Elephant Butte, NM

Arrived in Elephant Butte, NM April 21st, good drive, it is an interesting drive from Deming over Highway 26 (Hatch Hwy as it is known, all newly paved), shorter than driving to Las Cruces then North to Elephant Butte, also more interesting scenery. Lots of irrigated (from the Rio Grande River) crops, walnuts, pecans, and of course chilies, Hatch is known as the “Chile Capitol of the World”.
Post pic of hatch
We planned on spending 3 nights in Elephant Butte, wanted to check out the area, especially the reservoir as well as what is interesting in the area, thought we might stay here next winter. Checked into Lakeside RV Park, a Passport America campground, it is meticulously kept with many winter residents, situated on 2 levels, very friendly helpful staff but the park is surrounded by an industrial park with no views of the beautiful mountains. We attended the “Happy Hour” a couple in evenings to meet some of the residents, good group and always interesting to meet other Snowbirds and/or fulltime RVer’s and hear their stories of travel, etc.



Our site was curb side site, you can see we do not have any area for sitting outside, right on the road and behind us a rock wall, no view at all. Notice the rocks along side of the RV that is the front edge of our site.




Looking another direction, not from the RV, you can see industrial area. Think that was south, and north there was a boat storage area, in fact most of Elephant Butte town is storage facilities, gas stations and restaurants. Truth or Consequences is the town south for any actual shopping, groceries included.



The park was here before the Industrial Area was developed and it is a very nice park, just the sites are too small and none have any privacy at all.




The office and club house area, very nicely done and super clean.

This the pathway up to the second level, wonderful garden area on the hill.

We checked out other RV parks in the area as possible winter home next year and there are a couple of nice ones, but decided we would keep our reservation at TTRV. We drove 20 miles (32 km) back down the highway to check out Caballo Lake, nice small RV Park there but nothing much around except the reservoir which is only accessible via a walking path (nice) from the park but to get the boat in the lake one has to go through the State Park. The Elephant Butte reservoir is only accessible via the State Park also, which means paying an entrance fee each time we would want to fish or just paddle around the huge lake, not much else to see or do in the area, just not for us.
Elephant Butte Lake is 40 miles long and has about 200 miles of beautiful sand beach, average depth is 660 ft., was built between 1911 and 1916, and they actually started filling the reservoir in 1915. There is concrete boat ramp to the lake 10 lanes wide and 1000` down to the lake. There are approximately 100,000 people at the park on weekends throughout the summer. The water is used to irrigate and generate power. For more information on the dam and the State Park click the links below.
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Elephant_Butte_Dike
http://www.truthorconsequenceschamberofcommerce.com/area_eb_lake.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_Butte_Reservoir

The attendant at the park gave us a 15 minute free pass so we could drive around and take a look, it is a huge park, and we stopped to take some pictures of the lake.



Think the item you see in the picture is meant to be protections for the marina.

WE were very surprised to see campers right on one of the beach areas, and we found out they are allowed.

The marina, there are huge boats here, many house boats and large boats with cabins.

We did enjoy our stay here and happy we took time to look around, but the day we planned to leave we had to wait due to high wind! OH well such is life when one travels through these windy areas in April, we are told April is the windiest month of the year here!