Los Ojos and Vado Lake Drive

Our second day of exploring around the Chama area had us covering area not too far from our campground.  The weather was promising rain, so we felt like we had to explore in between the raindrops!!  A visit to a (pretty much) ghost town and a drive to a state park that we wanted to check out!!

Our first stop was at what I think is a ghost town, Los Ojos.  The church is truly one of the nicest buildings in the town, with the exception of perhaps some houses we didn’t see.  The main part of town is deserted.  The building in the lower right of the above photo used to be the home of a great shop that sold yarn, sold completed woven items and taught weaving.  However, it was completely closed down and vacant.  I was feeling disappointed, but then I looked them up online and found they moved into the town of Chama.  I didn’t find that out in time to visit them on this trip, but next time!!  The last image above is of a deserted market’s sign above the building.  I love the character of the round sign, don’t you?

After Los Ojos, we took off on the roads around the area, primarily looking for Vado Lake State Park.  We knew it would be closed due to the virus, but wanted to see what we could see in terms of a future camping destination.  The makeup of the area is quite diverse, as you can see from the above photo.  True desert landscape, with low shrubs and small trees, and then a lush meadow that the horses found to be great grazing!

And, then we came to Vado Lake.  It’s quite pretty, and very calm now, since the park is closed and that’s really the only access we could see to the lake.  It’s also a “no wake” lake, so you won’t find any jet ski’s or power boats on it even when the state park reopens.  I’m guessing it’s a fairly decent fishing lake from the signs around it, but fishing’s not really my thing!!

As we drove over a bridge heading back to Chama, I had to stop and take a photo of this lovely scene.  The river is Rio Brazos (pronounced with a long A).  I’m guessing it flows into (or from) the Chama River, as that’s just a little ways down from here.

And, finally, we drove by the nest of (we think) a hawk.  She was up high on a power line/telephone line pole, but still got a bit nervous when I got out of the Jeep to photograph her.  I was really very far away (magic of zoom lenses!), but she didn’t like me anyway.  Cars were ok, but not humans outside the cars!!

Enjoy!!