Even though I often extol all the great attributes of Albuquerque’s lovely weather, winter does last a long time and I always start getting spring fever at the end of February. I’m through with the cold. I want my 90-degree days and my shorts and tank tops. We combat spring fever by taking spring break trips.  This year was our first Spring Break RV trip, and we made the most of it.

As you read about our travels you will find we stay at Homolovi State Park quite often. There are several reasons for this. First let me say that we suck at traveling in the car. It takes us 8 hours to drive a route that Captain Bossy Pants (we lovingly call our navigation lady) says should take four and a half hours. Ok, that’s a little exaggeration but it takes us forever to drive anywhere.  When I was young my parents drove us for hours at a time. We drove to Washington DC from Albuquerque in 3 days. R, T & I, not so much. The most we like to travel is about 5 hours (according to the GPS lady), which—with our slow as molasses ways—takes 8 US hours. Anyway, enough about that.

When R was planning our winter trip, she happened upon Homolovi State Park. It just so happens that it’s about a 5-hour drive from Albuquerque when we head west. Here are some of the practical reasons we love it for a stop heading West:

• It’s a state park so it’s affordable
• It has electricity, water and dump site
• It is only 1 mile off of I-40, about an hour from Flagstaff—which tends to be expensive—an hour from the Painted Desert & Petrified Forest, and close to Meteor Crater
• The roads are well-labeled, paved and the sites are well marked and easy to find
• Each site is very large, flat, even and paved, has a picnic table, the water and electricity hookups are easy to reach
• There are flush toilets, running water in the CLEAN restrooms and hot showers

After our first visit, which was based on location & price, we realized that it’s beautiful and our list of reasons to stay on repeated occasions grew. It is in the high desert, so nothing about the view and landscape to surprise us—just the run of the mill dirt, yucca and sage brush. But the sunrise and sunset over the mesas and cliffs are stunning. The rangers at the visitor center (it is COVID times so everyone is multitasking) were very friendly and helpful. The back-in sites are large and easy for us to back in and there are no trees for us to potentially run into, although, I’m sure if we were to hit a cactus it could cause some pretty good damage. There are pull through spots as well but those seem to be in short supply and high demand. Each shower is in its own room with a full door that locks—I very much appreciate that—and they were very nice.

Homolovi is far from big towns and, consequently, it is very dark. You can see a million stars if you enjoy that sort of thing. Also, this is the desert (no forests or trees), so there are no fire restrictions (at least not that we’ve seen) and each campsite has a well-maintained fire ring that has a grill rack.

Keep in mind the high desert weather. While we were there, during the day it was 70 degrees, and we were walking around with shirt sleeves and the fan was on. As soon as the sun went down it got really cold, really fast (typical desert weather). Plan accordingly.