Nice Lunch Spot

Adventure Location: Lincoln National Forest near Queen, Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico
Teams Location:  Brantley Lake SP

The night was nice, dry and cool and the windows on the Castle were wide open for a good night’s sleeping.  That is until 0530 when a few million birds got together right outside the Castle and started screaming and hollering to wake the OFM up. So it was an early breakfast.  And an early start to the beautiful day was good.

The goal today was to find some spots that the Castle could make it into in the Lincoln National Forest without doing damage to the Truck or Castle.  It is with great pleasure that the adventure was a wonderful success. Some lunch stuff was packed in case the Queen Café was not open to fix me another fantastic Green Chili Cheese Hamburger for lunch.  They are now out of business according to the sign on the door. RATZZZZZ

The route to take is called the Guadalupe Backcountry Scenic Byway . It is also a fantastic bicycle ride according to many folks. It has been partially covered in this blog before but tonight there is more.  And be forewarned the Byway has not been more than 30% covered so far. This Byway is NM 137 highway from Brantley Lake to Dog Canyon campground in the Guadalupe Mountains NP. This next picture was taken where CR409 takes off to Sitting Bull Falls Park.  That is hwy 137 headed up into the Guadalupe Mountains and where the Teams had a great day.

The haze is smoke from the fire in the Gila Wilderness out to the west.

All of the main roads are paved or graded gravel and passable by normal cars.  The rest of the roads pretty much need higher clearance vehicles to get around.  Normally 4X4 is not needed if you are careful. We have the National Forest map of camping areas to help us navigate and stay legal under the new rules about where you can camp.

This area is fairly typical of most of the camping areas. It is a little less than perfectly smooth as you enter from the white gravel road.

The Truck is sitting in what became our lunch spot.  The rocks and dirt were easy to navigate and the Castle should be able to make it up to the lunch spot without any real trouble at all. (I hope).

The dirt/rock road continues well on past the lunch spot and down the hill for about a mile to some private inholdings in the NF. My feet insisted that we walk down the hill a ways to see what is down there. What is down there is more and rougher road. On the way back up the altitude was noticed.  We are a bit over 6000 feet.  The great part is the 96 degree temps back at the Castle were not here. The Truck thermometer showed 81 degrees of dry cool air. It was wonderful.  This next picture is from down on the backside of the hill as my feet were bringing the OFM back up the hill huffing and puffing worse than a worn out steam engine.

And finally all the Teams decided to let the OFM have his lunch.  And he did not resist at all. The passenger seat in the Truck was my throne to look out over the kingdom around me.

Places like these make me think about having a smaller and lighter trailer to tuck away into the nooks and crannies of the forest and rough country like in Utah and Arizona.

Exploring new places to sleep is a wonderful way of trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.