Bottomless Lakes

We're having a great time in New Mexico. The weather has been mostly hot with temps in the 80's and 90's. It's very dry so it's not too bad but we're slowly making our way to the northern parts of New Mexico for some cooler temps. We left Hobbs and spent a week in Artesia, mostly just to wait for our mail to arrive at the campground where we were staying. I'm really not crazy about private campgrounds but they have their advantages sometimes. We were glad to leave there and head to the first of the many New Mexico State Parks we plan to visit.

Before we left Artesia, we took a walk around the downtown area. I'm always impressed by the efforts these small, Southwestern towns make to bring some art and beauty to their city. Artesia was no exception. They had a series of statues throughout the town paying tribute to the Loving-Goodnight Cattle Drives.

The best part of our walk downtown came when we discovered a little park sandwiched in between two buildings. It was a delightful space with murals, fountains, trees and beautiful ceramic tiles.

Here's a picture I like of Larry looking at one of the murals. I wanted to include this to show that he likes this kind of thing, too, and that I honestly don't just drag him to all this artsy stuff.

We left Artesia last Thursday (after our mail finally arrived!) and drove to Bottomless Lakes State Park near Roswell. We love it here. After a week in a crowded RV park it was so nice to get back into the privacy and beauty of a state park. We've been here a week and plan to stay another week, at least. The lakes here are actually giant sinkholes which fill up from an underground water source. The deepest is around 90 feet. They got their names from the cowboys who use to use their saddle ropes to measure how deep the water was. When they came to this area, they tied several ropes together and still never found the bottom so they believed they were bottomless. The campground is located at the largest of these: Lea Lake. We can see Lea Lake from the front window of our motorhome.

Here are some more pictures of the lake and hill surrounding the park...

I went for a bike ride at sunset the other night and snapped this picture of the lake as the sun was setting...

This final picture was taken of the whole lake from on top of the big hill that you can see in some of the pictures.

We love it here so much that we have hardly left the park since our arrival. It is about 17 miles from here to Roswell and we took a trip there yesterday for groceries. We plan to return to check out some of the UFO stuff. We also plan to explore this park some more. It's very big and we want to check out the other lakes and look for a special type of quartz that is found around here called Pecos Diamonds.

I hope you enjoyed today's pictures! Thanks for stopping by.

From Texas To New Mexico

We left the Fredericksburg area two weeks ago and headed west towards New Mexico. Looking back at my pictures from that time, I debated about even doing a blog post. There was nothing very exciting about this part of our travels. No sculpture ranches or Presidential homes or even amazing scenery. West Texas is kind of barren and desolate. It makes for great driving but not great pictures.

In a strange way, these ordinary days are some of my favorite parts of this lifestyle. I love passing through the small towns and I think there's a kind of stark beauty in these harsh landscapes. This won't be my most exciting blog post but I wanted to share a few pictures anyway.

Our first travel day after Fredericksburg took us to Mason, Texas. We were still in hill country at that point and the drive there was beautiful! The wildflowers were starting to bloom and there were large sections of the countryside just covered in yellow and blue. This picture really doesn't do it justice but it's the best one I got from the window of the motorhome...

Mason is a nice little town and had another of those great courthouses that we saw all over Texas...

Mason's claim to fame is that it was the home of the author of "Old Yeller." They celebrate that each year with an Old Yeller festival and there was a statue of Old Yeller and the boy  in front of the library...

We stopped at the tourist center to get some tips on the best drives to see wildflowers. We were about two weeks too early for the really colorful drives but we had a nice drive through the countryside on one of the wildflower loops they suggested. Here are a few pictures from that drive...

We left Mason and drove 200 miles to Lake Colorado City State Park. This was our longest drive in the motorhome so far but it was an easy drive through the wide open spaces of west Texas. We spent the weekend at the state park and really loved it there.  It wasn't the prettiest state park we've ever stayed in but we enjoyed the desert atmosphere and the fact that we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Here are some of the pictures I took from around our campsite...

(That's our motorhome in the last picture.)

We left Colorado City Monday and drove to Hobbs, New Mexico. We really enjoyed our time in Texas this winter but it felt great to finally make it to New Mexico. It has been very windy here this week so we've pretty much just hunkered down and taken care of some little jobs around the motorhome. We're leaving Hobbs tomorrow to head to either Roswell or Carlsbad so I should have better pictures in my next blog post.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by.

The Benini Sculpture Ranch

We left Stonewall this morning and traveled a short distance to Mason, Texas. We're still in the Texas Hill Country but slowly getting closer to New Mexico. The wildflowers are really starting to bloom right now and it is just impossible to describe how beautiful it is here. We saw millions of bluebonnets on our drive today.

Before we left Stonewall, we took a day trip to the Benini Sculpture Ranch. This was definitely a highlight of our travels, so far. This is not a highly publicized tourist spot and I am so glad we heard about it and found it. It is located on 140 acres not far from Johnson City, Texas and is definitely off the beaten path. Benini is a renowned painter and sculptor and has a studio high on top a hill at the ranch. There is also a small gallery there featuring paintings by Benini and a few other artists. The highlight of the ranch is the contemporary sculptures that are everywhere as you drive the windy, hilly roads throughout the ranch. The ranch roads are all dirt roads and the sculptures are along the side of the road. Here are a few of the ones we saw when we first entered the ranch...

 

We stopped at the gallery to sign in and spent some time inside looking at Benini's paintings and talking to one of the artists whose works were on display at the ranch. We hadn't planned to visit the gallery but we are so glad we did. I took a few pictures inside and also snapped a shot of the outside of the gallery...

 Back outside, we continued our drive through the ranch and saw all of these great sculptures...

 

 

They even had a string installation in the trees. It was hard to photograph but I wanted to include it for my niece, Mindy Hirt, who is also a renowned artist who specializes in extraordinary and intricate string installations. This was cool but nowhere near as good as the ones she creates...

We finished our tour of the ranch at Bernini's studio which sits atop a steep hill overlooking the ranch.

There was something really magical about this place. Larry and I both kept saying "I can't believe this is here."  Here is a link to their web site if you would like to read more about the ranch or the artists. Benini Sculpture Ranch

I  hope everyone had a nice Easter! Stay tuned for more of our adventures. As always, thanks so much for stopping by!