A LITTLE Hike

Just a brief post to share some photos.  We visited the park office/visitor center this morning to find out about the hiking trails.  The trail does go for over 6 miles, but there are views for all of the trail, and the cabin on the mountain is 2.9 miles up the trail.  The cabin is most likely as far as we will hike... maybe. 

We went for a morning walk on a lower trail that leads to and beside a stream... very nice,  but we didnt have the camera for that.

After our morning walk, we went into Alamogordo to look around and get a few groceries.  Alamogordo seems to have all we would ever need in the way of stores, and we found out where the laundromat is, whenever we get around to washing clothes again.

Back at the park, we decided to check out the Dog Canyon Trail.  We knew we wouldn't make it very far this afternoon, but we wanted to get a feel for the trail. 
 

Trail?

hard to believe this is really a trail

View of the Campground

This is really a trail?

On our way back down

We hiked up less than 1/2 mile!  But we were told by the camphosts  (who were sitting in the sun watching us hike up the mountain) that the part we hiked was the most difficult part of the trail.  So that is encouraging.  Wind is in the forecast tomorrow so we may not make the hike to the cabin tomorrow, but we will in a day soon.

Moving Day... Really!

Our reservation was up at Brantley Lake SP, and we were very ready to move on.  We had most things put away yesterday, so we were close to ready this morning.  

We had finally made the decision that our next destination would be Oliver Lee Memorial State Park in Alamogordo, New Mexico.  So our drive today took us North on Hwy 285 to Artesia, then West on Hwy 80 through Cloudcroft to Alamogordo.  We had no idea that Hwy 80 would be such a beautiful drive!

This road took us through Desert, Ranches, Forests, Rock Tunnels... We climbed to 8800 ft at Cloudcroft, then down again to under 4000 ft.   Cloudcroft appears to be a small Ski Resort town.

Oliver Lee State Park is 12 miles South of Alamogordo, then 4 miles East on Dog Canyon Rd.  We arrived at 3:30 (it was a slow drive). 

The park has only 16 electric sites, and not very large sites.  There were only three available... one was way too small... one had a broken water faucet, and the other was a "handicap" site.  Since Jeff has a "handicap" permit that hasn't expired from his full knee replacement... we took the handicap site.  Besides being a lot bigger, it isn't really any different than other sites.  We wouldn't normally take one these sites, but what are we to do?  We asked about it, and they gave us the ok!

Our back window view

We are beside the Sacramento Mountains

Our front door View

There is a steep 6 mile trail into the Sacramento Mountains that we will check into tomorrow, but I dont know...

There have been some ground explosions as we sit here tonight... we dont know what they are, but hopefully they wont continue and we can find out what they were or are.  The White Sands Missile Range is only 15 miles away, could it be they are doing something there?  Hmmm.