Southern NM Campgrounds and Surrounding Areas in Early Spring?

[sstevens650]

Hello all,

We're dying to take our little family and the new Wolf Pup TT on its maiden voyage. We live in the Albuquerque area and don't want to venture out to far as mentioned this is our first trip.

If familiar with early spring in New Mexico, the state is warming but it's still cold here. We just drove up to the Durango/Pagosa Springs CO area this past weekend for a ski trip and Northern NM has a ton of snow and temps are still well below freezing.

I suppose the plan is to head south, within a 4-5 hours drive. We'd like an area near water but its not necessary and possibly something fun for us to do with the kiddos (fishing, hiking, playground) both of which are under 5 years.

Not sure if I want to do the whole Elephant Butte thing but a few places that have popped up on my radar are:

Percha Dam State Park
Caballo Lake State Park
Valley of Fire
Apache Creek
Gilita
Quemado Lake

Please let me know if any of these are out of season. We are accustomed to dry camping (in a tent) we have a new generator and don't necessarily need hookups, especially since this will only be a 2-3 night trip for us.

Any insight, recommendations, or ideas are welcome!

[Chief T]

Originally Posted by sstevens650

Hello all,

We're dying to take our little family and the new Wolf Pup TT on its maiden voyage. We live in the Albuquerque area and don't want to venture out to far as mentioned this is our first trip.

If familiar with early spring in New Mexico, the state is warming but it's still cold here. We just drove up to the Durango/Pagosa Springs CO area this past weekend for a ski trip and Northern NM has a ton of snow and temps are still well below freezing.

I suppose the plan is to head south, within a 4-5 hours drive. We'd like an area near water but its not necessary and possibly something fun for us to do with the kiddos (fishing, hiking, playground) both of which are under 5 years.

Not sure if I want to do the whole Elephant Butte thing but a few places that have popped up on my radar are:

Percha Dam State Park
Caballo Lake State Park
Valley of Fire
Apache Creek
Gilita
Quemado Lake

Please let me know if any of these are out of season. We are accustomed to dry camping (in a tent) we have a new generator and don't necessarily need hookups, especially since this will only be a 2-3 night trip for us.

Any insight, recommendations, or ideas are welcome!

Greetings from the Duke City and congratulations on your new TT. We haven't been to Caballo, but friends of ours went last year and liked it. Last year we went to Lake Cochiti to dust off the cobwebs for our fist trip of the year. We're scheduled to go to Brantley SP by Carlsbad for first spring trip. Keep in mind spring brings strong winds here and plan accordingly.

Safe and happy travels

[fanrgs]

We were at Caballo Lake SP two weeks ago for three nights while waited for the weather and roads to clear enough to get back to Denver. We have stayed there before in the W/E sites near the boat ramp. Those were full, so we ended up in a FHU double site below the dam. Good thing too, since we had a major wind storm one day we were there. The dam and adjacent hill proved a great wind block! Interesting to see a NM SP campground completely full on three weeknights in late February.