Enjoyed a nice evening in the mountains of SW Colorado on Friday night.  A bit chilly, but the sleeping bag and furnace kept us warm all night.
Woke up to another beautiful sunny morning.

Headed further west to mesa verde national park.  Stopped at the visitor center to book a couple tickets to the balcony house tour.

3 story ladder to climb into the cavern house

Tour success!

Spectacular views leaving the mesa

Next stop was the four corners monument.  Exact location where you can break dance on four states of utah, arizona, new mexico and colorado.

Continued our drive down into arizona to see Canyon de Chelly on Sunday.

Quite a landscape

Smooth drive today up into southwest Colorado. Spending the night at a dispersed camping site in the national forest just west of Mancos, CO.

We left the trailer at the campsite and took the truck north to Taos. First stop was to get some lunch as we were quite hungry when we got there. Since we are in New Mexico we decided that Mexican food would be a good choice. Chris found a place online with good reviews called La Cueva Cafe and it did not disappoint! It was a quaint little restaurant and we ate outside on the patio. We got an order of shrimp tacos and an order of veggie enchiladas and split them. The guacamole that we had for an appetizer was also really good! Next, we drove up to Taos Ski Resort. Ski season is over and the place was a ghost town. As we started driving through the resort, we were immediately greeted by 5 longhorn up on the mountain- very cool!! We parked the car and decided to hike the trail up the mountain to wheeler lake. There was still enough snow to cover the ground so we hiked about 4 miles round trip through the snow! Quite different from our barefoot hike in the sand dunes just a few days ago! Afterward, we drove to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. What an awesome view!! The river is quite low due to the area being in a drought for the past 3 years and also getting very little snow. Headed back to the campsite, first stopping at the grocery store to stock up on more supplies.

Woke up and realized that we had a lot to do today. We were out of water in the trailer, and needed to find an RV dump site. The truck and trailer were also in desperate need of a washing. We found a car wash in soccorro which had a lane that was high enough to pull our trailer through which worked out great. Then it was off to find a (hopefully free) dump station, which we found at a Giant gas station right off the interstate in Albuquerque. Driving through Albuquerque was really interesting in that it is this large, sprawling city in the middle of the desert and you can look out from the road and see the entire city at once. Ok, so we were still in need of potable water for the trailer, so we found an inexpensive campground just north of Santa Fe in the Santa Fe National Forest called Black Canyon Campground which had good reviews online and had spigots with potable water- perfect! Turned out to be a really nice, quiet campground in the pine covered mountains (what a change from the desert!). There was a mountain trail within the campground so after getting settled we headed out for a hike. Turned out to be quite a strenuous hike with some steep inclines. A good workout after a busy day of driving. Also noticed some snow still on top of the mountains, as well as spotted a few mule deer. Headed back to our campsite and cooked up a pot of vegetarian chili which definitely hit the spot:)

Chris and Cindy got tired of driving, so we let Jalapeño take over!

After a morning run and some brunch of quinoa and beans with the salsa that we purchased in Texas, we loaded the trailer up and got back on the road heading toward Santa Fe. We decided to take our time getting there and find a place to stop along the way for the night to break up the trip. Our first stop was at the petroglyphs grounds at Three Rivers campground. We hiked around the jagged rocks and found a lot of petroglyphs left by Native Americans over 600 years ago! We also got to talking with a very nice older gentleman who had done a lot of traveling around the area and had a lot of advice for places to visit. It’s amazing how big everything is out here, there is so much to see! We got back on the road and found another free BLM campsite near Soccorro, NM.

Awoke to another beautiful blue sky morning at our BLM dispersed camping site near Carlsbad. Turned the furnace on during the night to keep us a bit warmer than the previous night. Get to try out our new sleeping bag as a comforter tonight.

Packed up and departed westward after a quick stop at walmart for food and supplies. Made good time up into the mountains. Quite a bit cooler up at the 8600 foot pass before coming down past Cloudcroft.

Cindy's first 6% downhill trailer driving experience was a success!

Pulled into white sands national park to spend the afternoon before continuing a bit further to camp a BLM rec area nearby.

A huge kitty litter box!

Back at the beach!

Quick factoid: we are about 85 miles from the trinity site, which is where the first atomic bomb dropped here back in 1945.

After a short sunset bike ride last night, we enjoyed a nice full moon dinner.  Also our first dose of chilly desert evenings last night.  Went to bed in reasonably warm temperatures, but woke up in the middle of the night freezing!  Added a new sleeping bag to our shopping list..

Blue skies and warm temperatures greeted us today for some local exploration.  After breakfast we drove up to the Carlsbad caverns park.  Turned out to be free parks week, a nice surprise. The hype about this park is true, it’s an unbelievable sight!!  Spent about 2 hours to walk the entire loop, most of which is 750 feet underground.

Headed back to the trailer for lunch and a siesta.  Unloaded our bikes and took off to check out the black river recreation area.  A unique oasis in the middle of nothing.

Off to see the bats leave the cavern at dusk..