Lake Abiquiu COE

The Lake Abiquiu COE (Corps of Engineers) campground is located northewest of Santa Fe, in New Mexico.  This is Georgia O'Keefe country and there are museums and other sites about this American artists.  The area is high desert....  6,000' and the Sangre del Cristo mountains are close by.  In 2007, Bill and I were leaving the Grand Canyon area in Arizona and wandered up this way...  it took us a month to get to Albuquerque, we loved this area so much.  It was time to come back.  

The campground where we're staying overlooks the lake...

Looking out from the front of our rig...  a late evening photo of the clouds and lake as the sun sets.

And even more beautiful....

The sun shining on the rocks the next morning....

The way the sun shows all the layers of different kinds of rock is just fascinating.  Neither sunrise nor sunset lasts very long....  you have to be quick to appreciate some of Mother Nature's beauty!

There are several hiking trails at this campground.  I saw that there was a geocache hidden about a half mile from our campsite, so Sunday morning out the door we went...

Once we found the trail walking was fairly easy.  It winds around the side of a hill....  way above the lake.  Occasionally there were markers describing a plant or a tree.  Mostly we saw junipers up here.  We saw a couple of rabbits.

As you can see, we're up pretty high.  Those are fishing boats in the water near the shore.  You can also see the chain-link fence (upper right) that runs along the top of this bluff.  This is a family campground and I'm sure safety is a high priority here.

The cache was an easy find...

I had forgotten to take a pen along...  but this cache was large enough to hold lots of swag... and also at least 3 pens were inside.  WoooHooo!  Signed the log, replaced the container...  and off we went.

The building at the upper right is located at the dam.  It looks like the landscaping consists of all native plants.  We did see one tree that didn't look indigenous, but ????.   Anyway, the purple sage was in bloom as is the rabbit bush.  Even the cholla had yellow "tunas" on them.

Abiquiu Dam

This is a really high dam....  I have no idea how high the water gets here, but I think Noah would be called in to build an ark if it ever got this high.

Okay...  my birding friends...

Two shots of this woodpecker...

At first I thought he's a Ladder-backed....  but the eye stripe?  and what's the red on his chin?

Red-naped?  Where's the black bib?  Broad white wing stripes?  

  Remember, we are in northern NM at 6,000'....   Help!

We walked a big loop...  from the dam we walked along the road that takes you to Cuba...  a town we pass through when we drive from ABQ to Farmington...  Bill's hometown. 

Up above the campground...

We can look down and see our motorhome nestled among the junipers.

Our walk didn't take more than an hour...  terrain kind of rough at time until we found the trail...  but great views and lovely scenery.  There are other trails here.... today we'll go the other direction and see what we can see.  

That's All For Today!