Crossing the Rio Chama

After leaving Santa Fe/Cochiti Lake area we headed north to Heron Lake State Park near the New Mexico/Colorado border.  The drive up highway 84 was beautiful and just about the right pace for us at 55 mph.  We arrived and felt like the only campers in the park and we had trouble finding the lake at first because it was so far receded. 

 Not sure of the reason, but you could see where it had once been.  There were one or two other campers in the park, but as the ranger said it was still off-season for them.  

The closest town was Chama, NM and it had a few places to eat, a grocery store, library, etc, but was pretty small.  It seems that their claim to tourism is the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad, which had not started running yet.
After stopping by the visitors center we lined up a few things to check out while in the area.  One of which is a little controversial.

The lady at the visitors center told us about a little community off the main drag that had deer that have become somewhat domesticated because the residents have deer feed on hand.  After all of the parks we have visited we have been drilled and understand the importance of not feeding wild animals.  They forget how to feed themselves and begin to look to humans for their food source, so feeding them is a huge disservice.  After a long discussion about the topic we decided that these particular deer have already been ruined and decided to throw all of our park service training away and feed a few deer.  They are more like pets it seems.  They just sit outside of the homes in this little mountain community and wait for the next sucker to come along.  I have an analogy for that, but I won't go there.







While exploring the park where we were staying we found a nice hike that crossed over the Rio Chama and continued on to the neighboring state park.  We started out hike in the later hours of the day and after crossing the bridge found some cat-like tracks all over the place.  We made it a short hike :)

Some kind of cat is close by

Skipping stones.  We are getting very good.

Crossing the Rio Chama

Some of the week we relaxed at our campsite, made cookies, went through the girls clothes and made a goodwill bag.

That weekend our buddies the Judd's came up to meet us from Los Alamos.  We had a lots of fun together doing hikes, cooking over the fire and just hanging out while the kids played.  Some of the girls came over to our place for a sleepover.  The quad bunks have come in handy several times now.

Marshmallow concentration

Heron Lake

Crossing the Rio Chama again with a bigger group

Judd and Cadenas girls

Overall it was a nice stop and made even better with friends.  I bet that area is quite busy in the on season, so it was nice to enjoy it's quietness that week.