Pendaries Lot, Rociada, NM - Jun 2011

Well, we have moved to a new phase of our full-timing adventures. We've purchased a deeded RV lot at the Pendaries RV Resort in Rociada, NM. The resort is located in the north central part of the state. It is 22 miles northwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico and about 60 miles from Taos. It is adjacent to the Santa Fe National Forest and is perched on the side of a hill, up in the pines at about 7,500' elevation.
The resort is about 25 years old and has a blend of about 40 rental sites and 140 deeded lots. From what we understand, the resort used to be a Coast-to-Coast membership park, but in the early 90s they expanded and began selling deeded lots. There are still a handful of new lots available, but most of the lots have been sold and the ones currently available are resale lots.We purchased a resale lot in Phase 1 (there are 3 phases.) The lot we selected is good-sized -- measuring 90' x 90'. The rear of the lot backs up to a large, private ranch and both sides of the lot have vacant lots that most likely won't be built on. That gives us an additional amount of elbow room and therefore a lot of privacy. There are plenty of pine trees throughout the park and our lot also has a small stand of aspens on one side. The lot came complete with full hookups and a small storage shed.
So how did we come by this decision? Well, we've been looking at property in New Mexico for a couple of years because of it's cool mountain retreats and it's close proximity to Texas since we still plan to spend our winters in San Antonio and well, we just really like New Mexico -- both the climate and natural beauty.In addition to mild summer weather, we were looking for affordability, proximity to quality medical care, close enough to a good-sized town with decent shopping and property that had a view. Over the past two years, we have visited and checked out property at Chama, Ruidoso, Cloudcroft, Gallup, Pecos and Silver City. All were pretty and met the criteria of being above 7,000' elevation, but they each had drawbacks and we never found that perfect spot.

Last month, we stopped at Storrie Lake State Park (in Las Vegas, NM) knowing we wanted to check out the Mora Valley area because we had read about it's natural beauty. We explored the area and almost immediately we knew this was "the spot" and all we had to do was to find the right property. One of the places on our list to check out was the Pendaries RV Resort, so we drove to Rociada one day and it didn't take us long to decide that this had just about everything we wanted and it was something we could afford. The only downside of this lot is that, because of the density of trees, it does not afford us a view, but because of the lot's location and roominess, we look out at trees instead of our neighbors, so that was a compromise we were willing to make.

We still love the surrounding area and there seems to be a lot of open land -- much of it with stunning views, so we plan to keep our eyes open and maybe someday we'll find some acreage with that perfect view. In the meantime, we love our spot and the weather has been delightful. I'll write more as we get settled.