Just after we had started this walkabout, my friend Bruce reminded me about the Ultimate US Public Campgrounds Project, an iPhone app that lists about 30,000 public sites across the country. Using the app, we decided to head for Ute Lake State Park in New Mexico, near Logan. We swung around the north end of Lake Meredith and checked out some of the campsites and views. then headed due west and eventually passed through Channing, Texas before turning southwest on highway 54 to Logan. Lots of oil rigs and cattle! It appears to be a harsh area, most towns leaned more toward industrial. Rough roads at Interstate speeds.
We noticed that new pavement was actually laid down only where the tires run. That’s one way to cover the miles on a budget!
We made Ute Lake only to find out that all New Mexico state parks are CLOSED to non-residents due to COVID. Interesting. Using our handy app, we filtered to national forests and parks and found Mills Canyon, about 90 miles northwest. The app mentioned 10 miles of high-clearance road and no trailers or RVs on the last 2 miles, this sounded very promising.
I had over 1/2 a tank of gas and we figured we could find gas along the route. So about 3 miles out of Logan we put Google Maps to the test, looking for filling station stops. We had five hits, three were BEHIND us in Logan, two were ahead. One was listed as the town of Mosquero’s public water utility and the other was in Roy, even further up the road. Considering these results, we chose to backtrack to Logan to fill up. And a good decision it was! I didn’t see anything resembling a gas station the entire way.
You never know what you’ll get into. The app said there was a horse camp first, then the tent sites with hiking were a couple of miles further in, both were free.
So right at the top of the kiosk we are warned about bears, cougars, and rattlesnakes. Sounds like my kinda place! Patricia wasn’t so sure…
We dropped off the mesa down a pretty rugged road and finally ended up at the Canadian River and a very sweet campground.
There were about a dozen campsites. Each had a table, a fire ring, and a grill. The evaporative toilets were clean. In fact, the entire place was very well maintained. What a nice surprise!
The air was dry and we were at about 5,400 feet, so the night sky was pretty nice. I haven’t seen the Milky Way that bright in a long time. While I was setting the telescope up, Patricia saw some nice shooting stars. We looked at Mars and found the Andromeda galaxy, always a treat. I hope to do more with the scope on this trip. I’m not sure it’s working correctly, seems the view should be brighter. I’ve checked the collimation and that seems ok. Of course it is an antique, it was my first major purchase as a young engineer back in 1986 or so. Even took precedence over a car, I kept driving that old Dodge truck the kids had named the green hulk. Three-on-the-tree and manual steering baby!
We took a stab at recording our drive out. The 30 minute drives was sped up 8X so it only lasts about 4 minutes. Don’t get too nauseous watching it! I just dangled the iPhone from the sun visor and it did a pretty good job of stabilizing the video. So check it out:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14iP-kmwsc5_0n_7-lksSVb2a2YwSe7pc/view?usp=sharing
As it turns out, there weren’t any bears, cougars, or rattlesnakes. At least not any that we saw :-). But we did see this:
