My Trails

Camp at Navajo Dam

We were hoping to move north through New Mexico and stay one step ahead of the hot weather, but we may have moved too fast. Every since we left the Truth or Consequences area we have had little warm weather. Spring is having a hard time coming to the southwest this year.

When we left Percha Dam State Park it was starting to edge towards 90 degrees so we looked forward to nice weather at Bluewater State Park. The road to Bluewater was a little more than we wanted to drive in one day so we made a stopover at a free campground across from Pie Town, New Mexico. While there we saw the VLA site down the road and bought pies from a cafe across the street. I have stopped at the VLA several times but never bought a pie in Pie Town. The Pie was good but I don’t think I will ever buy another there – it was way way more expensive than my Pie budget allocates.

The next day we continued on up to Grants New Mexico and stocked up on groceries for our camp at Bluewater State Park. We only stayed a little over a week at Bluewater. The weather turned chilly and it seemed the wind always blew. We did get a few hikes in while there and even found a windless afternoon for a campfire and roasted hotdogs.

Bluewater is over 7000’ and a good place to find nice weather in the middle of summer, but we decided to move north for a couple different reasons. Straight north of Bluewater is Navajo Lake State Park. Even though Navajo is further north it is 1000’ lower and thus a little warmer. We also were sure that the area had cell service and TV signal for Donna, something that was almost nonexistent at Bluewater Lake. Perhaps the best reason we wanted to visit Navajo was the fact that Mom and Dad spent several summers there and we wanted to experience the nostalgia.

On the trip to Navajo Dam we made an overnight stop at a place called Busti/De Na Zin, a wilderness area in the Navajo Reservation. The camping area is nothing more than a parking lot but the picturesque landscape draws many photographers trying to capture the colors of the eroded formations.

We have been here at Navajo for almost two weeks. There is very few non electric sites here this time of year so we both paid for hookups. There is another campground area above the main area that is non electric but is not open until May 15. It’s probably a good thing we paid for electric sites because it has been chilly and raining. With electric we can turn off most things in our rigs that use battery and propane. There are nice bathrooms here with hot showers so we get to save that way too.

Ruins

Donna at Aztec Ruins

We have been exploring the area some. One day we went to Aztec to see the ruins the Pueblo Indians built around 900 A.D. We wanted to travel to Chaco Canyon to visit the ruins there but were scared away by reports of a nightmare road to the site. We have been to Farmington a few times to shop. I have been looking for another lawn chair and Donna has been exploring the idea of switching cell carriers. I found a chair at Target but Donna ran into a roadblock when she found out her cellphone is not compatible with Verizon.

It has been raining off and on for the last couple days and temps mostly in the 50’s. We plan on heading to Heron Lake State Park on Monday. It probably will not be any warmer there, but unless we drive several hundred miles south, it is the only option we have. We will only have to stay 6 days before we can come back here. The campground above us will be open by then and we can stay free with our passes.

I haven’t gone into a lot of detail on the places we have seen. It is kind of Deja Vu for my New Mexico summer last year but I see something new everywhere I go. It’s been nice having Donna and Hanna to share this New Mexico adventure. Now I’m caught up. To see more detail and photos of places we have been go to my sisters blog http://driveonup.blogspot.com/

This entry was posted on Friday, May 10th, 2019 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Adventure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.