Bottomless Lakes State Park – Roswell, New Mexico

It took us over a month, but we finally made it across the great state of Texas and into New Mexico. I’ll be honest, New Mexico was never on my radar as a vacation destination so our initial goal was to get through the state quickly and make our way into Arizona. This was a big mistake. We had so many experiences and adventures in New Mexico. We saw things we had no idea existed and we learned a massive amount about the state. Before we left the Monahans, I was chatting with the neighbor and I told her we were heading to New Mexico. She raved about the green chilies, and if you are from the south and know about the chilies I apologize. This was a learning experience and I didn’t know. I know now and I’m a fan! More on that later.

Our first stop in New Mexico was Roswell. For anyone who knows me and knows the significance of Roswell, I know what you’re thinking, of course that was our first stop. For those of you that don’t already know, Roswell, New Mexico was the supposed crash site of a UFO back in 1947. I am a huge fan of all things paranormal, mysterious and unanswered, so this was a must. To sweeten the deal, we stayed at the Bottomless Lakes State Park, which also has an interesting folklore that I was not aware of. There are nine “lakes” in the area, but they aren’t actually lakes, they are sinkholes. We camped next to the largest lake, Lake Lea. Its not bottomless, but it is 90 feet deep. Legend says that people have dropped things in the lake that were found months later in the Gulf of Mexico. There is also legend of a giant sea turtle patrolling the bottom of the lake. We didn’t see anything mysterious and the legend didn’t deter the kids from swimming in the lake, even though it wasn’t warm outside. This is the only lake you can swim in and during the summer you can rent paddleboards and paddleboats.

Rowell, as you can imagine, is a tourist town. Down the main strip, businesses have little green alien statues outside their doors. Even McDonald’s had a play area in the shape of a flying saucer. We had to see all of the town welcome signs which are located at each direction entry road that leads into town. We visited the International UFO museum while we were in town and we are glad we did. They have a lot of copies of documents from the incident that took place just outside of Roswell, including pictures and props from movies and tv shows centered around the Roswell incident. After that we went to a local restaurant recommended to us called Peppers. Delicious. Also, this was news to me and I apologize to anyone offended for my ignorance, I’m learning. Apparently, New Mexico is known for their green chilies, it is their state plant, and they are even depicted on their license plates. I swear green chilies are offered on everything and sold everywhere and I get it. They are delicious and we bought a bunch of jars of them for the road!

Since we were only a couple of hours drive away from Carlsbad Caverns National Park, we had to go. This was one of those places I have heard of but didn’t know much about. The entrance into the caverns is an incredible experience. It looks like a giant hole that just appeared in the middle of nowhere and you actually zig zag the decent of 700 feet underground. Rylen was terrified. He’s not a fan of heights and it was a long way down. This was Lylah’s first time ever in a cave and she had her camera out and was taking pictures the whole time. I would love to share some of the pictures she took, but the little poop deleted everything accidently.

Overall consensus of our visit to Roswell was it was absolutely wonderful. The only negative to our stop was that a water pipe had burst before we arrived and it was under repair. That meant we didn’t have a shower house available for half of the week. The other negative we experienced include some of New Mexico’s plant life. While New Mexico is well known for their green chilies, they are also known for these spikey burs called goat heads. Lylah rode her bike over a few of them and both of her tires went flat. On a positive note, she was in need of a new bike. Beside the few negatives we encountered, the campground was busy the entire time we were there with many full-timers. We met so many people and everyone we talked to in Roswell was very friendly. We enjoyed our stay so much, the kids were ready to stay permanently.

The Bottomless Lakes in Roswell, NM