June 4-5th • Exploring Elephant Butte Dam
If you are following our blog you would have noticed that I have missed posting for a few weeks now due to some unforeseen things we have had happen. It is really an adventure living on the road and the things that come with it. We did take a one week break to travel and stayed at hotels along the way. Then Kevin went for some work and his truck broke down on the way back. All of this will be in future post as I would like to get you all updated with everything we have done up to this point.
First I’ll start with our new campsite. It is much larger than our last spot and it works perfectly for our family. There is a good digging area for Lita and John and lots of room to just hang out. Noah and Malachi bring the piano out to practice daily. When we first took this journey I wasn’t sure how it would be having all these things in our camper. We are a family of 6 living in less than 300 sq ft and have lots of large items for example the keyboard. With all of this I’m super happy we did bring it all along it has proven to be such a blessing to hear the boys play daily. Music really is a mood lifter.
When we started this journey we decided the kids would write postcards and send them to friends or family members along the way. I feel that we have lost the art of writing and sending mail this day in age. We are also making sure we have a calendar with family’s birthdays and special events so that we can write cards every month. I feel that in homeschooling our kids we can teach them so much and one of those things is just having thoughtful notes in the mail sent to people we love. At the beginning of this trip, they didn’t even know how to address letters or where the postage went as we really don’t send things anymore in this day and age. The day we got to New Mexico Aunty Stephie showed us she got her card! How exciting to see the smile on her face when she got her postcard. Do you or someone you know want to receive a postcard from the kids? Send us a message with your address and we will get it added to the list! Just be sure to send us a picture once you get your postcard so we can share the journey.
We are staying in Elephant Butte, NM for all of June. Of course, the first order of business was to find a good local restaurant that we could enjoy while here. We found a local Mexican restaurant called Casa Taco the staff are friendly and the food is great. We did end up going here many times during our stay in New Mexico and would highly recommend it to anyone that is in Elephant Butte or Albuquerque area. As I’m writing this I know we will only be in New Mexico for a few more days and I’m thinking about how we have to make one more trip for some awesome tacos before we head off to the next location.
After we had lunch we headed out for a day of exploring. We decided to explore right around where we were staying we headed to check out the Elephant Butte Lake State Park and the Elephant Butte Dam. It is so amazing looking at the structure and how they built these dams for holding water. It’s amazing to me that this entire area wouldn’t have water at all if it wasn’t for the architects that built this dam. You can see they have had some drought and need more water they said that the lake is about 9% less than what it normally is this year. Which makes a big difference in the water level for boating and enjoying the lake.
The day was hot and long we decided to end the day with a dip in the Elephant Butte Lake. We headed down after a lot of exploring and driving. The only way to get to the lake is to drive down the sandy beach. They don’t have any roads that lead directly to the beach good thing we have 4wd otherwise I don’t think we would have made it down there and we didn’t even go right down to the beach. We got to the beach about 3:00 pm and of course, within 15 minutes of getting there it was overcast and cooling off. Seems like our luck to always have a change of weather when we finally decided to take a cool off in the lake. We ended up staying and swimming for an hour and left just in time as it started doing the 10 minutes downpour. It was such fun memories and a great ending to a fun day.
