Goodbye Hike Above Santa Fe

Our last night in Santa Fe we drove up into the mountains just east of town and found a beautiful little campground at Hyde Memorial State Park. We had to set up the tent in the rain and we all snuggled in for the night. In the morning the sky was clear and glorious, the kids made friends with the children in the campsite next to us while Elijah and I broke camp.

We drove back towards town until we found the trail head for the Dale Ball Trail that had been marked on the map as a short 1.8 mile hike. It was at the top of a small hill that overlooked the whole city of Santa Fe. When we started the hike it was already quite hot and the terrain between the short drive from the campground to the trail head had shifted drastically from pine forest to desert.

Hiking Up The Hill

The Boys Were Not Totally Into It

Izzy Was A Little Mad At Me For Taking Him On a Hike

We Were Pretty Happy When We Got To the Top

Izzy Had A Lot More Fun Once He Had the Camera In His Hands

Hannah Got Over Heated

The whole first part of the hike was up and the kids weren't too sure about it. The view at the top was spectacular and well worth it to Elijah and I, but the kids really only started enjoying themselves once I handed them a camera to take pictures, and then the usual afternoon storm moved towards us and sprinkled us with a light rain. Gotta love monsoon season. I will always look forward to traveling in the Southwest in August. It's highly recommended.

Here are some pictures Izzy took on our hike:

At the end of our hike we piled in the car, grabbed some Starbuck's coffee and said goodbye to Santa Fe. We drove south headed to our next destination, Carlsbad Caverns. The drive was long and rather than try to find uncertain camping near the caverns we stopped at a KOA just before Carlsbad proper. As far as KOAs go it was a nice tidy one with all the necessary services, but it was incredibly hot, the mosquitoes were really big--we could tell we were nearing Texas--and even the best KOA is really just a glorified RV park. During the night the heat finally subsided, but within minutes it went from cool summer night to intense violent wind and electric storm. I was really glad that I had insisted we use the safety braces on the tent poles. At times it felt like the wind was going to pick up the trailer roof and tear it right away. The next morning you wouldn't have known there had been a storm at all, it was already so hot and clear by 9 am that we were all sweaty and ready to pack up and go.