2017 Spring Break

For our Spring Break trip, we drove out to Balmorhea State Park, swam, spent the night, and then drove on to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park in Alamogordo, NM. Using that as our base, we made day trips into Las Cruces, Cloudcroft, Sunspot, and Carrizozo, NM. Those trips included drives along some beautiful scenic drives and several other parks and campgrounds – most notably White Sands National Monument and the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site. It has been a full and fun week. And, as of this writing, we still have two days left.

Balmorhea is a spring-fed pool oasis in west Texas near the Davis Mountains. We stop there often and have posted some photos from there before, but here is one more.

Oliver Lee was at the very edge of the Tularosa Basin and the cliffs of the Sacramento Mountains just southeast of Alamogordo – probably about 600 feet higher than the basin floor. This is still the Chihuahuan Desert, so it looks and feels much like Big Bend National Park. But one difference is that the basin floor is about 2000 higher. Another is that the mountains are about 3000 to 6000 feet higher.

These pictures are from the drive to Las Cruces and the White Sands National Monument.

And these are from the visit to the Sacramento Mountains including Cloudcroft and several stops along the road to Sunspot.

And these are from the Three Rivers Petroglyphs Site and Carrizozo, NM. We will probably post more pictures from the Petroglyphs after we are back home. Various sources say there are between 20,000 and 21,000 glyphs. We only saw dozens, and they were still amazing.

It has been a great trip so far – more posts soon.