Day 159 – Today we travel again to the campground we’d planned to stay at weeks ago before we came across the sign that said “Grand Canyon, 60 miles”, LOL. We’re finally going to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near San Antonio, NM. There is a campground called, Bosque Birdwatcher’s RV Park, situated right outside the entrance to the wildlife refuge. Due to its convenient location to the wildlife refuge, we’ve beeen looking forward to staying there.
213 miles
We were up a little after 7 a.m. The girls didn’t wake us up this morning – they had their heated pads & were sleeping soundly. It was 24 degrees & very cloudy (not in the teens like had been forecast). As we were packing up & getting ready to leave, the two ladies who had camped near us stopped by to say that they’d seen our cats in the windows & were themselves camping with 3 cats. They’d left home in August & were camping full-time.
Red Rock Park Campground, 5757 Red Rock Park Dr., P. O. Box 10, Church Rock, NM 87311, (505) 722-3839, www.gallupnm.gov. Check-out time 12 noon, Two campgrounds, managed by the City of Gallup. The West Campground is open from May 1 to Oct. 31 and reservations are required. It has 38 campsites. The Main Campground is open all year. The literature says the Main Campground has 121 campsites, but it didn’t look nearly that large. Maybe it was because there was hardly anyone camping there in the winter, which made it look different, but if 121 sites were filled, they would certainly be crowded close together. When we were there, it wasn’t crowded at all. It was a great place for a night or two stopover. Bordered on one side by large red rock formations offering hiking trails and water & electric hook-ups for $22 per night, this was a bargain. Dump stations were available. Located off Interstate 40 and historic Route 66, but far enough away that traffic noise wasn’t a problem. At least half of the campsites were not level but some were large and some were pull-throughs. We would return again.
We departed at 9:30 a.m., 31 degrees. We took Route 66 briefly to I-40E and stayed on that highway for a good distance. To avoid going through Albuquerque, we turned southeast on Route 6 (old historic Route 66) to Interstate 25 south, stopping for lunch at Pizza Hut in Belen. It was a nice break & we appreciated something other than egg salad sandwiches! The scenery hadn’t been as interesting as we’d experienced in the past few days, partly because it had been raining on & off, and partly because we were in relatively flat desert country. The red rock cliffs were still in the distance to the north for a while, but the landscape was mostly flat.
Following the GPS, we turned off on the 380 east briefly, then onto Route 1 south, heading for the RV Park near the entrance to the wildlife refuge. It was raining steadily. The GPS led us to a dirt road; we didn’t take it. We turned around and got on an even smaller highway, then ended up in a parking lot for a closed school. We went to the phone and tried Google. We followed its directions, passed by a sign that said “RV camping” and almost turned in, but Google said that we weren’t there yet. We continued down the small road & it eventually took us to our Bosque Birdwatcher’s Campground, which was closed and a “For Sale” sign was posted. Oh dear. Here we are in the boonies, we don’t even know if we can turn around because the road is so narrow, and we have no place to stay.
Never fear, the turning radius on the RV pulled us through again and we headed back to the “RV camping” sign we’d passed by earlier, turned into the long driveway, and came upon a small parking lot with full hook-ups for maybe 12 campsites, surrounded by fields for some kind of crop which hadn’t been planted yet. We were greeted by a very nice man who evidently lived with his wife in the small house at the Park. He said it hadn’t rained in four months & now everyone wants to find a place to stay in the rain, and that his nephew currently owns the Birdwatcher’s RV Park down the road and had closed, putting it up for sale. As we grabbed a campsite for two nights, other RV’s and campers pulled in, hoping for a place to stay. $25 per night for full hook-ups; we lucked out. It was 2 p.m. and 48 degrees, raining hard. And we were still close to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge as planned.
It continued raining all afternoon. We watched as people drove by towards the Birdwatcher’s Campground, then came back here. It was this guy’s lucky day. We brought out the wine & beer, played some Yahtzee (Rob won), and listened to the geese and ducks flying overhead. Tomorrow we’ll go in to Socorro to pick up our mail at the post office, then spend the day at the wildlife refuge. We hope it stops raining by then!