Lamar CO to Las Vegas! (New Mexico)

Today we easily made it into northern New Mexico, under clear blue skies. Along the way we stopped at a reservoir campground we would have stayed at, but way too early today:

There's a large reservoir lake behind the dam

 It was a very pretty drive in the foothills leading up to the New Mexico mountains. The drive seemed flat, but the elevation crept up to 4,000 feet and more before we reached the hills. Much of the drive followed the Santa Fe trail, one of the early settler routes.

We'd been wondering when we might see some antelope, and started seeing them later in the morning. In the end, we saw more than we've seen in the same wild area, scattered along in small groups. My apologies for the blurry photos, they were quite a ways away most of the time:

Continuing on southerly we crossed a pass reaching almost 8,900 feet elevation, then on down the other side:

Just inside New Mexico we stopped at a tourist info place for maps and, well, info. Outside a small farmers market was setting up, and Cathie helped fund the baking business of these nice gals:

When we started this trip, we intended to make much use of the New Mexico state parks for overnight stays. Their parks are all the same price per night, $10 for a developed site (no hookups) and up to $18 for full-hookup sites, and good central washrooms etc. 

However we neglected to consider that they might be shutting down the parks for the winter! All the ones we've looked at so far have been partially open, but no main washrooms. Almost all the water has been shut off, no water to campsites, even the dump stations are closed. This happens the 1st of October each year, until Mar 1.

We wasted quite a bit of time (although with gorgeous mountain drives) looking at different parks before we figured this out. The northern parks are mostly unmanned so it took a while before we got the story.

In the end we settled in for the night in Storrie Lake SP just outside Las Vegas, with one of their nice shelters on site. One water tap works in the park, and there are vault toilets scattered around, quite luxurious compared to real boondocking. Very nice views from the site:

This isn't the worst disappointment we've had recently, and we'll get better at finding places to camp. We can hear the Taos Walmart calling though!  😀  

Map of today's drive: