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Caballo Lake SP, NM – Tuesday October 27, 2015

This morning we moved 45 miles up the Rio Grande River to one of the lakes created by the dam system on the Rio Grande.

Here is our travels for the day.  This is a big lake with a campground up  on the lake and one below the dam on the river.  We ended up at the lake campground and it seems to be a nice place.  We will be here until November 2, 2015.

Here are the campsite pictures, site 9:
Now remember this site has water, electric and covered picnic table for $14.00 a night and with our annual pass we get it for $4.00.
Here is the overhead view.  We drove around a couple of times to get the site we wanted.  The first site we stopped at was a nice site on the corner however a garbage dumpster was close to the site and to many people take their dog for a walk when they go to dumpster.  Hank would have to let everyone know he was there to protect his campsite.

 

Leasburg Dam SP, NM – Monday October 26, 2015 Follow-up

Where to go.  One of our challenges of retirement and travel is “Where do we go next”.

We have a plan:
from here we’ll go north to Caballo State Park, NM until Monday November 2.

Next stop will be Lost Dutchman State Park, AZ just outside of Phoenix for 2 weeks, Nov 2 to Nov 16.

Next to Buckskin Mountain State Park close to Parker, AZ on the AZ/CA border.

Friday Nov 20th we will start for home.  One or two days driving through California with extra time if we have to wait to get through the Siskiyou’s.  At  least this is the current plan.

Monday afternoon I got out for a walk down to the dam.

Leasburg Dam is on the Rio Grande river or what is left of the river.
The Leasburg Dam is a diversion dam running most of the water into a canal.
This is what is left in the original river flow area looking up towards the dam.
This is looking down river and this is the largest flow area of the river bed.
My InReach GPS transmits it’s location to a satellite every 10 minutes when it’s moving and every 4 hours when it’s not moving.

It has an internal record of where it is every minute and when I sync the InReach over the internet you get a much smoother picture of our travels.  If I was walking the blue line would pretty much be on the road.

Leasburg Dam SP, NM – Sunday October 25, 2015

We are at Leasburg Dam State Park on The Rio Grande River just north of Las Cruses, NM.
Here is the travel map.

We are in site 24 for tonight and Monday night.  This campground is small and most of the sites are reserved during the week and all are reserved this weekend.  When we were looking for a site I drove the motorhome and car into a spot where I had to unhook the car to be able to turn the motorhome around.  This is only the second time I’ve go myself into a spot I could not get turned around.  The first one was at a Pony Express Rest Site in the middle of no where on Hwy 50 in Nevada.  Since I had the car off the motorhome I went and found a site and walked back to get Jean, Hank and motorhome.
Here are the site pictures.
A couple of view pictures.
One moon coming up picture.

Brantley Lake SP – Carlsbad, NM Shower Valve – Friday October 23, 2015

Today was laundry day.  It is always a challenge to find a laundromat.  The first one we found on Yelp we could not find in town.  I think it was where they are building a new Buffalo Wings restaurant.  The second one work out great.

Motorhome improvement:
Last year I added to ball valve to our shower.  It is not the most “high end” shower fixture however it sure works great.  It is a 1/4 turn on and off which makes controlling the water flow prefect.  The hot and cold water mix values on motor homes are not the best quality and it’s difficult to get the right temperature when trying to use the least amount of water.  Once I get the correct water temp I only have to use the ball valve to control the water flow.
This works great.
I also changed out the shower head last year.  This one mixes air with the water flow and spins the water to help create more water pressure.

This shower head is a lot heavier than the original head so I added these two strings to help support the shower head and allow for two different water flow angles.

Brantley Lake SP – Carlsbad, NM – Wednesday October 21, 2015

We moved to the Carlsbad area because the the weather system which has been in New Mexico since Monday.  Most of the state has been under a flash flood warning all week.  Tuesday night Roswell got hit with 4 inches of rain and had a tornado warning.   Well tonight we got a really hard rain which lasted 45 minutes before it moved on.

I got some pictures.
It was totally dark, the light is from lightening and this shows some of the rain.

I got some lightening in these pictures.

The sky was lighting up all around us.

Brantley Lake SP – Carlsbad, NM – Tuesday October 20, 2015

Yes we went back on Tuesday.   On Monday we started down into the caverns at 12:30 and came out at 4:20.   The bat flight program starts at 5:45 so we stayed and it was again amazing.  The bats started to come out at 6:10 and they were still coming out when we left at 7:15, it was just to dark to see them.  The ranger said it takes 2 1/2 to 4 hours for all the bats to come out 300,000 to 400,000 are here this year.  Did you know you can see bats two miles away.  They come out of the caverns in what looks like a flying tube extending out into the air and across the country side.  You can actually see clouds of bats out at least 2 miles from the caverns and maybe further.

Tuesday we came back to spend more time in the caverns and to see the bat flight again.  Jean got a big blister on Monday so I walked down the natural entrance by myself and Jean took the elevator down a hour after I started down.  At home this morning when I set down to put my shoes on Hank stationed himself so I could not leave without letting him know I was leaving.

On Monday I took 700 pictures and Tuesday I got an additional 476.

This is one of the largest single features.
An amazing 62 feet high.

Few pictures of cavern features:
This one shows the some of the size of the caverns.

Looking across one of the rooms.

Ok, that’s enough.  I still have 24 pictures I prepared to put into this post but I’ll control myself.    Have a GREAT day.

 

Brantley Lake SP – Carlsbad, NM – Monday October 19, 2015

How do you write a blog about Carlsbad Caverns.   They are truly amazing.  The size is beyond what will fit in a camera.  They have mapped 138 miles of  caverns.  The main cavern you get to tour on the self guided tour is 750 feet below the surface and will hold 14 football fields, the ceiling is 200 feet high in places, one of the large formations is 62 feet high. The place is so big you just don’t have the feeling you are underground.

Today Jean and I walked the one mile trail from the natural opening 750 feet down into the mail cavern.   Here is some of my pictures:
A flower from the natural entrance.

And a wasp.

I found this on the net showing a cross cut of the caverns.


Need to have at least one picture to show the bats are here.

The next amazing thing you experience is the trail down into the caverns.  It drops quickly into the ground dropping at a plus 20% grade for almost a mile.

The ranger said it is an hour trip to the bottom, we took 2 hours and enjoyed every minute of the trip down.

Brantley Lake SP – Carlsbad, NM – Sunday October 18, 2015

We got here about 12:30 this afternoon and plan on staying here until the weather clears, that should be Thursday or Friday.

I just heard that if you are trying to head north from Arizona through Nevada or Utah you are out of luck.  The three main roads are either closed ( 95 and 93) and I-15 through Utah may close or could be closed now.

Here are today’s campsite pictures, we’re in # 37.
This is our view.

Here is today’s drive.

We are just north of Carlsbad, NM.

Their was a sign at the visitor’s center saying the campground was full.  We drove into the campground to find a site and than went back to the main road to the dump station.


We set up in site 36 by the tree in the center.  I have the TV satellite dish on the roof of our RV and the tree was in the way to get a signal.  While we were setting up camp the guy in site 37 left.  We decided to move camp to 37 rather than getting up on the roof and taking the sat. dish down so we could get a signal.

Hank is really happy.  We got out for a walk this afternoon, this campground does not seem to have any Goat Heads.

I’ll end today with some sunset pictures.

Sumner Lake SP – Saturday October 17, 2015

I went for a couple of walks today.  While standing on a hill above the lake I saw this guy taking his boat out of the water.

For awhile I didn’t think he was going to make it.  I was down on this dock earlier in the day and the plant growth on this concrete boat ramp was really slippery stuff.  From the hill he looked like he slid back this far, got half way out, slid back almost this far again and then he made it out.

This is our drive on Thursday.
Tomorrow Sunday October 18, we are going to return to Brantley Lake SP, for several reasons.
It’s our camping site to visit Carlsbad Caverns.
It has the least amount of Goat Head thorns then some of the parks around here, they get into Hank fur and paws.
 The weather is going to turn bad late Tuesday, LOT of rain.
I know what this park looks like and it will be a good place to set out any flash floods.