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Excerpts from the 2005 New Mexico State Parks statewide brochure available for download. [New Mexico State Parks Brochure - pdf format]

Bluewater Lake State Park
Rolling hills studded with pinon and juniper trees encircle the 7-mile-long lake, which is stocked with trout and catfish. The lake is popular for boating, year-round fishing, wildlife watching and hiking.

Bottomless Lakes State Park
Water sports in the summer and trout fishing in the winter await visitors at this park, a series of seven small lakes bordered by high red bluffs. The lakes are 17- to 90-feet deep sinkholes created by circulating underground water that dissolved salt and gypsum deposits. The largest, Lea Lake, is a cool playground where visitors can rent paddleboats, swim, scuba dive or relax on a sandy beach.

Brantley Lake State Park
Southeastern New Mexico’s largest lake offers a myriad of adventures, with plenty of room for boating, water-skiing and fishing, and opportunities to camp, picnic and explore. The park is an excellent base camp for visiting area attractions, including Living Desert Zoo & Gardens State Park, 12 miles south in Carlsbad..

Caballo Lake State Park
The Caballo Mountains are the majestic backdrop to the lake, which boasts a full array of water sports, winter waterfowl watching, camping and cactus gardens in bloom. The Riverside Campground below the dam offers shady camping and picnicking sites among the cottonwoods.

City of Rocks State Park
Millions of years of erosion brought this volcanic rock “city” to its present stature as one of New Mexico’s more unique state parks. Visitors can camp, picnic and hike among the pillars, some rising as high as 40 feet. Nature lovers enjoy watching a myriad of Chihuahuan Desert wildlife that call the “city” home, and are featured in displays at the park’s unique visitor center.

Cimarron Canyon State Park
Trout fishing is excellent and wildlife is abundant at this park, which is part of a state wildlife area. Hikers and anglers enjoy the park’s eight-mile section of Cimarron Canyon, known for its towering rock cliffs called the Palisades.

Clayton Lake State Park
Sitting pretty among rolling grasslands near the historic Santa Fe Trail, the park offers visitors an opportunity to camp, fish or picnic near one of the most extensive dinosaur trackways in North America. The 170-acre lake is a waterfowl resting area in winter, when bird watching is superb, but fishing is prohibited.

Conchas Lake State Park
About 25 miles long at capacity, the lake is popular for boating, fishing, swimming, camping, hiking, scuba diving, and even golf. Visitors also enjoy watching the area’s wildlife, including the thousands of migrating waterfowl in the wintertime.

Coyote Creek State Park
Solitude, scenery and some of the best mountain trout fishing in New Mexico await visitors at the park, which sits at 7,700 feet in the eastern foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It is an ideal place to camp, picnic or fish.

To learn more about New Mexico State Parks, visit them online, www.nmparks.com.