Entering Into New Mexico: An Overnight Camp At Caballo Lake State Park (Jan. 30th-31st)

After leaving Tucson in the wee hours of morning, I had a pleasant, leisurely drive of about 4 hours before arriving at my destination of Caballo Lake State Park. On the way, I enjoyed a magnificent, ever-changing sunrise coming up over the hills to the right of the long stretch of highway. The campground at the state park was rather odd: It was, for all intents and purposes, an RV park. That is to say, ninety percent of the sites were for RVs and vehicles needing hookups. Some massive RVs had the appearance of being there permanently! The humble, main camping area for car campers like myself consisted of a large, circular parking lot down by the lake... more scenic, to be sure, but lacking any amenities whatsoever! This was the "primitive" camping area. There were no numbered sites, no picnic tables or water faucets, and no bathrooms! One had to "hike" up the hill to the more "civilized" RV area to use a bathroom (which was heated and quite nice, as it turned out-- though rather misplaced, since RV's have their own bathrooms and this nice--and large-- one probably rarely got used!) 

However, my little secluded spot--down a slight incline away from the circular parking lot--was most scenic; totally doable, especially since it was just for one night. It was sunny but VERY windy the afternoon of my arrival, and I had an inkling I was in for a VERY chilly night! I was NOT mistaken!

I walked around a bit, noticing that the actual park was quite vast, and several "primitive" campers like myself had also chosen secluded-but-scenic little spots in various dispersed locations. I imagined it would be quite pleasant at the lake in the summer, though there would undoubtedly be many more people filling up the park. As it stood on this chilly day in January, the campers were indeed quite sparse. 

After my little walk, I amused myself by creating a nice "firewall" to protect my little camp stove from the wind when it was time to cook my dinner. (My dinner was quite humble: canned soup with some leftover cooked veggies and a few crackers.) 

I ate early; as soon as the sun dropped down on the horizon, the temperature plummeted. I hastily plunked myself down on my comfy mattress in my car, and read until I felt sleepy. Snuggling down into my lovely down sleeping bag, I drifted off into a peaceful sleep, until...

... as always, a full bladder nudged me awake. I could tell by how cold my face was--the only body part NOT inside the bag-- that stepping outside the car to do my business was going to be brutal. This was painfully accurate! After only a couple minutes, I fairly threw myself back into the car, dove back down into the sleeping bag, and lay shivering, trying to warm my feet and hands for quite some time until I was finally able to fall back to sleep. 

I awoke at dawn to windows covered with ice, and a temperature on the dashboard reading 22 degrees! Holy moly! NOW I understood why there were so few "campers" there;  all the sensible people were in RVs, undoubtedly with heaters they could run all night!

After warming my car, I made haste to hit the road again, driving the 3 hours or so into Albuquerque. I greatly looked forward to being able to live indoors for the few weeks to follow! More about that in the next blog post. 

The lovely Lake Caballo...unbeknownst to me until after I left, at 4500 feet! No WONDER it got so very cold in the night!

 

After leaving Tucson, driving into the sunrise over New Mexico... a most magnificent display!

The nifty fire ring I made; in order to light my little camp stove, I needed serious protection for the delicate gas fire from the unrelenting wind!

My own little "primitive" campsite, away from all other campers...being mid-week and wintertime, the others were sparsely scattered around in this immense park.  Hard to beat this view, eh?!

A lovely sunset over the lake

NOT so lovely: completely frozen toes in the night as the temps dropped well below freezing! Waking up to caked ice on the windows of my car... hefted myself into the driver's seat and got the car running and heat going before I dared crawl out of my sleeping bag!!!

Yep, you are seeing this correctly: 22 degrees!!! Definitely TOO cold for car camping!!!