Sugarite Canyon State Park - Raton, New Mexico

 I had been looking forward to our stay there. We had done a day ride there several years ago and it is a beautiful park - plus one of the few places you can ride in two different states - New Mexico and Colorado - and still be in the same park.

Campground has two sets of corrals for the horses

Plenty of space for the trailer

This is the second set of corrals available

The horse camp is called Ponderosa Horse Camp and is reserved by calling the park. There are vault toilets, picnic tables, and fire rings. No water, electric or septic! This is a boondock/primitive campground. There are two sets of corrals available for horses, but they are not in great shape. You can set up your own corrals or high lines.

It is about half a mile of dirt road up a steep hill into the campground. Given the weather, the road was really muddy getting in and challenging.

No cell service and the internet was spotty - most likely due to the weather.

There is a small campground about a mile before the horse camp called Lake Alice campground. That campground has a dump site for your black and gray tanks. Those campsites have water and electric and a limited number have full hook-up.  We went in before and after our stay to dump our tanks. It was challenging to get lined up with the dump with our 35' LQ. I don't recommend larger trailers to attempt it.

We managed the water situation by putting our space 50 gallon water tank in the back of the truck, driving down to the Lake Alice Campground, and hauling it back to our campground.

You are about 10 minutes away from shopping at this campground.

It snowed the first night after we arrived. We hunkered down and basically hid in the trailer. With no internet or cell service, we read books and watched DVDs.

We ran our generator to heat up the trailer using our furnace and piled on blankets.

After two days of bad weather, Ari had had enough of slogging through mud to take care of the horses and hauling water. He wanted to leave as soon as the rain and snow had let up and the roads had dried up a little. It was too muddy to ride.

$14/nite...while our stay was a bust, I still recommend this place - just try for better weather than we had.