Manzanos Mountains State Park, New Mexico

Sunday, June 14
On the way to our camping location we stopped in the town of Mountainair at the visitors center for the Salinas Pueblo Missions. The town has several galleries and art related shops, and murals on several of the buildings.

We were quite impressed by the mural where we parked. Please excuse my fat finger across the corner. That's the problem with digital cameras in bright sun..... you can't see what you are doing!

This mural has a lot of detail that was especially nice up close. There are subtle rock art symbols on the boulders, and snakes hiding in the rocks.

They have a nice little bookstore/gift shop at the park information center, and as usual I picked up a couple of children's books, but we were most impressed by the fantastic adobe "L" shaped bench in the parking lot.

Mosaic and hand crafted tiles were used to create a snake curling around the back of the bench, and there are little reptiles tucked in all over the structure. Strong sunlight and the lattice covering combined to make a very harsh shadow, so it's difficult to get the whole structure. Guess you'll have to use your imagination!

We're camping at Manzano State Park this evening, for one night only. It's a nice park, with plenty of pine trees and and between spaces. We headed for the big space, #33, way at the back and though it looked spacious, by the time we dodged branches we still had a bit of a challenge to get our rig shoe-horned in. We finally got it settled and enjoyed a cool evening as we're up a little over 7,000 ft,in the juniper and pine forested mountains.

This campground reminds me of  "the old days" of camping. There are few services, no water and electric at the sites. There are trees between and in all the spaces, so they are more private than we often see, and the surrounding area is fairly wide open, so you can walk anywhere.

It's also a very friendly campground, tonight anyway! We tried to go for an evening walk to get Shiner a bit of exercise and could barely move to the next space before we struck up another conversation. Shiner seemed to enjoy the walk, even if it was at a snail's pace.

Tomorrow we tour the ruins of the Salinas Pueblo Missions.