Hyde Memorial State Park, New Mexico - August 12th to 15th, 2023

Hyde Memorial State Park is located in the mountains, northeast of Santa Fe. It is a great place to camp to explore Santa Fe or enjoy the hiking trails in the mountains in both the state park and the surrounding Santa Fe National Forest.

On Saturday, we drove from Manzano Mountains State Park to Hyde Memorial State Park, about a two hour drive. We dumped our tanks before we left, but we didn’t fill our fresh water tank. The sign at the water pump said the water was only for use while we were within the park. When we went to put the chemicals into the toilet, we discovered the bottle had sprung a leak. Luckily we keep the container inside a plastic bag, but there was still a mess to clean up. Gorilla tape sealed the leak, but we still stored the bottle on its side with the hole above the surface of the liquid. We stopped at a grocery store in Santa Fe along with a picnic lunch at a nearby park. It was a national chain grocery store, Smiths, a division of Kroger, so we decided to pick up items for our backpacking trip coming up in a little over a week.

We don’t buy expensive backpacking meals. Instead, we use Knorr and Idahoan packets of rice, pasta, and potato dishes. They are easy to make by adding them to boiling water and cooking for just a few minutes. Then we add a packet of chicken. For dessert, we use Lärabars. We also picked up packets of oatmeal, coffee, and hot chocolate for breakfast along with small packets of nuts, string cheese, and meat sticks for lunches and snacks. We already have granola bars to round out our lunches and dried fruit to add to our oatmeal. That should be plenty to get us through three days of backpacking.

We also have electrolyte tablets (paid link) that we picked up earlier. We don’t want to have a repeat of Guadalupe Peak (Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas - August 4th - 7th, 2023). However, temperatures should be much cooler during our backpacking trip and our bodies should be accustomed to high altitudes by then. Manzano Mountains State Park was at 7400 feet. Hyde Memorial State Park is at 8800 feet. Our next stop was Cimarron Canyon State Park which is at 7900 feet.

The RV sites at Hyde Memorial State Park were a little disappointing. They are right alongside the road, about 25 yards away. It seems even closer than when we stayed at Talimena State Park in Oklahoma (Talimena State Park, Oklahoma - March 9th to 12th, 2023). And it is not just our site, it is all of the reservable sites.

Our site had electrical hookups, but the closest source of water was back at the lodge or office, a couple of miles back down the road. And it is only open from 8 am to 4 pm. The dump station is also back down the road. We didn’t fill our fresh tank at Manzano Mountains because the sign said the water was only for use within the park. We didn’t know to fill our tank at the lodge or office on our way in, so we’ll have to break camp in the next day or two to go fill up.

Just before we entered Hyde Memorial State Park, we passed Black Canyon Campground in the Santa Fe National Forest. We stayed there during Season One: Crisscrossing the Country (Taos Pueblo, New Mexico - July 16, 2019). From what we remember, the sites there are in a prettier setting, far away from the road.

At Hyde Memorial State Park, it was nice and cool outside. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sitting outside. It was a Saturday, and there was plenty of traffic going up and down the road. Hopefully that will die down during the week. Luckily, there wasn’t much traffic during the night, so we had no problems sleeping. Temps dipped down into the 50’s overnight. We left the windows cracked open all night. Keith, who had been complaining about all the heat during our trip, turned on the furnace Sunday morning to take the chill out of the air inside.

Sunday morning, we hung out at our camp site before going for a hike in the afternoon. It was so nice sitting outside in the cool air, listening to the birds and trying to ignore the traffic noise from the road. Hummingbirds were everywhere. We heard them almost constantly. Every now and then, they would fly and hover about one foot in front of us to check us out, but only for about a second or two. They never lingered long enough for Ann to capture a picture or video. It was a neat experience.

The trail we hiked was the Circle Trail or, more specifically, the West Circle Trail and the East Circle Trail. The two trails are not two different circles, but rather the east and west sides of the same circle. The trailhead could easily be reached by crossing the road from the RV campground and walking down the road through the tent campground. We took the circle in the counter-clockwise direction, starting with the West Circle Trail.

The trail started out as steep switch backs, up almost a 1000 feet to a ridge line, with nice views in all directions. It followed the ridge for a little while before steeply descending back down into the valley. There were nice views in front of us for most of the descent. Then we crossed the road and picked up the East Circle Trail to return to the trailhead. The East Circle Trail stayed down in the valley with only some elevation gain. It was a nice trail, but didn’t have the views like the west side did. It was better than walking the campground road back to the trailhead, but we’re not sure we would hike East Circle Trail by itself.

The lodge and office were located where we crossed the road to get from the West Circle Trail to the East Circle Trail. This was where the water station was supposed to be. We thought we’d check it out while we were there. We found the water pump, but it was padlocked closed. A couple of staff members on a golf cart came by, so we asked them about the water. It turns out that the park was out of water right then. They don’t have a well or city water supply, so they rely on water being delivered. The water delivery service normally has two trucks, but they are done to only one truck. The next delivery won’t be until Wednesday evening. Of course, we leave Wednesday morning and our water will probably run out sometime on Monday. The staff suggested going into Santa Fe and finding water at a gas station.

In total from our camp site, we went four miles with an elevation gain of 1250 feet in just under three hours. It was hike number 41 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2023.

Monday we drove over to Bandelier National Monument. We’ll cover that in our next blog post. Luckily, we were able to fill up our water at the national monument.

Tuesday we relaxed and hung out at the campground. Keith was fighting a cold and didn’t have much energy. Ann worked on blog posts and videos. It was also a great opportunity to clean up a bit. We cleaned the bathroom, swept the floor, and took showers.

We experimented with the DC-to-DC charger (paid link), and it seems to be operating fine. We also played with the solar panels. With everything turned off (battery bank and inverter), we plugged each solar panel in, one at a time. Amperage input was about 7 to 9 A with one panel, then 15 to 17 A with two panels, then went to… 15 to 17 A with three panels. It didn’t matter which order we plugged the panels in, so it was not a bad panel. When the third panel was plugged in, no matter which panel it was, the amperage shot up to over 20 A for a split second, then dropped down into the single digits before steady stating at 15 to 17 A. It seemed like the solar controller was limiting the amps coming in.

The rest of the time, we sat outside, enjoying the humming birds buzzing our heads every now and then. A couple of times they seemed rather aggressive and came uncomfortably close to our heads.

We enjoyed camping at Hyde Memorial State Park, despite the proximity to the road. Just be prepared to bring plenty of water, as it seems they do not have a reliable water supply. However, next time, we would choose to camp at Black Canyon Campground, just down the road.

Check out our related video: Hyde Memorial State Park, New Mexico

(Ann)