Manzano Mountain State Park, NM

Katie and I spent a little more than a week at Manzano Mountain State Park in New Mexico.  This was our first visit to this park, which has been closed for a few years because of fire danger.  It's not near anything, so if you visit it, make sure you have enough food and supplies.  They do have a dump site and water and trash removal, and a very nice couple who are camp hosting.

It's a small park nestled in trees - the electric sites are on a loop.  Most of the reserved electric sites are nice and looked level, but the non-reserved sites were pretty small and not level.  I circled the loop three times when we arrived looking for a good non-reserved spot, but couldn't find one, and the overflow area was chained off.  A park employee told me it was closed because a group of 150 (boy scouts and their families) were expected for the weekend and they didn't want anyone parking in their spaces.  The camp hosts were in Albuquerque for the day, and so I took an open "one-night only reserved" dry site and talked to the camp host later that day.

He said he would have the Ranger take down the chain so I could get back into the overflow primitive area and choose a site at the end.  There were seven sites in an end loop that were available for campers not attending the group events.

This is our site for the first night.  Nice and level, nice shade structure with a table and a fire ring.

The next morning we went back into the overflow area - I liked that area better, but there were only two sites with enough sun to keep my solar panels in the sunshine all day, and this is the one I chose.  I actually had sun on the roof all day long - it was a very good site.  Kind of hard to back into, though, without hitting trees.  It was pretty level.  We were NOT in the desert any more!

We had some good critter activity here - first here are photos of Katie's favorites - look at the dirt on this guy - he has a hole in the soft dirt at the base of the tree right next to The Palms.  Katie could see him coming and going from her car seat:

Here he is climbing up the tree:

Below is the another lizard - he almost looked wet.  He looks pretty round around the middle, too, and I wondered if it was a she with baby lizards in her tummy. :

Below is Katie checking out the lizard hole, and of course, I made her get away from it. I didn't want her getting bit on the nose.

And so Katie just stood nearby, guarding it. (This is what she looks like when she guards me while I'm in the kitchen.)  Notice she's facing away from the lizard hole holding up her right paw.  Watching for enemies!  :)

And we had some good hummers, too:

The sun caught this guy just right in this shot:

Chirp, chirp, chirp:

This park has Ponderosa and pinyon pines, and alligator juniper trees.  Looking at the rough trunks on the alligator junipers, it's obvious how they got their name:

I was planning to stay here the full 14 days, but one morning I woke up and decided to leave, and 2 hours later, we were at Costco in Albuquerque.

It was really nice to camp in the forest with the great pine tree smell, but I think Manzano Mountains State Park, as nice as it is, was just too small for us, and the spaces, even the overflow spaces, were too close together.  With that many trees it's hard to find a spot that will work with the solar panels.  This park is pretty out-of-the way, too, and I don't think I'll use the gas to come back next year.  It's an about a two hour drive to Albuquerque.  I'm glad we visited this once, though. 

By the way, the 150 campers with the Boy Scout troups were so quiet, even though they were right  next to us I hardly knew they were there.  They were always working in small groups at different campsites, earning badges I think.  It was a pleasure to camp near them.  I honestly don't know how they kept those boys so quiet for the whole weekend. Some of the families had small children, too. Super well behaved! 

I took a photo of a camp stove one family had on their table, isn't this a good idea?  It has an oven and two burners on the top.  It's propane powered.  Very cool, so I looked it up on Amazon.com, and if you're interested here's a link:  Coleman Camp Stove.  Expensive...

I also saw a new bird while there - it's a Band-tailed Pigeon and it sure looked big flying from tree to tree:

At first I thought it was a dove, but my field guide shows that the Band-tailed Pigeon has that iridescence on it's neck, and yellow legs and feet.

Goodbye from:

From me and Katie, have a great Sunday, everyone!  :)