Villanueva State Park

After two nights of vicious storms, we decided to cut our stay at Ute Lake State Park short. (Friday night, we had some rain, some thunder and lightening, but mostly very high winds. We found out the next day that the area had been under a tornado watch/warning! While we do have a weather radio, we didn't have it on...it's a good thing, too, because as freaked out as I was about the high winds, I'd have been even more freaked out if I knew there was a possibility of a tornado! Saturday night we had a huge electrical storm with continual lightening, mostly up in the clouds rather than lightening that hits the ground.)

We left Ute Lake around 10:00 AM and headed to our next stop, Villanueva State Park. We stopped in Santa Rosa for lunch and for diesel ($3.099/gallon...we could have got it for around $2.899/gallon at either the Love's or the Travel America, but both were very, very busy with long lines).

Driving north on SR-3 from I-40 just before entering into the small town of Villanueva, there's a section of road that is narrow, steep, and with switchbacks. We made it down the hill OK, but we may go north on SR-3 with we leave here and head to I-25 rather than go UP that hill!

Villanueva State Park is located on the Pecos River and has many nice, wooded sites. It'll be much quieter than Ute Lake State Park with their many motor boats!


Miles driven: 159.4
GPS coordinates: N 35° 15.935' / W 105° 20.034'