Category: Campgrounds

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.

Brantley Lake SP – Carlsbad, NM – Monday October 12, 2015

We stayed in camp all day today.   It is supposed to get to 88 or 90 degrees and the park is going to have the electricity off for most of the day.  Site 1 – 15 do not have working electricity and today is the day to get it fixed.  With the power off we can not leave Hank in the motorhome all day with this kind of heat.  We will wait and go to Carlsbad Caverns on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Just before dark the campground host came by and said the power will be off most of the day Tuesday.  What they did Monday did not fix the problem and sites 1 – 15 still are not working and they are not really sure what the problem is.  We decided to head for Roswell on Tuesday morning (10/13/2015) then to Fort Sumner, NM on Thursday morning and spend the weekend in the Fort Sumner area.  We will come back to Brantley Lake and Carlsbad next week.  We are getting really flexible.

Brantley Lake SP, NM – Sunday October 11, 2015

We stayed  in camp all day.  The Fox game of the week had the Seahawks on which allowed us to watch them loose.
Tomorrow, Monday, we had planned to go to Carlsbad Caverns for the day however late this evening we found out the campground will not have electricity tomorrow and we can not leave Hank without A/C.  It was 91 degrees here today and inside the motorhome without A/C it could get will above 110.   Looks like we’ll hang around here tomorrow and go to the caverns Tuesday and Wednesday.

I think we are about as far south and east as we will go this trip.  I checked the mileage and we have driven 2577 miles.
Think we’ll go north a ways and than head back west following the warm weather.