New Mexico January 2018

The month of January found us back in New Mexico. We came here years ago on vacation and loved it. When we started work camping we decided to find a position here and it was a great decision. When we first retired we were docents at two light houses in Michigan and at Young State Park in Boyne City also in Michigan. They were all short term but Elephant Butte was our first long term position.

Elephant Butte Lake State Park is the largest state park in New Mexico. It is on Elephant Butte Lake which was formed when a dam was built on the Rio Grande River. We are 250 miles south of Albuquerque and 75 north of Las Cruses and 5 miles from Truth or Consequences (yes that is a real city)  just off I-25. We are here for 3 months this time as camp ground host. We take care of 16 sites in our area making sure they are cleaned when campers leave and ready for the next guest. We are also the main contact for our campers and help them enjoy their stay with us.

This is the butte that gave the area its name. Look closely and you can see the elephant. Here is a little hint...the trunk and head area on the left which means the elephant's butt is to the right. There you have Elephant Butt, oops I mean Butte.
Below is a picture of us working at the park entrance. This is from 2011 our first time here the only thing different is we are a few years older but we are still looking good.

This is our site in Lions Beach Campground. The other two times we were here we were in Quail Run. We have a full hook up site with a view of the lake. Great way to spend the winter. We enjoy staying a little busy (12-15 hours a week) and meeting the campers. We have a couple here now from Pullman Michigan which is not far from our home.

We were out Geocaching one day and had a great view of the lake from the south end. We have been Geocaching for a couple of years now and it's a great way to get out and enjoy Mother Nature. Geocaching is where you use an app on your phone to find little treasures that others have hidden. It can be as small as a pill bottle (or smaller) or as big as an ammo box. There is usually a log to sign and you can log it on the app for your own records.

We did drive to the town of Hatch. This is where they grow chiles. If you use red or green chiles in your cooking, chances are they came from Hatch. This is where Sparky's is. We go for the green chili cheese burgers, green chili cheese fries and the green chili corn. These pictures are of the outside and the parking lot across the street.The inside is just as interesting.

We have quail, morning dove, roadrunners (Beep Beep), bunnies and jack rabbits around us all the time. We even have coyotes roaming the park.  Holly puts out food for them every morning.  I'm not sure if they are all sitting up in the trees waiting for food or trying to keep from being coyote food. Below is just a small group that shows up for breakfast. They are sure fun to watch and I love waking up in the morning and hearing them talking amongst themselves.

This is me standing in the middle of the Rio Grande River (bed). This is about 1/4 mile below the dam. Because of the drought conditions here they are trying to get the level of the lake up before they start letting water out for irrigation. Once they start letting water out the water would be around my chin. So sad to see the lake so low and the minimal snowfall this year to the north is not going to help much.

We do get storms rolling thru once in awhile. Not much rain out of them but we do get some beautiful cloud formations, especially at sunset.

We drove up to Bosque del Apache to see all of the migrating birds that winter there.They have several ponds for the different water fowl. They also have fields of corn and grain. This pond was mostly snow geese. As you can see, there are a lot of them and there were other ponds with more. There were also ducks and blue heron in and around the ponds. Tends to be quite noisy around all these birds. 

We were lucky to catch this Bald Eagle checking out the area. It is always a thrill to see one of these magnificent birds. We saw a number of them when we were work camping in Libby Montana but it is still exciting to see one wherever we are.

This is a corn field full of sand cranes. These are impressive birds. They are very large and very loud. We have seen them fly in to a group and hover in the air and float straight down to land in a hole among all of them. At night they gather in shallow ponds away from the edges so if any predators try to sneak up on them they will have to come into the water making noise which gives them time to get away.

We also drove out to White Sands National Monument. These are very large sand dunes made up of real fine gypsum sand. Because of the white color it almost seems as you have driven into a winter wonderland.

Due to the constant shifting sands they plow the roads to keep them open. This also helps the illusion of snow. People come out for picnics and to slide down the dunes on saucers. That's not flying saucers...that's over by Roswell on the other side of the state.

That's all for now. We have not been out too much as we have been here twice before so there isn't much we haven't already seen. I'll keep trying to find something interesting for our blog and hopefully show you some of New Mexico. So for now, just like the guy to the right, I'll just slide out of here and see what I can come up with for the next post. Till then stay warm up north.