6/7 Navajo Lake State Park, NM

This is confusing, but there is a Navajo Lake State Park on the north end of this lake and one at the south end.  The one at the north end is in Colorado, so is a Colorado state park, but I am in the one at the south end, which is in New Mexico.  You would have thought they could have given them slightly different names!

I drove here yesterday, after leaving Ghost Ranch.  It was a very pleasant drive, even with the storm clouds in the distance.  Nice views of mountains in the distance and a lot of very colorful rocks. 

This is a very large, earthen dam, with an impressive spillway on the left.  

Now this was neat!  The road to the campground from the south goes directly over the dam!  I was able to stop to take photos because no one was behind me.  On the right is a dropoff to the lake--down about 50'.  On the left, also with a dropoff without guardrails, is the river side of the dam.  The base of the dam must be 400-500' below!  Glad heights do not scare me, although, you will note that I am driving right down the middle of the road!  Don't want to run off the edge here. 

This is the bottom of the spillway.  The building gives you a good idea of the size of things here. 

And the river area below the dam.  

You can't tell from the photo, but my site is horribly slanted. Even with boards under three wheels, it is still not level inside.  As long as I don't roll out of bed, as they say.  I had to get help backing in because the entrance was so steep that I could not get out of my vehicle to check things.  And of course, they put trees close to both sides just to make it trickier. 

The trees do block some of the view of the lake, but here is a peek from the roadway.  The campground, by the way, is on a bluff high above the lake, so no handy beach.  

I took the next couple of photos the next day, as I was leaving the campground to visit a national monument nearby.  That road travels down the side of the dam and then along the river at the bottom. 

 They don't seem to make power from this dam.  Wonder why not?  Might be that they have no many natural gas wells in this area.  When I filled up with propane today, cost was at least half than what I usually pay for propane.