We explored some new parts of the refuge and will likely stop here again one day.
In the fall we had visited northern New Mexico. On this trip we would stop in central and western NM. Our first stop was in Clovis at an alpaca farm. It was just a quick one night stop but enjoyed hanging out with the alpacas and learning a bit about them. Our first week long stop was in Oliver Lee State Park, just outside Alamogorda, NM. It’s a nice little park backed right up against the mountains. It’s a typical desert environment. There were several trails to hike and the cactus and chollas were starting to bloom. While were we here we did visit the White Sands National Park.
One of the chollas in bloom. It’s surprising to see such bright colors in the desert.
This is a large agave plant.
While driving to go to the Organ Mountains NM, we ran across several of these Oryx. They were brought here from Africa for hunting purposes and they have thrived in this environment.
Ocotillo just about to pop.
Our campsite at Oliver Lee SP.
The state park adjoins the national forest and adds to the seclusion of the park.
We’re not sure why but Nika loves sand. She prances even more than usual in it.
At White Sands National Park.
We borrowed some saucers from the camp host and all went sledding on the sand.
Our next stop for the week would be near Silver City but we would make a one night visit to City Of Rocks State Park along the way. This giant pile of rocks just seems to pop up out of nowhere amidst the scrubland in central NM. The campsites tuck into the nooks and crannies of the rocks. Silver City is a cute little city that seems to be having a rebirth of it’s downtown area.
Quite an unusual little park with these racks that seemed to have been dumped in a random place.
Sunset behind the rocks.
A nice quiet spot for the night at City of Rocks.
Downtown Silver City, before anyone is up.
We then headed up the road to Cosmic Campground. It is in the Gila National Forest and is a primitive camp, with no electric or water. We camped at one of the dispersed sites off the road into the campground. While we stayed here we visited the Mogollon ghost town, Mineral Creek canyon and the Catwalk Recreation area.
Back in the mining days, they used catwalks to move supplies and materials up and down the canyon. Some of that hardware is still in the rock. The forest service added this catwalk for the public to have an interesting way to get into this tight canyon. We visited this twice and the second time, it started snowing on us.
We really enjoyed the Catwalk with the different views of the creek and canyon walls.
The Mineral creek canyon had to be explored on foot, repeatedly crossing the creek and getting wet feet. It had lots of different colors in the rock walls and had this small arch in one of the walls.