Bluewater Lake SP, NM - Aug 2010

After making a three-day mad dash through the heat wave along I-40, we landed at Bluewater Lake State Park near Prewitt, NM. We wanted to plant for a couple of weeks while we waited for Frank's mail-order prescriptions to catch up to us. We had stayed here before and hoped to find one of the first-come-first-serve electric sites available. There was only one left when we arrived, but it was an okay spot. It was nowhere near level, but we had enough blocks to make it work. We had pretty decent weather our first week here and went on numerous walks while we acclimated to the 7,400' elevation.
We could not see the lake from our site, but we walked up to the top of the hill every day and enjoyed the spectacular view out over the dam and lake.
Scotty seemed to re-adjust to life on the road just fine. We keep a toy box for him in the RV and he was especially happy to be reunited with his toys. On his first day back in the RV he dug through, played with and scattered his toys all over.Our second week at Bluewater Lake wasn't quite as pleasant. As New Mexico's seasonal monsoons arrived, we experienced daily thunderstorms. Our mornings generally started out sunny and pleasant, but by noon the dark ominous clouds rolled in and we would spend the afternoon and evening being assaulted with lightening and thunder and barraged with rain. Then one day, the monsoon rain turned into hail -- not very large hail (large marble sized), but plenty of it. It pelted and pounded us for a full 30 minutes until the ground around us was as white as snow and the hail was nearly 3" deep.
It cracked one of our vent covers and the rain and hail came pouring into the RV. We quickly jammed a towel up in the hole and held it in place with our insulated vent covers. It worked until the towel became saturated and then we had to put a bucket underneath to catch the dripping water.

We sat inside and watched as the hail piled up and I got this cool shot of the hail collecting on and sliding off of the roof of the campground bathrooms.After the hail stopped, we went outside to assess the damage and it was like walking in a winter wonderland. The hail covered everything with a white blanket and it's ferocity had stripped small branches from the trees leaving a heavenly, pine-fresh scent in the air. It reminded me of the fragrance of a Christmas tree lot. Our camping neighbors were all outside (doing the same thing -- checking for damage) and the kids began to have a "snowball" fight. It was quite an unusual turn of events for the middle of summer.
Once the threat of hail and lightening passed, I got up on the roof to exam the damage up there. I couldn't even get to the vents because they were covered in hail. I had to get the broom and sweep the hail off before I could fix the damaged vent cover. While doing that I thought about what an unusual situation it was -- to be "shoveling" snow from the roof of the RV in August -- something I never thought I'd be doing.

One good thing came of the storm -- a spectacular, full arch rainbow -- there was even a double bow for a few minutes, but it was so faint that I couldn't capture it in this photo.