Round and Round, Up and Down

Hyde Memorial State Park is located on either side of the highway that goes up to the Santa Fe Ski Resort. The east side is sloped enough that campsites are wedged into the side of the mountain. They are nice sites for tent campers or pop-ups and some even have little three-sided wood shelters. The west side of the park has the 10 electric sites for RVs.

It also has the Circle Trail that goes up the north side of the ridge and down the south side, crosses the road and circles back up to the north again. The trail map indicates it's only a 3-mile hike with a 1800 foot elevation change. HA! It felt like 3- miles straight UP! We walked out of our way for 1/2 mile before finding the trail head (UP-down), then we hiked the steepest part of the trail first. It took us over an hour to go one mile UP.  The views from the top were spectacular!  Then we hiked down a fairly steep ridge, crossed the road and hiked UP again to the traill head and then hiked UP some more to the RV. My Runkeeper App reported a 4.3 mile hike!  And that was all before lunch!

After naps, of course, we drove up to the ski area observing númerous trail heads along the 10- mile drive. The ski area is at about 10,000 ft elevation. Coming back down we decided to explore the only gravel side road we passed. It was a lovely drive, no challenge for the Jeep, and took us down to the highway 15 miles north of Santa Fe!

To reward ourselves for all this activity, we stopped at a wine bar for refreshments and a snack.