Camping is always such an adventure.....

So we set out around lunch time on Monday intending to go camping for a few days near Santa Fe. Tad had spent a few weeks looking at campsites on the internet and we chose a few that looked good online and went to try them out. In person they were not that great. The tent sites weren't big enough for our tent, the sites were almost right on top of eachother and the other campgrounds didn't look that great.

So we decided to head out to Ghost Ranch, about an hour north. We were going to make this a day trip anyway the next day, so we just decided to camp there instead. This is the site of dinosaur digs and a museum. Well the campground there was more like a trailer park, so we opted not to camp there. Instead we went there the next day and checked out the museums and bones and now the "ceolophysis" is Derek's favorite dinosaur.

So, it was getting late, but we knew there was a campground farther north at Heron lake, about 40 minutes from Ghost Ranch. When we got there, it didn't look promising at first. The first 3 campsites we drove through didn't have that many trees, but finally we found a good spot on the lake. We had just enough time to get our tent up and walk to the lake when the sun set. It turns out this is a good lake to go fishing at in the winter if you like Salmon.







Derek found some "fossils" by the seashore.











Chama, New Mexico was only about 20 minutes north of our campground, so the next day we headed up there. There's a little downtown and a little train station and that's about it, but we got there in time to see the big steam engine toot its horn and take off. Scared the kids pretty bad.







Here are the Ghost Ranch pictures....





They had a little dig area for the kids... Derek found these "dinosaur" bones at a nearby reserve lying on the ground. They're probably Elk bones.


We drove by the Valles Caldera Natl Preserve. It's an ancient volcano site that is rumored to be full of elk herds. It's a private reserve owned by the government. No camping is allowed there, but they do lottery hunts and you can drive through and go fishing. We'll have to do that another time.


On the way to our 2nd campsite we took a short cut on this road for 45 minutes.... There was one tricky spot where I thought for sure we were going to get stuck, but luckily we had a good driver.


Along the way, we saw this guy....


This was our 2nd campsite about 1 hr from our apartment.






Camping is a lot of work with kids! Next time we'll try and get some other families with kids to come with us so they can be better entertained! We had a lot of fun, but it is good to be home and doen with all the clean up and the laundry!