Leaving Oklahoma and heading to New Mexico today.
This morning the trailer door was difficult to open, the wind was blowing so hard!
Short discussion as to whether we should try driving today (our reservation at Foss was finished), but we decided to go and stick to secondary roads.
Driving wasn’t too bad, bit of the tail wagging the dog for a while, but the wind moderated by the time we hit Amarillo.
Driving along secondary roads took us through several small towns. Some of which had more closed businesses then open ones. Bad economic times in this part of the country.
Crossed the state border into New Mexico and stopped at the Visitor Center to pick up a state park camping guide, but Visitor Center was closed, we forgot it was Veteran’s Day.
Long drive, but uneventful. Temperature dropping into the mid-30’s (fahrenheit).
Santa Rosa Lake is another resevoir (like Foss Lake) created by the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Woke up the next morning to a sprinkling of snow on the ground and discovered that the park’s water taps were all frozen!
RV sites are nice, with each one having a covered picnic table. No on-ground fires are allowed, but you can have a fire & cook in the raised fireboxes/grills. We couldn’t reserve a single site for our entire stay, so we had to do the “RV Shuffle”. Two of our neighbours joined us, and after the shuffle we were still neighbours!
Lots of rabbits running around the campground, dogs were very interested!
SweetPea still thinks she is a lapdog, but she is probably over 100 lbs now!
We were invited over to a neighbour’s trailer for drinks one evening, so we put the dogs in the back of the Suburban to see if they would go to sleep. SweetPea has been barking a lot lately (at us, at strangers, at strange dogs, at Lump, at anything that moves), but she sleeps in the truck when we are driving, so we hope she will settle down and not notice that we are gone!
One of the neighbours, Diane, was born and raised in Midland Ontario, now living in California. Her husband, Dennis, is a good photographer and showed us some amazing shots of grizzly bears in Alaska. Dennis has a website of his photos here.
Found the dogs sound asleep, so all is good!
Several hiking trails start right from the campground.
A three minute drive from the campground got us to the Los Tanos equestrian campground and trail. No one around, so the dogs got their first 0ff-leash romp since we started this trip (very happy dogs).
No trail maps, so we didn’t know where we were going. We just wandered around in what we thought was the right general direction and after about 3 hours ended back up where we started!
Earlier this summer, in June, the Carlsbad Irrigation District (water management) released 14,500 acre-feet of water from the lake . Here are before and after pictures of the water level at the boat ramp.
The water level dropped by 27 feet. The arrow on the photo shows the previous water level.
We took the dogs for a walk on the now-exposed lake bottom. Lots of small trees which were previously underwater can be seen. What we didn’t see until we got back to the campsite was the many many burrs which had found their way into both SweetPea and Lump’s fur. Lump was the worst, with his long feathers and tail becoming a burr magnet. Nothing a couple of hours of grooming can’t fix!
We stayed in Santa Rosa Lake SP from November 11-16. Mainly stayed in the park doing hikes, but went into the nearby town of Santa Rosa one day to do laundry and pick up some groceries.
A lot of closed businesses in Santa Rosa, but fortunately the Laundromat was still open. The T&D Food Market was the only grocery store in town and “gross” was the word. Very rundown and grungy little store, which gave off a weird “not quite dead yet, but getting there” kind of vibe. One of the items we were looking for was shrimp to make quesadillas. I found a box covered in ice, that looked older than me, which had “Shrimp for Bait, and also Tastes Good!” on the label. Think I will pass on that one.
Looking for a less dismal store we tried the local “Family Dollar”. It was great! An excellent frozen food sectionn (even had shrimp that wasn’t fish bait), and great selection of canned goods (and cookies/candies for those of us with an out-of-control sweet tooth).
The local gas station/liquor store looked like it had seen better days from the outside, but inside was clean and well-stocked.
Trip Summary:
Depart from: Foss Lake State Park, OK
Depart time: 10:00 am
Odometer: 127370 miles
Arrive time: 3:00 pm(?) Santa Rosa Lake State Park, NM
Odometer: 127726 miles
Gas Summary (fill-ups):
Odometer: 127710 miles, 20.3g @ US$3.56/g (US$72.32)