Good news, we awoke in the same place we parked last evening. The winds dropped fairly quickly last night and it was peaceful on the range.
We departed before 10:00am and headed towards Carlsbad, NM. First a quick stop in Whites City to take a couple of pictures.
Carlsbad is a fairly large town with all of the associated amenities should you need them. We stopped for gas and moved on.
Heading North on SR-285, we drive to Artesia and came across several orchards of Pecan trees. We turned West onto SR-82 and drove through the nicely decorated town center. Heading out of town we were buzzed by student pilots practicing touch-and-go circuits at the local airport.
Continuing West we entered ranch land. Lots of cattle ranches with large gates with names above them along with their branding symbol. Slowly at first and then more noticeably, the land climbed into the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains and onto the Lincoln National Forest. The grasslands became conifer forests as the road climbed to 8,676ft as we entered Cloudcroft, a small town clearly a year-round outdoor destination that had a small but quaint downtown, food trucks and BBQ joints. The ski hill was closed for the season but there were still a few remnants of snow from this past Winter to be seen.
We stopped and picked up pastries from a small bakery and tacos from a well reviewed food truck.
The road from here was all downhill, literally. 6% grades for several miles westward has us taking it easy on the brakes and letting the transmission do its job of managing the speed. We stopped halfway down at a rest stop to eat our Mexican lunch (delicious) and take a few photos before completing the 6% descent into Almagordo, NM.
Our destination is the Oliver Lee Memorial State Park just South of town. No reservation but they tend to have some ‘walk-in’ sites available. We arrived at about 2:30pm and all of the walk-in sites had been taken and all reservation sites were booked for the night.
We were contemplating our next steps when the park host came by and told us that he had room for one rig in the ‘overflow’ area. We took it. No services where we are camping but we have access to the comfort station should we need it and can dump our tanks before leaving. Good for one night!
