Ute Lake State Park - Logan, NM | Our week in late March
Some parks can elicit a “Wow” response immediately upon entry. Meanwhile, others may be a bit more… subtile. When we visited Ute Lake State Park earlier this year, we found that it definitely fell into the latter category.
Ute Lake State Park is located just outside of Logan, NM. For us, the location provided a good halfway point between our winter residence in Yuma, AZ, and our home base in Missouri. Staying here for a week allowed us to travel home over two weekends, and stop and work for a week in between.
While the park was about 20 miles north of our route along I-40, it was worth the detour to camp with a view of the lake for the week. We also enjoyed having a spot that wasn’t right along the highway, and the quiet that went along with that. Since we were still in the offseason, the park was also a bit more vacant than I can imagine it probably gets during the peak of Summer. It is also worth noting that while the local stores did have any necessities that we needed, the town is still pretty small, so you will probably want to stock up on most of your supplies prior to arrival if you decide to visit here.
Our biggest complaint during our visit would have to be the weather. The majority of our time there was overcast and windy. We would go out for short walks, but for the most part, we chose to stay in. I guess for late March-early April, this is pretty much typical anywhere.
We did take one afternoon to explore some more of the park, and to do some geocaching. The interesting thing was that as we started down some trails, and started looking more closely at the landscape, the more we found the beauty in the park. We started noticing things like wildflowers, and tiny cacti hiding amongst the grass. We also did a pretty good job of noticing the caches, as we found all that we looked for that day.
As we approached the end of the week, we started to see winter weather warnings beginning overnight on Friday. With this in mind, we decided to head out immediately after work on Friday, and get a little further east, and to a lower elevation. The plan worked out, and we were able to avoid any snow.
Ute Lake State Park provided us with exactly what we were looking for. It gave us a quiet place to work for the week, lake views, and wasn’t far off of our route. We also learned that the beauty of some places doesn’t hit you immediately, and you just might have to go and look for it. The one thing that is certain is that we will be keeping Ute Lake in mind if we return to that area, and we think that you should as well.
