New Mexico - Elephant Butte Lake State Park and Truth or Consequences

We spent a couple of nights at Elephant Butte State Park which is just north of the town of Truth or Consequences New Mexico.  How’d you like to have to learn to say or spell that name if you were a kid!

T or C, as the locals call it, is a small, tired town.  It used to be called Hot Springs, due to the local abundance of hot mineral water and the resorts and spas that utilized it.  The town seemed to get lost amid all the other towns called Hot Springs and the folks on the  town council thought they ought to do something about it. Many years ago, when Ralph Edwards of the Truth or Consequences fame put out a request for a town that wanted to change its name, the previously known town of Hot springs put it to a vote and opted to change the name.  

It may have been something once, but it’s just a tired town now with a cool name.  

Anyway, I digress. Our time spent at Elephant Butte was nice.  The campground is very large, and even now in the off season, had quite a few sites full. In fact, most of the RV sites were full.

 We spent a part of one of our days exploring the reservoir/ dam area.  The lake was quite low and appeared that it had been so for a while.

Tom headed off to find a feathered friend or two while I roamed the desert looking for interesting plants and critters.   This tomato worm certainly fit!  There were five of these worms on this plant and only a couple halves of a leaf or two remained.  I could see no similar plants nearby, so I’m not sure where they’d go after they’d eaten this plant up.

I also found a couple of old buildings to wander around.

On both of our nights here, we had wonderful sunsets.  A couple of good nights of rest and a day or two with no early alarms were needed.  Our next trek will be a 300+ mile day as we head to Arizona.