Our fourth stop brings us to Ute Lake State Park in Logan, New Mexico.
This was our longest drive so far, over 9 hours, so we headed out early. We drove through some wind farms with huge windmills as far as you could see. We made a quick pit stop to see what was listed as “the largest shovel in Texas”, which turned out to be in the parking lot of some construction company. We also stopped at Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo. It’s a bunch of old Cadillacs half buried sticking up in the middle of field. They are covered in layers of spray paint that must be a few inches thick
We hit a bad storm near the Texas/New Mexico border which mad for some scary driving. It wasn’t until we reached New Mexico realized the wind from the storm had actually blown a vent cover off the roof.
We made a quick pit stop in the rain at the New Mexico welcome center for a photo, and then drove on to Ute Lake State Park where we were staying for the next few days.
By the time we arrived it was getting late so we took a quick survey of the campground and the near by beach and then had dinner and settled down for the night.
The next morning we visited the park information center and got some ideas for activities. We took a hike on a trail around a small canyon in another park of the park which was beautiful. The landscape and cacti we’re amazing and we even saw a turtle. After the hike, Cory and Collin went fishing for a bit (they didn’t catch anything) and then joined Christy and Cara at the beach for some swimming in the lake. We discovered that much of the lake bed was red clay so we had some fun making small sculptures. We even made and dried a tiny bowl and two hearts for the kids to paint later.
The next day we played on a nice little playground in the park for a while. Then we hiked over to the dam which had some great views of the surrounding country side. After that everyone did a little fishing (and still didn’t catch anything) and then went swimming in the lake again.
That night Christy gave the kids showers in the camp shower facility which was quite the challenge. They have the kind where you have to push a button about every 10 seconds to keep the water on which made trying to hold the kids to rinse them quite difficult. After that the kids and Cory played on the playground while Christy showered and they saw a coyote run across the campground. We had a long drive the next day so we packed up most everything that night.
The next morning we headed out early for the our next stop, the Grand Canyon!
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