Breaking Bad and UFOs

We've been trying to leave Elephant Butte for a while now but we keep going back.  The South Monticello Point campground is probably my favorite place we've ever stayed. Larry's, too. It's just so beautiful and peaceful there. It gets a little crowded on weekends but the spaces are so far apart there is still a lot of privacy and the campground clears out on weekdays.

We're in Socorro now, at Escondido Lake. We were planning just a quick stop here on our way over to Bottomless Lakes near Roswell but now we're thinking about going back to Monticello Point again. We just bought fishing licenses and thought that might be a good place to fish but mostly we both just love it there so much, we're having trouble leaving.

We headed up to Abuquerque a few weeks ago. We had been out in the middle of nowhere so long that the city was kind of overwhelming. We had a lot of little city type errands to run-banking, Trader Joe's, etc-so we didn't do a lot of sightseeing. We've been to Albuquerque several times but had never  been to Old Town so we decided to go there this trip. I loved the old buildings and the art but it is very touristy. Most of the pictures today are from there.

Old Town Plaza

Rattlesnake Museum

San Felipe de Neri (built in 1793)

Albuquerque has a whole tourism industry built around the show Breaking Bad. We both love that show. We saw Breaking Bad merchandise everywhere and recognized a lot of the filming locations. There are tours you can take to see all the major locations and there are also maps online for self-guided tours. We felt funny about going to look at people's houses but we did check out a couple of locations. The online map we used told us which ones didn't like people taking pictures so we stayed away from those. (I like to see where things were filmed for some reason. It's kind of a weird hobby of mine.)

Tuco's headquarters

Walter White's house

We haven't been doing much in Socorro. It has been very windy so we've been mostly just hanging out here at Escondido Lake hoping to get in some fishing. One of the most famous and well-documented UFO sightings took place here in Socorro 50 years ago last Friday. We found this mural commemorating Officer Zamora and the sighting.

I was never really into UFO stuff so I had never heard of this incident but Larry had. I looked it up and it was pretty interesting. (link) It's considered to be one of the more legitimate sightings because several people, including the police officer, saw the object and there were burn marks in the field where they said it had landed before taking off again. I'm actually kind of surprised this incident didn't get as much attention as Roswell. New Mexico has so many strange things like this. I love it.

We haven't seen any UFOs but we did see this beautiful full moon over Elephant Butte Lake so I'll end this with a picture of that. Hope everyone is having a wonderful Spring!

Ghost Towns

We're still in New Mexico and still loving it. We've spent most of the winter going back and forth between Elephant Butte State Park and Caballo Lake State Park. It has been a great winter...mostly warm, sunny days and cool nights. We'll probably be moving on soon. Caballo Lake was way too crowded the last time we were there so I think we are done with it for the season. I'm really going to miss this part of New Mexico but I'm looking forward to exploring some of the parks in the northern part of the state.

Caballo Lake before the crowds set in

 
Today's "postcards" are from a drive we took a few weeks ago to explore some ghost towns. We drove across the Black Range Mountains, crossed the Continental Divide and found ourselves in the Gila National Forest.

That's a map of the Sierra County Ghost Towns. We went to Cochillo, Winston and Chloride. Here is a link to a website with a lot more info...  Sierra County Ghost Towns

San Jose Church in Cuchillo

I made a friend.

 General Store in Winston. Ghosts need ice, too, I guess.

We spent quite a bit of time wandering around Chloride. There are still around 20 people living there now but we didn't see a soul. Chloride had between 1000 and 2000 residents in the 1880's. A couple from England bought several of the buildings not long ago and have been restoring them.

Ghost Kitty. We fed him cheese and crackers...from a distance.

The Hanging Tree (That's really its name.)

We saw signs driving out of town saying "Beware of Wolves" and I'm pretty sure this is a wolf skin hanging on this building...

We really enjoyed the drive. I love the diversity of the terrain around here...mountains, desert, lakes, forests. I'll end this with a picture from around our campsite. Thanks for stopping by.

Life is good

Elephant Butte and Caballo Lake

We arrived at Elephant Butte State Park in New Mexico a few days before Thanksgiving, just in time for a freak snowstorm. The desert looked beautiful in the snow and it warmed up quickly and melted after a day or two. That's my kind of snowstorm!

We spent two weeks there and then headed to Caballo Lake. I was bummed to be leaving Elephant Butte but I ended up loving Caballo Lake even more. We've had very nice weather-in the 60's each day and 40's at night. I know it has been warmer in Arizona and California but we decided to stay here and avoid the crowds. This has probably been my favorite two months since we started fulltiming. I've been doing a lot of hiking, baking, beading and even made a little extra money for Christmas on Amazon Turk.

We've just been heading back and forth between Caballo Lake and Elephant Butte. I can't even begin to describe how beautiful it is here and how much I love it so I'll just let these pictures do the talking.

Elephant Butte

Elephant Butte

Sunset

Jackrabbit

Caballo Lake

Caballo Lake

Caballo Lake Hiking Trail

Caballo Lake

Caballo Lake

We drove down to Hatch, New Mexico from Caballo. Hatch is known for their chiles. It's a great little town and the chiles we bought there were wonderful. We plan to head back there and stock up before we leave this area.

Our internet connection has been a little slow so I haven't posted much but it is very fast now so I'll try to start posting more. We moved to a new site yesterday and it is the most beautiful site we've ever had so I know I'll be out taking more pictures.

I want to wish my sister Cindy a very happy birthday! I miss you! I miss all of you and wish you were here. Thanks to everyone for stopping by!

Where Have We Been?

Sorry I haven't posted anything for a while. We spent the summer traveling back to Virginia and Maryland to visit family. We didn't do a lot of sight-seeing so I decided not to take many pictures and just enjoyed the drive.  We're back in New Mexico now, staying at Ute Lake State Park with plans to head towards the southern part of the state soon.

The trip back to Maryland was great. We drove through Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia. We were able to stay off interstates for the most part and just kept a slow but steady pace back east.  We drove about 150 to 200 miles a day and then spent 2-3 nights at each stop. It took us about 5 weeks to get back to Maryland.

One stop where I did take some pictures was in the Muscle Shoals and Tuscumbia area of Alabama. We really liked it there and hope to go back some day. Helen Keller's home was in Tuscumbia so we drove over there  and took some pictures.

Helen Keller's Childhood Home

We stopped by a pretty park in Tuscumbia and walked around looking at the falls and some statues dedicated to the Trail of Tears.

Our favorite "Road Food" stop on this trip was at Rhoda's Famous Hot Tamales in Lake Village, Arkansas. It doesn't look like much but the tamales were fantastic.

We drove about 150 miles on the Natchez Trace again. We love the trace. Our favorite park this trip was a beautiful Mississippi state park we found just about 10 miles off the trace-Davis Lake State Park. We stopped there planning to stay a night or two and ended up spending four nights there.

In Virginia, we stopped to visit my sister Karen, my aunt Shorty, my niece Katie, her husband Tim and their four adorable boys-Luca, Toby, Finn and Sage. It was great seeing them! Then it was on to Maryland. We spent two weeks at the Elks on Kent Island cleaning out our storage unit. That wasn't fun but we got it done and that feels good. We got rid of most of it but ended up storing a bit at my parent's house. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

After Kent Island, we went to Westminster and stayed for a month in my sister Cindy's backyard. Camp Cindy was our favorite campsite ever! They have a big outbuilding for their tree farm and we parked near it. They put a 50 amp plug in for us which was so nice. Thanks, Cindy! Thanks, Clyde!

Can you see our motorhome here at Camp Cindy?

We got to spend a lot of time with my Mom and Dad, my sister Cindy, her husband Clyde and my niece Mindy. We also got to see my nephew Matt, but not for very long. We had such a great time visiting everyone and it was hard to leave but it was time to head west again.

We wanted to get back to the southwest before it got much colder so we took a more direct route this time through West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas. We did even less sight-seeing on the trip back but we did stop at Dorothy's House in Liberal, Kansas. Some of the bricks for the yellow brick road were donated by famous people. We saw the bricks from Liza Minelli, Bob Dole and Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

 

 

The Liza Minelli brick. It's a bit worn and hard to read.

We've been back in New Mexico for a week now, here at Ute Lake State Park. The weather has been good and we have been the only people in the park most days. We both love that. Now that we're back in the southwest, and slowing down again, I'll probably start blogging a bit more. I really got out of the habit this summer. We'll be heading soon to a part of New Mexico where we've never been so I'm sure we'll be exploring more and taking more pictures.

 I promise not to wait 4 months before posting again.  Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Thanks for stopping by!

Texas Canyonlands

We realized as we were headed towards Amarillo that we would be near Palo Duro Canyon so we decided to go there. It was very, very hot so we stayed at a private RV park near there instead of down in the canyon at the state park. We really want to stay there sometime but it's a long, steep drive for such a short visit. It was a good decision because when we drove down in the canyon in the Jeep, it was much hotter on the canyon floor, where we would have been camping.

Palo Duro is the second largest canyon in the United States. We enjoyed the short amount of time we spent there and we definitely plan to come back some day when it is cooler so we can do a few hikes and camp down in the canyon.

We drove to Caprock Canyons State Park next and spent four days there. We had a great campsite in the park, just a few feet from the Canyon Rim Trail. It's a wonderful park. They have a herd of buffalo and we saw prairie dogs all over the place.

We saw this park employee moving a rattlesnake away from the restroom area and told him he was brave. He laughed a very nervous laugh and said "I usually scream like a little girl when I see them." I took a picture but it's not very good because I didn't want to get any closer to it. (You might want to look away here, Mom.)

 It was still hot our first day there so we just drove around, looking at the buffalo, the lake and driving through the canyons. That's one thing we really liked about both Palo Duro and Caprocks, you can drive down into the canyons.

We only planned to stay there a few days but ended up staying four days when we found out the temperature was going to be dropping. On our last day there, it was actually kind of chilly and we decided to hike the rim trail. We haven't been doing much hiking due to the heat so this was really great. It was a bit overcast, too, which is also nice for hiking in the southwest. Here are some pictures from our hike...

I really liked this picture of Larry taking pictures of the canyon.

Caprock Canyons is one of our favorite places we've ever camped and we definitely plan to return. We left there Tuesday and drove to Lake Texoma on the Texas/Oklahoma border. It's pretty here but I haven't taken many pictures so I probably won't do a blog post about it. We plan to leave here tomorrow and head to Arkansas as we continue to make our way east.

Thanks for visiting!