Farmington, New Mexico

October 22, 2025

So many of our recent destinations have had pretty amazing scenery, and we were probably starting to take such surroundings for granted. Not everywhere can be spectacular, and nowhere have we heard Farmington, New Mexico hyped as a must-see, bucket-list dream destination. But, it happened to be on the route to our annual Florida winter resting place, and it served its purpose well.

Leaving the spectacular scenery behind in Utah

We were back in Arizona for only a short time this trip

We have been appreciating the decreasing gas prices the further from California we get! Hey, is fresh mutton a thing here???

We stayed at an RV park on the San Juan County Fairgrounds property, which borders the San Juan River. Astute readers will note that this is the same river that we camped right next to previously at Goosenecks State Park. That the river looks different here is a bit of an understatement. In fact, it was quite hard to see it behind all the brush and trees.

Here's a map showing the San Juan River. Incidentally, the route we drove from Goosenecks (near Mexican Hat, UT) closely followed this river much of the way.

The fairgrounds property is huge, comprising a casino, horse racing track, a convention center, offices, several enormous parking lots, and 400 RV sites with electrical hookups. Fortunately, not much was happening here this time of year, and when we arrived on Saturday, most of the parking lots were completely empty and there were about 5 other RVs parked in the RV park section. After the weekend, it was just us and one other motorhome.

To ensure that Rick had something to occupy himself during our stay here, one of the supports for the fresh water tank popped off as we were filling said water tank.

At least this didn't happen while we were on the road!

A temporary fix until Rick could do a proper job of replacing the stripped-out screws with more robust bolts

It's not really true that Rick needed something to do while we were. He actually had quite a few projects planned, all of which he completed in short order. The truck was taken in for an oil change, velcro was attached to our deck roof foil squares to keep them from blowing away, and the really major task of switching Julie's computer from Windows to Linux in such a way that Julie wouldn't know the difference (that was the most challenging part 😉) was successfully accomplished. And, of course, Rick also completed the unplanned re-rigging of the fresh water tank as well. Feeling a little slug-like by comparison, Julie decided to put some of next year's travel plan through the blender and do some destination rearrangement just so she could say she did something constructive.

Not a lot happening at the Fairgrounds this time of year

Hopefully the velcro will keep the foil squares more securely in place in the future.

We did actually find some scenery to explore while we were here. About 50 minutes south of us was an area of badlands known as the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness. While we wouldn't necessarily call the scenery beautiful, it was quite interesting.

We pretty much had the entire wilderness to ourselves

Sliding past the barbed wire fence would not be a pleasant experience for those carrying a bit of extra girth!

What words does this scene evoke in your mind? Lush? Vibrant? Verdant? Hospitable? Didn't think so.

We thought the area would make a good setting for a Star Trek or Dune movie.

Since there was no official trail, we kind of made it up as we went along and ended up following several different washes.

The little hoodoo village was fun

We weren't sure what these fairly large tracks were from, so Julie did a Google Lens search online. The first several matches led to webpages about dinosaur tracks. As wonderful as it would be to believe that the internet is always right, we concluded that these tracks were probably made from cows.

Another day, we walked a nearby river trail along the Animas River to enjoy our first show of this season's fall color. It seems that the most ubiquitous tree in these parts is the cottonwood. Lucky for us, they appeared to be at peak yellow.

This was a bit unexpected. Usually they tell you not to feed the wildlife.

Cute local art

That was pretty much it for the excitement in Farmington, aside from some laundry and getting flu shots. We did have a nice sunset one night, and Julie ran outside to try to get close to the river to find a photo-worthy subject more appealing than a parking lot, but she was hampered by barbed wire. (New Mexico seems to have a lot of the stuff.) Reaching gingerly over the fence, she got this shot:

Sunset over the San Juan (and through the barbed wire)

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