Oasis State Park | Portales | New Mexico

 

This is where I spent the Labor Day holiday weekend.  It was a nice quiet park with prairies all around.  This next shot is my campsite, actually only half of it because it was so shaded at that end.  I could have fit another RV in it! 

 

 

 

There are sand dunes in the area and there were lots of deer footprints in this area.  I never did see any deer, although I was told there were quite a few bucks there.

 

 

This little guy was always hanging around the lake, but I didn't see any of his friends.

 

 

On my way to the lake one evening, this little guy was crossing the road.  I didn't want him to get hit by a car, so I just hung around until he got the other side.

 

I love the color of this dragonfly, and he was nice enough to pose for me.  When he was flying around, it was like a flash of gold in the sun.

 

 

Another dragonfly was really striking when he was flying around, you'd just see the light wingtips fluttering.  He wasn't that good at posing, though.

 

A fishing tournament was held at the lake one day on the weekend.  Lots of people showed up to catch catfish since the lake was stocked.

 

 

Sunset at camp one night.

 

 

A few nights later, we had a full moon rising. 

 

 

Busy in San Carlos | Sonora | Mexico

 

I have been busy since my last post, there is so much to do here.  Super moon as seen in San Carlos above, about a week ago.  I'm not sure it looked any larger to me.

 

 

Really rough living here......  This was taken last weekend at the beach.  A friend and I had snacks and were listening to live music.  Like I said, really rough living!  They have tables under the little palapas, redone since the hurricane damaged most of them a few months ago.  The photo below shows the inside, looking straight up, they look quite sturdy. 

 

My friend has a dog and I was babysitting the furry guy below, so we took them to the beach.  He doesn't get out to the beach much since he doesn't even like to get in the car with his owner.  He got his feet wet and had an interesting change of scenery.  And he was totally exhausted when he got home!

 

San Carlos is all about musical entertainment, so Mark Mulligan organized a concert with the Foresteros band from Hermosillo, a large city about 2 hours from here.  Everyone had a great time last year at their concerts, and we had a great time again this week - the Foresteros rock!  Mark plays here most weeks and is quite popular in this area, as well as in the States.  He's the only one without long pants on.

 

We had another clean-up-the-beach this week and dispatched a 2600 pound load to the dump.  This area looks much nicer, but still needs some detail work.  The Sea of Cortez (aka Gulf of California) looks very inviting, but the nights are turning cooler in this area and the water will soon be too cold to swim in.  For me anyway!

 

Full Moon

Above is a shot of the full moon the other night.  Actually, it was the night before, but I like this photo better than the one I took of the actual full moon.  Still in Bottomless Lakes State Park in New Mexico, but planning to leave early in the morning tomorrow.  By the way, the lakes are not really bottomless - the early explorers thought they were because when they tried to find out how deep they were by tossing a line in the water, it just drifted away and they never could get a measurement. 

These lakes all are partly rimmed with a bluff like the one pictured above and also shown on one of my previous blogs.  They're sinkholes, the earth was washed away by water from underground springs until finally the top covering became thin enough to fall in.  The other day I was exploring and found an area that looked interesting.  I parked the truck and wandered over to a patch of land high up on a hill without too much vegetation.  I don't like wandering through a lot of vegetation because I really don't want to run into a snake, especially a rattler.  Anyway, I was wandering around, kicking a few rocks and noticed that the ground sounded funny - unlike other areas I'd been in.  I kicked a few more rocks around and finally realized that the ground sounded hollow.  Mental images of the surface caving in under my feet were enough to make me turn around and hurry back to the road.  Who knows how deep it will be when it does cave in?  I certainly didn't want to test it, but I'm really curious.  It may take years or it might be next week.......



I found these cute little flowers this morning on my hike, I have no idea what they're called.  They are pretty much that size and very low to the ground. 

Tomorrow I'll be leaving here, but I've enjoyed the stay here, and I hope the next park I go to will be as nice.  Well, I could do without the flies, especially the deer flies - they have teeth!  Surprisingly, I have not experienced mosquitoes here, but that might be because it's the desert.