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.

And into New Mexico...and then onto Arizona

Trailer parking at Sugarite Canyon State Park

http://www.emnrd.state.nm.us/spd/sugaritecanyonstatepark.html

Horse corrals in the trailer parking area

After leaving Arrowhead Ranch in Santa Fe, NM, we decided to make a quick stop of Sugarite Canyon State Park before we hit the road.  The park is only about 15 minutes from Arrowhead Ranch which makes it worth the detour.

There is trailer parking close to the entrance which even had a couple of nice corrals.  If we were locals, we would come here often, put the horses in the corrals and have a nice lunch or snack before or after the ride.

We rode around the lake and had several water crossings.  One thing that is cool is the park is in both Colorado and New Mexico, so we got to ride in both states by simply riding through the park.  The trails are pretty easy and we ended up riding about an hour and a half around the lake and back.

Our next stop was Blue Water Lake State Park.  

http://www.emnrd.state.nm.us/SPD/bluewaterlakestatepark.html

There is a horse motel across the street from the park entrance.

https://www.bluewaterlake-lodge.com/

We were the only guests at the horse motel and the owner seemed lonely and hungry for conversation.  She has a small general store where you can buy supplies.  We did buy a bag of ice from her.  She has RV hook-ups set up for LQs and there is a dump station for RVs across the street in the state park.

We rented a tiny cabin that had a queen size bed, a toilet and a kitchenette with a small sink, fridge, and microwave.

There is a loft above the bed where we put our suitcase because there was no room for it otherwise.

There is a small front porch with two chairs and a table.  It was a cozy place to sit and eat our meals.

By Blue Water Lake - Ari and Lennox

We were expecting lots of trails inside the park, but the majority of trails don't allow horses.  You have to ride past some of the campsites and then you can ride near the lake and a little past the lake.  Overall, it wasn't a great ride.

I am glad we spent the night here though because otherwise the drive to Flagstaff would have been way too long.

Our next stop was Red Rock Park near Gallup, NM.

https://www.gallupnm.gov/207/Red-Rock-Park-and-Museum

You have your pick of corrals for your horse at Red Rock Park, but apparently nobody cleans up after their horse as every single corral was filled with manure.  There was also litter from cowboys, like empty wrappers and cans.

The water wasn't working either and when Ari asked, he was told that people were carrying the water from the campgrounds - which were not that close by.

While the scenery was pretty, it looked like once again most of the trails were designated for hikers only.  Ari walked around and was not impressed with the campground.  It was only noon, so we decided to keep going to our next stop - Flagstaff - rather than spend the night.

Once again, we are almost out of hay and after the soap opera performance from the horses when we tried to feed them alfalfa cubes, we stopped by a Flagstaff feed store to pick up another bale.

Olsen's get their hay from California, so the bales are all "three stringers" instead of "two stringers" which means the bales are 1/3 bigger than the bales we were getting in Utah and Colorado.  They don't fit in our bale bags so we had to put some of the flakes in our half empty bale bag to make i work.

Now, we have to decide - do we spend an extra day in Flagstaff or show up in Phoenix a day early to visit Ari's family?  We decided to ride this afternoon in the Coconino National Forest where our horses are being boarded at Summer Sage stables and decide whether the riding was worth spending an extra day or not.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/coconino/