We needed a stop on our way to the Palo Duro Canyon from the Cibola National Forest so we stopped at the Mesalands Community College’s Dinosaur Museum.
It was a pretty small museum and did not look like much from the outside.
I was glad that the twins stayed with Nick and went to find a park while I only paid for 3 kids to go in.
HA
It ended up being really interesting though and the boys really enjoyed the exhibits.
Little Bit loved looking for touchable exhibits and had a lot of fun looking for the blue handprints that let you know you can touch things!
Next stop (we thought) was the Palo Duro Canyon!
We were getting there mid week in May so we thought we should be able to get a site for a night or two.
I was wrong…
They were having an event and all their sites were booked!
I had no clue where we were going to stay that night, we loved the Palo Duro so much the last time we came that I made sure we went through there on our way home so we could stop again!
In a panic I started looking for somewhere to stay that hopefully was not an RV park(I don’t like how close together most of the spots are) and found Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
We decided to check it out and found beautiful open sites and hardly any people!
The best part though was it was totally free with our National Park Pass! It is really cheap even without the pass but free was nice.
We did not see as much wildlife as at previous refuges we had stopped at but it was still very pretty.
There is not a lake anymore, I guess it was not safe so they drained it.
The only downside to this beautiful spot was the vault toilets which were pretty bad but doable.
Our black tank got damaged getting to our last boondocking spot so we could not use the rv toilet.
After backpacking with Nick and having no toilet though I am pretty thankful for anything with a door.
We stayed two nights here and got to explore a local museum(free again!) and we did get to check out the Palo Duro Canyon but it turned out to be another fail.
HA
I will share why in the next post!
It was just a good lesson in not judging a place because of a bad visit!
I had not used this benefit before but sure enough we were able to get in for free to three museums in Albuquerque!
We only went to two of them though.
It does get a limited number only in for free but that worked fine for us since someone always needed to stay with the dog.
This museum had some incredible displays.
I used to worry a bit about visiting places like this as a creationist but have found that I can enjoy it just fine.
I find their theories fascinating and I love to see what they think the area looked like before.
The boys knowledge of dinosaurs and creation science actually far surpass me.
They had an exhibit on the how the brain works also that was interesting.
It is a science/children’s museum and they really liked it!
I really enjoyed the quiet in the vehicle.
Our site might have been a lot of work to get to but it was pretty.
Next we headed towards Texas and got turned away from our next camping spot!
With our local zoo pass we were able to get 50% off our admission!
After the zoo we tried to get to the dispersed camping spot I had found in Cibola National Forest.
We ended up damaging our black tank so even though I liked the site I wish I had not pushed for us to camp there.
It still ended up being a beautiful evening though!