Day trips from Lake Holloman

While we were camped at Lake Holloman, the wind came up and filled the air with dust. We decided to leave our RVs there and use the car to see the other nearby places. Our first day-trip was here:

There is a campground here where we had planned to stay, but you can see the dust that changed our mind.

The petroglyphs here are more modern (600 years old as opposed to thousands of years) than others I have seen, and have a lot more detail.

The trail leads up through these rocks. Petroglyphs are all around.

Desert bighorn sheep, done with great detail.

Bear paw

Animal killed with an arrow.

Sheep with arrows.

This man's face is almost 3-dimensional, painted on a point of rock where his nose is.

A bird

Lizard

Maybe one like this blue-tailed skink.

Rock wren

We didn't go as far as the remains of the village...too windy and dusty. Next time.

I can't remember which little town had these donkey sculptures. It might have been Tularosa, NM.

Painted donkeys

Our next trip was to Valley of Fires...the remains of a huge lava flow.

Lava

A boardwalk trail leads out through the lava beds. We didn't walk it...still too windy and dusty, so will need to come this way again.

We read about the lava.

Origin of the lava flow...

And another nice campground is available here.

Back at Lake Holloman, this is what sunset looks like through a dust storm. The only way you know the mountains are there is when the sun sets over one.

Another day we drove to Roswell. We toured the UFO museum first. It was a beautiful day there.

Birdie with the little green men.

We read the accounts of the 1947 UFO crash near here.

Looked at the displays.

Read about how the government threatened and paid off witnesses to deny what really happened. Very interesting and thought provoking accounts. Something very unusual happened here, and the government still doesn't want us to know the truth.

Next we visited a nearby wildlife refuge to do some birding.

Wetland area. We took the drive through the refuge. Construction trucks were creating a lot of dust and rumble.

Lots of waterfowl.

We saw a pair of coyotes.

Cinnamon Teal

On our way back we stopped to see the larger than life horse sculptures outside this museum. The museum was closed.

The sculptures depicted different breeds of horses.

Each horse had a plaque describing the breed.

Thistle was fine until we got to the Thoroughbred.

He barked and cowered at that one.

On our last night at Lake Holloman, we were blessed with another beautiful sunset over a calm lake.

Creating wondrous mirror-like reflections.