Isleta Indian Casino & RV Park, NM

The drive north on the interstate to Albuquerque follows the Rio Grande as it heads south to Texas. This is the southern part of the Rockies, with a few mountain peaks on each side of the highway at eight or nine thousand feet elevation. The hills are covered with scrub and grasses, no trees except for in the mountains. The sky began to turn grey, and as the wind picked up, Howard began to have difficulty controlling the rig. In a crosswind, the trailer is just a big, 29 foot sail. The truckers just kept on going, but after forty minutes of battling the wind gusts, we decided to pull over and wait out the weather. There just happened to be an Indian casino up ahead, so we pulled in and decided to spend a couple hours waiting out the wind storm. We parked near a couple of other RVs and truckers in a fairly deserted parking lot. By the time we headed for the door of the casino, a cold, blowing rain had begun. We took a walk around inside and Howard decided to go back to the rig and read, while Lei stayed to check out the slot machines. When Lei got back to the rig, the wind and rain had not let up, so we debated whether to stay in the parking lot with no hook ups, or try to make it to Albuquerque. Instead, we found a campground operated by the Isleta Reservation, just down the hill. We paid for a spot at the gate and drove around the campground a few times looking for a not too muddy site. There were a few other campers there, locals with old rigs and tents, and all the sites were fairly far apart, with a few tall but scraggly trees. By nightfall, all the sites were occupied, and the wind and rain continued.
We slept all bundled up and managed to ignore the train that went by early in the morning. The little space heater served us well that night, and in the morning it was still drizzling and about fifty degrees. It was Good Friday, and some of the families hid eggs in the grass for their kids. We hung around until noon when the ran let up, then packed up and headed for Santa Fe.