Howdy folks!
We hit the jackpot with our stay in Chama, New Mexico…we hit perfect weather, and full fall color. We drove to Chama from Sedona (took us 2 days of driving). What a total different setting. That’s one of the really fun things about this RV living…one day you are in the red rocks hiking in 100 degree temperatures and then 2 days later you are in full fall color in the mountains and building a campfire! Switching from air conditioning to furnace and digging through all your shorts and t-shirts for the long johns!
We had never heard of Chama and had not planned to go there, but one day in Arizona we were watching a PBS show (after Bill installed our new TV!) that highlighted Chama and the surrounding area. We knew it was our kind of place and changed our plans to spend a week there. So glad we did. Chama is in the northwest corner of New Mexico, about 10 miles south of the Colorado boarder and the San Juan mountains. You may remember we stayed in the San Juan mountains in Colorado earlier in our trip. That was on the west/southwest side of the San Juans. Now we were on the south side of the mountains. I think it is fair to say we love the San Juan mountains. 🙂
Chama was a cute little town, and the RV park we stayed at was great. The RV park was at 7,800 feet elevation. Lots of trees and big sites and campfires were allowed! Almost everywhere we’ve been has had fire bans, so we were excited to have a campfire again. We did tons of hiking and exploring the area. You’ll see in the pictures we were totally enamored with the Aspen trees, they are so beautiful. You may also notice Gerry is sporting a colorful outfit in many pictures too. Elk hunting season opened while we were there and we wanted to be sure Gerry (and us too) was very visible while we were out hiking. We also put his bear bell from Alaska on him to help be sure we didn’t surprise anyone.
One of our hikes – Red Mountain Lake – was at a pretty high elevation – we started at 10,500 and went to 12,300. It is one of our favorite hikes yet. It was cloudy, foggy, cold and windy at the top, with a beautiful mountain lake. We also hiked a section of the Continental Divide trail. The Continental Divide trail is 3,100 and runs from Canada to Mexico. This was also one of our very favorite hikes and ranks in the top 5 of all time.
Hope you enjoy the pictures and happy fall!
