Rain, floods, grey skies, it was almost like being at home!

On Old Highway 60 about 1½ miles from Kiva RV Park and Horse Motel is the Rio Puerco, the major river drainage we thought was a small local creek, it normally looks like this, just a narrow dry ditch.

 

There’d been quite a bit of monsoon rain in New Mexico and this time when we arrived it looked like this.

Although there were late afternoon showers in the forecast, we decided to drive out on CR12 to find the ghost town of Riley, then continue on to Magadalena, look at another ghost town called Kelly and then drive back on the paved roads.

It was a lovely drive on a reasonably good dirt road, with great views of the mountains.

 

We crossed quite a few dry river beds and washes along the way,

To get to Magdalena we had another river crossing to make, but as drove further along the dirt road we could see the afternoon storm clouds starting to build.

  

We continued on until we reached the Rio Salido which we expected to be dry however, there was a narrow channel of fast flowing water in the middle, thinking about it now I have no idea why, when the Rio Puerco was running we expected this river to be dry, but we did.

 

This wasn't what we'd expected and while we’ll drive dirt roads when they’re dry we’re not used to crossing muddy, fast flowing rivers no matter how narrow.   As the sky was steadily getting blacker, and with the thought of the afternoon showers the last thing we wanted to do was get caught on the road in a downpour, so we decided to turn back.   We never did find Riley or Kelly. 

The next day it rained all day, the RV park looked like this,

 

CR 12 looked like this, well at least the start of it did, we have no idea what it was like further up and we weren't going to find out.

 and this is the normally dry Rio Puerco.

 

 

Didn't look much like a dry ditch that day!

Have fun, we are!