Abiquiu Lake, NM - Apr 2008

The longer we fulltime, the more we find that our travel plans can change at the drop of a hat. We generally have a vague destination in mind and I do a lot of research so we have an assortment of places to stay no matter where we land. We also check the weather to decide if it's going to be too hot/cold/windy/rainy and then we make up our minds -- sometimes not until the morning of moving day.

This spring, our plans were somewhat dictated by the fact that we were going to need to be in southern California in early May, but in the meantime we wanted to take advantage of inexpensive camping in the New Mexico State Parks. Having bought an annual pass, we were trying to limit our stays to the state parks and we also wanted to check-out as many as possible since we were pretty sure we'd be returning in the fall. We also had decided that when we were ready to head west, we would travel on I-40 rather than the hot and dreary I-10.

Our original, northernmost destination was going to be Sugarite Canyon (up near the Colorado border and one of our favorite parks) but that was nixed since they were still experiencing overnight lows in the teens in addition to twice weekly chances of snow. While I like cooler weather, that was just a bit too cold for me. Instead, we headed for Navajo Lake State Park -- also near the Colorado border, but at a lower elevation. Since the park was too far away for a single day's drive from Santa Rosa, we opted to stay at another of our favorite places -- Riana Campground on Abiquiu Lake. Being a Corps of Engineers park, we didn't get a state park camping discount, but we happened to arrive a day before the park officially opened, so our first night of camping was free (without hookups of course.) The park was nearly empty and so we also got to park in our favorite site -- the one on top of the hill with the best views.

We stayed two nights and were glad we did since it was very windy on day two. The wind kicked up some dust (not too bad in the campground) and that rewarded us with a nice sunset.