61 or 91 - You Decide - Ruidoso, NM

We have a few weeks between trips and decided to get out of the Texas heat and head to the cool mountains of New Mexico. 

The nearest place to us for some cooler weather is Ruidoso.  We have stayed in Ruidoso many times.  I think the first time we took our RV was in 2005.  It was a favorite summer vacation spot for us when we worked.

It’s a long one day drive for us (about 560 miles).  So now that we have the time, we break it up into a two day drive.

We live in central Texas so it takes quite some time to get to the TX/NM border. 

This time of year there are thousands of acres of cotton. 

West Texas is pretty flat, and dry. 

We spent our first night in Brownfield.  An interesting thing about small towns in this part of Texas is that many of them provide free RV parks. The Brownfield RV park is adjacent to Coleman park which has a pretty nice disc golf course.

There seemed to be a migration of Mississippi Kites in the park. We saw a couple of dozen, including some juveniles that were hatched this year. 

Mississippi Kite - Adult

Mississippi Kite - Juvenile

The next morning, cotton fields turned into cotton fields with many oil rigs.  We finally made it out of Texas and had only a 3 hour drive to Ruidoso.  

We didn’t stop in Roswell this time but it’s a fun, quirky town to visit.

Not too far into New Mexico we started getting into the mountains.

 

When we got into Ruidoso we headed straight to the Eagle Lake Campground in the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation.  We have stayed here many times in the past, but hadn't been back in over ten years.  

Office

We stopped coming to this campground when it began having bear problems. The campground didn't use bear-proof trash cans, and the bears had figured out that this was an fine place for a meal. When we saw bears walking on the campground roads at 5:00 p.m., we decided to find another campground. After more that ten years, we decided to give it another try, and were glad to see that they are doing a better job with the trash. We did not see any bears on this trip.

The fee for camping is $45 a night, which is pretty typical for this area.  Most of the sites are not at all level but we like the campground because it’s very quiet and not particularly crowded. Most of the commercial campgrounds in this area have sites that are very close together.

 

Alto Lake is very close to the RV park.

It’s a beautiful area.  We spent a morning hiking the trails of Alto Lake and Grindstone Lake.

There are lots of wild horses in this area.

We saw several on our hikes. 

We also saw a few on our drives. 

And even this one in the campground, right behind the trailer. 

There are a couple of new disc golf courses that Mark hadn’t played before.

Even though our favorite restaurant had moved, we were able to hunt it down.  There are several good restaurants here.

This is one of the reasons we come to the mountains in the summer.  1:00 pm and only 61 degrees!

We also come here for the birds.  Especially the many hummingbirds.

We took three hummingbird feeders with us, and fed dozens of hummingbirds. We filled the feeders 3 - 4 times each day. 

We fed three different species of hummingbirds:  Broad-tailed, Rufous, and Calliope.  

The Rufous Hummingbird is named for its overall rusty red color.

The Calliope Hummingbird is the smallest in North America, and the male has an interesting purple striped gorget.

By far the most common were the Broad-tailed Hummingbirds. The males have a special feather in their wings that produces a distinctive trilling sound when they fly. 

We had a great week before heading back home.

We stayed at the San Angelo KOA for one night to break up the drive.  We didn’t even unhook.  We ordered some great Mexican food and had UBER Eats pick it up and deliver it to us! Another UBER first for the McClelland's!

This why we like to get out of Texas in the summer.

1:00 pm and 91 degrees.

I bought a few souvenirs for the house.

So, would you rather be at 61 degrees or 91 degrees in August?

It was a very enjoyable week.  If we had time we would have stayed longer.  But, we have another trip coming up soon.

Stay tuned!