Caballo Lake SP, Riverside Campground

We left Oliver Lee SP, south of Alamagordo NM after 5 days, & traveled west, past White Sands Nat'l Monument, to Las Cruces, & north up I-25 to Caballo Lake SP, south of Truth or Consequences, to the campground below the dam called Riverside Campground. Last March, we dry camped at the Percha Dam Campground, just south of where we went this time. Since our NM State Park pass is still active, we opted for a $4/night electric site since this winter weather farther north in NM could be unpleasant.

While here, I wanted to see Silver City NM again, but this time by going up, over, & thru the Cibola National Forest in the mountains west of ToC. Previous heavy rains caused A LOT of road wash-outs, but Highway 125 was finally passable again. Wow, it's so nice to get high enough to see acres of mountains covered with huge Ponderoza Pines & distant views of rolling desert hills.

The road going up the east side of the mountain followed the terrain, climbing above wide valleys & canyons, but the road going down the west side stayed in a very narrow canyon with a (currently) trickling creek right next to the road winding its way to Silver City, with only a few distant views to the west.

While in Silver City, we decided to eat a late lunch at the Adobe Springs Restaurant. Jeff had a Reuben sandwich & I had a delicious turkey club on sourdough with sweet potato fries. Since they were such big sandwiches, we each only had half. The other half was almost better the next day. The slow trip back over the mountain was just as fantastic, but we didn't get back to the trailer until right after dark. Definitely worth the trip.

We also got to visit with Emily again in ToC. In fact, she unexpected treated us to a pre-Christmas lunch at an Asian restaurant. Again, the meals were too big to eat in one sitting, so we took home left overs. It was definitely great to visit with Emily again.

We had one day of rain, but I finally got a chance to photograph these strange trees around the campground. They seem to be some kind of cedar based on the color of the wood where branches have been trimmed off. Such knobs, bumps, & horizontal trunks.

Overall, this is a quiet, spaceous campground, but only dry campsites are located along the Rio Grande River on the east side of the campground where we had wanted to camp. After five days tho, we both felt the urge to move to our next adventure - in Santa Fe.