Heron Lake State Park, New Mexico

Friday, May 9, we drove 90 miles NW on Highway 64 to Heron Lake State Park. We used “New Mexico Campgrounds the Statewide Guide’ by Christina Frain that we bought in one of the museum stores in Santa Fe. In fact, we have bought quite a few books about the local history of the SW and have enjoyed reading them on our lay days. One exception was the Kit Carson book that Lou F. gave to John before we left. He thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Our ride from Taos to Heron Lake SP took us from 7,000 feet to 10,500 feet. The AAA maps did not indicate that we would have this high a climb. We took it slow and easy and had some beautiful scenery. We were very surprised to see so much snow (4-5 ft) at the highest point. When we reached the CG, we were told that the road had only been cleared a week ago. We lucked out this time.

Heron Lake SP has 250 + sites and we were one of only a half a dozen campers in the park. The campgrounds and sites are arranged around the lake, and there are many large and secluded sites with a view of the lake. The lake, however, is extremely low from the 8 years of drought.

We had a beautiful campsite overlooking the lake with the snow covered mountains to our east. We also have our own private nature reserve with deer, turkeys, water birds, osprey, and tiny “peep” birds around our campsite.

There is a program here where they build platforms for the osprey to nest on so they won’t nest on the power poles. We watched them drive for fish in the lake when they weren’t sitting on their eggs.

We have had calm, warm, sunny days and some days with very high winds and cool temperatures. Several mornings have been in the 30’s. We understand from the ranger that it is unusual to be this cold at this time of the year.

Most of our time has been spent reading about the local history and taking hikes, but we did participate in an evening star watch program. A local astronomer came to the CG and set up his telescope and we viewed Saturn, the moon, several stars and galaxies. It made for an interesting evening.