Cabalos Lake State Park, NM

Another lake created by a dam for water supply and recreation. We had already put in enough hours of driving, so we stopped to talk to the camp host about the best place to park. He didn’t believe our truck was from Hawaii until he saw the matching front and back license plates. He then got into telling us his parents had lived in Kona for many years, but he never liked it because he missed the change of the seasons. He pointed us towards the unreserved portion of the campground, and we cruised through the rest of the parking spots before finding a site near the bath house. We parked in a pull through that had a nice picnic table with its own pavilion. The campsites were all on gravel, very level and easy to pull into. There were only a few other campers around, even though the camp host had said the park would be full for the weekend. We got set up and took a walk on one of the trails in the park. There were no large trees, just a lot of scrub bushes, all about a foot tall. We walked down to the of the lake, which was noticeably below the normal waterline. We found out later that there are several lakes in a string running north to south that were all low due to a light winter snow season. All the towns and farmers downstream rely on the snow melt from the Rockies for water, so when there’s only a little snow, the lakes are drawn down to continue to supply the surrounding population. The night was too cold to try a campfire, so we stayed in and slept with the little space heater turned on High.
When we woke up the next morning, we decided to stay on another day and enjoy the park, maybe walk another trail, and check out the nearby town. There were still only a few other campers around, so Howard gave the rig a quick wash down, even though the park requested all campers to conserve water. It took less than ten minutes, and was only to rinse off some of the road dust we had accumulated since we started in Eugene.