Santa Rosa Lake State Park, Santa Rosa, NM May 10-15, 2013

 The drive from Lubbock to Santa Rosa was through more tiny little towns that looked one step away from a ghost town.  We drove in rain for a lot of miles but luckily missed the worst of the storm. During the drive, I saw my first tumbleweed! It reminded me of one of my Dad’s Louis Lamour books about a lonely woman who wrote poignant notes and tucked them into tumbleweeds.  (A tumbleweed is the above ground part of any of a number of plants that, once mature and dry, breaks from the root and tumbles away in the wind.)

We stopped at the New Mexico Visitor’s Center in Texico and talked with the woman there and she told us about how the drought is affecting homeowners – it sounded like a story from the dust bowl days: sand blowing so hard all the time that it creeps in through the doors and windows, gets into the carpets, curtains and even stove and refrigerator. I can’t help but expect that it has to be getting into the motors of appliances and damaging them as well. She also told us that in New Mexico, if the wind is blowing less than 35 mph it’s just breezy. It’s only considered windy when it gets above 60 mph. The wind is something we’ve experienced since we got to Texas, and New Mexico seems even windier.

Traveling west on State Highway 84, the country is very flat and much is farmland with huge feedlots, grain elevators, and grain silos scattered along the highway. 

We also learned that in a 24 hour period, 100 trains go through town. I can’t even begin to estimate the number of tractor-trailers.

This was a state park just outside of town and you would swear you were 100 miles from anywhere. It is sparse campground by a lake and dam, and I wonder if it might not originally have been a Corps of Engineers park. Some of the sites had no hookups, some had only electricity, and some had water and electricity. The most common plants were cholla cactus, juniper, sagebrush, and lots of dead plants that I couldn’t identify. (Sagebrush is the official state plant of New Mexico and was used for tea, medicines, fuel, and the stringy bark may be used in making baskets and ropes.) The drought has been rough on this part of the country – much of what should be green is brown and crunchy when stepped on. The fire hazard is listed as extreme and only propane fires are allowed. We got a photo of the dam and if you look carefully, you can see a couple different water lines staining the rock – far above the current level of water.

In spite of the dry conditions, we enjoyed the park and the very different scenery we encountered. We took a drive to Puerto de Luna, a little town of 141 people. We never did see any businesses – just houses scattered along and a church that was built in 1888 and renovated in 1921.  The countryside on the drive to and around Puerto de Luna was spectacular and I took way too many photos.

Had some folks come in driving a little class C with at least three adults, two kids, and three little dogs. Neither the kids nor the dogs were on leashes… They decided they needed to level the rear wheel, so they got out their Leggo-style leveling blocks and stacked them up, one two blocks high, then two stacks of three blocks high. The only problem? They had the two stacks of three next to the tire and the two blocks were on the far side of the stack. Needless to say, they couldn’t drive up onto the three high stacks without the lower block to begin with. After a surprisingly long time of gunning the motor, trying to get the wheel atop the stack of three, someone figured out they needed to get the short stack immediately in front of the tire… I really worry about folks like that.

We had lunch at one of the very few restaurants that received something other than two or three stars  in TripAdvisor and Yelp – Comet II. We had a friendly waitress, a good lunch for a reasonable price and nattia, a yummy, rich pudding with a caramel sauce, was included!  How can you not love that?

We stopped at the Blue Hole, a bell shaped pool in Santa Rosa that is a consistent 64 degrees, has a constant inflow of 3,000 gallons of water a minute, is 80’ in diameter at the surface and 130’ in diameter on the bottom. It is one of the most popular destinations in the United States for SCUBA diving and training. It was a surprising find in the middle of a small town.

All-in-all, this was another delightful time in a campground that was completely new to us. Now we’re off to Tetilla Peak Recreation area, between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.