New Mexico, the road south

Colorado: September 26-29

Spanish Peaks area of Colorado

After three nights staying with my friends Chris and Melissa at their awesome home way up high atop Floyd Hill I was back on the road heading south.

old fashioned advertising

On my second day I turned west at Walsenburg on Rte. 12 to drive into the Spanish Peaks area and the San Isabel National Forest. The Peaks are two prominent mountains in the southern part of Colorado. A gorgeous area that still has not been overrun, that still has room to stretch. If I had the means, this is the area of Colorado I would choose to make my last stand.

abandoned ski slope of Cuchara

For now I was content to find some free camping along a national forest road south of Cuchara. Cuchara is a small town where there is a closed ski resort of the same name. This resort has now been closed for years and the main building is like it's own little ghost town with broken glass and peeling wood siding. There are occupied condos on the hill overlooking the slopes, however.

view from a hilltop near my campsite in the "Peaks"

This entire drive, along the Highway of Legends from La Veta and south beyond Monument Park (see map above), is filled with beautiful mountains, valleys and splashes of color with all of the changing aspens in late September.

across from my campsite in the Spanish Peaks

New Mexico: September 29-October 20

northern New Mexico

My campsite, though, was often in the shade of the mountains and too cold so I drove across Raton Pass south into New Mexico. My first stop was the Sugarite State Park and the Soda Pocket campground. It was scheduled to close in two days and there were only 4-5 other campers spread out in generous campsites.

One of those was a woman named Jennifer and her dog. They had been traveling for two years in her Jeep. She is a freelance writer, grabbing gigs along the way. She seems to have had a fairly successful career, but hit a personal rough patch. Interesting person, you meet people like her all over.

towards Folsom, a leaning barn

One of the great campground deals around is the New Mexico state parks. For $10 you can get an attractive site with hot showers. There are about 50 of these parks and not all of them that I've seen qualify as great, and not all have showers. Some are just RV parking lots. Sugarite, though, was one of the good ones. I had a perfectly clear night for stargazing.

a view from Capulin looking west

I made a quick visit the next day to the nearby Capulin Volcano National Monument and took the hike around the rim for some good views. I also drove through the town of Folsom where the "Folsom points" were found at an archeological dig in the 1920's, pushing back the date of humans in North America from 3000 years ago to 10,000.

antelope west of the town of Raton

Another beautiful drive west through the towns of Cimarron, Red River and Questa led me to the new national recreation area of Wild Rivers. I scored a great campsite at the Little Arsenic campground right up against the Rio Grande canyon.

Little Arsenic campsite

This is easily one of the best BLM campgrounds I've been in, costing only $7 for a site that had space, a covered picnic table and views. It was very clean with clean pit toilets and easy access to hiking trails.

a good spot for lunch on the Rio Grande

a view of the canyon from my campsite

My second day I took the daypack down into the canyon, a hike of several hours where I saw only one lone fisherman. A peaceful time along the river.








I ran into a ranger at an overlook and he told me that across the canyon on the west side it was almost all free dispersed camping (there are some private lands interspersed). A few hundred thousand acres worth of free camping!

dispersed site, west side of Wild Rivers

I crossed the tiny John Dunn Bridge to the south, then drove north some 20 miles on a dirt road before pulling over into a secluded area among pinon pines. This was as sweet a spot as you could imagine.

It rained overnight, not too much but enough to turn the dirt road into mud. Trying to drive out of that the next day was time consuming as the tires would cake up right away, leaving me to slip and slide continuously. There is zero traction when that happens.

at Bandolier...Alcove House kiva

The morning cleared and I made it into the famous town of Los Alamos. FYI, they have one of the great grocery stores in the west, Smith's Marketplace. Better than Whole Foods. Anyway, I grabbed my supplies and went down to Bandolier National Monument and their campground.

The hike over to the ruins the next morning was pleasant and I really like the 1930's-era visitor's center. Built in a different time, Bandolier now uses shuttles to get people in and out, the crowds are so great. I see this more and more. A shuttle took me back to the campground.

a tiny part of Valle Caldera

From Bandolier west it was more beautiful mountain roads with a stop at the brand new Valle Caldera National Preserve. There is a lot of hand-wringing right now about President Obama creating some new national lands in Utah and Nevada. He is also responsible for Valle Caldera and Wild Rivers. As a traveler, I love it! V.C. has a vast meadow area that has been used for many movies and t.v. shows over the years, including Longmire, the latest Lone Ranger and The Missing.

some of the ruins at Chaco

Then it was off to Chaco Canyon, a place I've wanted to see since viewing a PBS special years ago. For some reason I expected to hear the voice of Robert Redford when walking through the ruins (he narrated the special). That would have been pretty cool. For my money Chaco is the most memorable of all the ancient ruin sites I've seen in New Mexico. The campground is typically rather tight with no privacy, but it is convenient. And the host, Bonnie, was fun to talk to.

this is probably the worst Balloon Festival photo, ever

After a night in the town of Gallup, I once again met my good friend Scott at his place in Albuquerque for a few days. This happened to be Balloon Festival week, which should have been great, but we got some rain that weekend. Can't win 'em all.

southwest New Mexico

Southwest of Albuquerque is some of the best of New Mexico. West and south of the town of Datil is the Gila National Forest (see map), one of the largest in the continental U.S. and in a sparsely populated area.

the road southwest of Datil...it's calling you!

dispersed camping beyond this sign

Dropping south off Highway 12 it was all dirt road, some good, some bad, for about 100 miles over the next two days. Under blue skies I found some dispersed camping where the only sounds I heard that night were the coyotes. It was sublime.

Gila Cliffs

On my second day driving south through the forest I saw only three other vehicles before I hit pavement and traveled up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. It's an interesting site and worth a visit. Personally, I didn't think they lived up to all of the hype.

downtown Silver City

More pretty country along the road down to Silver City, a town with a great historic center. It seems to be chock full of artists and galleries. I was able to spend a few hours in the public library getting caught up and buying my Mexican car insurance and printing it out. Very important.

moonrise at City of Rocks

Later that day I drove down into another of those great New Mexico State Parks; in fact, my favorite so far, City of Rocks.

looking down on City of Rocks

campsite #10

Although it got somewhat busy over the weekend, the weekdays were relatively quiet with lots of space between me and my nearest neighbors.


I was able to get site #10, an excellent spot and a major reason I stayed for 6 nights, the longest I've stayed anywhere so far on this trip/blog.

City of Rocks

I hit near perfect weather and this was also the first spot since early July where it wasn't cold at night or in the morning. The days were in the low 80's with a cooling breeze, and it couldn't have been more comfortable.

tarantula

One of the most exciting things that happened was that a big, furry tarantula scampered right through my campsite one day. It looked like it was headed to Mexico.

historic downtown gift shop

I spent my last night in New Mexico in a hotel room in Las Cruces, having dinner in their historic downtown at La Posta, a very good Mexican restaurant. The gift shop downtown has a Billy the Kid connection, hopefully you can read the sign in the photo.