July 15, 2007: New Mexico/Colorado Trip Day 2
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The Drive to New Mexico

As we have done before, we decided to leave from Fred's house on Saturday morning, since it is easier to get across North Texas if you don't have to contend with Dallas/Fort Worth traffic. We got everything set on Friday night, and on Saturday morning loaded my car and were away from the house before nine.

We've followed this route a number of times before; it's the best route to take when your destination is anywhere in northern New Mexico (Albuerqueque and north) or southern Colorado (Colorado Springs and south). From Van Alstyne, we just get on US75 and head north, turning west on US82 just north of Sherman, TX.

Once we are on US82, we head almost due west for a while, basically paralleling the Texas-Oklahoma border. There are a number of small, interesting towns that we go through. We can keep up a pretty good clip along this stretch; the only time the speed limit goes below 70MPH is when we are going through one of the four or five small towns. This stretch of road is almost all divided highway.

At Wichita Falls, we leave US82 and get onto US287, which now begins to angle northwest towards Amarillo. This is a long stretch- about 175 miles- which is more divided highway punctuated by the occasional small town or the small city- Childress and Vernon being the two largest. There is not much to do as we ride along except talk or listen to music. We reached the outskirts of Amarillo about one in the afternoon.

From Amarillo to New Mexico, you can take one of two routes, and we've taken both of them before. One heads northwest on US287/US87 towards Raton, New Mexico. You'd take this route if your actual destination was Colorado. But we were intending to camp our first night at Manzano Mountain State Park which is about thirty miles south of Albuerquerque, and so we took the "southern route" following I-40 to Albuerqueque. On this route, there are no towns to slow down for so you can make somewhat better time.

But as we were riding along, Fred was doing some checking as to what hikes and stuff we'd want to do our first full day in New Mexico and, as it turned out, the really interesting hikes and stuff were closer to Santa Fe than to Albuerqueque. So as we went west, we changed our minds as to where we'd want to camp the first night, and we chose instead to head for a US Forest Service campground about fifteen miles north of San Jose, NM, where Fred had read about a longish but interesting hike to a set of waterfalls. So, just west of Santa Rosa, NM, we headed north on US84 towards Las Vegas, intending to then go south on I-25 to the exit for the unpaved road to the campground.

As we drove north, however, we could see that there was a lot of rain in the direction we were planning to go, and so, worried about setting up the tent in the rain, we changed plans again and shifted our destination to Coyote Creek State Park, some thirty miles north of Las Vegas.

When we got to I-25, we just had to travel a few miles up the road to the town of Las Vegas, NM. There, we followed our map to get to NM518 to the town of Mora. Just outside Las Vegas, we passed Morphy Lake State Park. We actually thought of camping there, but all it was was a lake in the middle of mostly treeless flat ground, and there were already lots of RVs and stuff there. So we just got some brochures on Coyote Creek. We tried calling the reservation number for Coyote Creek, but there was no one in the "office," apparently, so all we could do was take our chances and head for the park.

The drive to the little town of Mora was pretty scenic, but we missed the turnoff to the state park and had to stop and ask some locals where it was, but that didn't waste more than a few minutes.

Right in the center of Mora, there was a turnoff for NM434 north, so we doubled back and took the turnoff. Right away we passed some interesting buildings and an alpaca ranch, but didn't stop just in case the campground at Coyote Creek was filling up.

After about a half-hour's drive, we reached Coyote Creek Campground, only to find out from the campground host that all the spaces were already taken.

So, that kind of made our decision for the first night. It was too late to backtrack to Manzano Mountain SP, and it still looked as if it was raining in the mountains near San Jose, so we thought we'd just get a motel in Las Vegas for the night. We turned around and headed back down to Mora and on to Las Vegas.

The Victory Alpaca Ranch

Shortly before we got back to the town of Mora, we passed an alpaca ranch. Both Fred and I have seen the TV advertisements that try to entice people into raising alpacas; I think it is the same kind of enticement that got Fred's friends from Arlington into raising ostriches out west of Fort Worth. I don't know what you do with alpacas other than shear them for their hair or sell them to other people to raise.

Anyway, we stopped at the entrance to the ranch so Fred could take some pictures of the animals that were out in a pasture about fifty or sixty yards away. Fred used his zoom lens, and captured a view of a few of the alpacas out in the pasture, and a closeup of a single alpaca. I think they had just been shorn, but I couldn't really tell from this distance. The valley around the ranch was certainly picturesque, so even if they don't sell many alpaca, I guess there are benefits to living out here to raise them.

Mora, New Mexico

About a mile south of the alpaca ranch, almost to the intersection in Mora, we found this old mill building. Until we walked around to the back of it, we didn't see the wheel, and at first thought it to be just a barn, although one that was falling down in disrepair. It was obvious that the mill had been there when the highway was built, as the road had to curve around it.

The building had obviously not been kept up, either as an historic site or anything else, for when we got around to the side of the building and took a close look, we could see that not only had the brick (not just a facade here, but the actual wall) separated along a jagged line up the side of the building, but you could see right through the structure, as we've tried to show clearly here.

We spent some time just wandering around the area and the building, taking quite a few pictures, and I've put thumbnails for some of the better ones below. To see the full-size image, just click on the appropriate thumbnail:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	July 15, 2007: New Mexico/Colorado Trip Day 2
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