Patagonia Lake State Park

After leaving the busy week of the Escapees Hangout, we set up camp at this highly rated state park in southern Arizona. Nestled in the mountains near the Mexican boarder, Patagonia Lake State Park is said to have two seasons: boating season and birding season. We were there during the birding season so most of the accompanying pictures are of birds.

We shared our 5 days at the park with our friends, John and Tina. Our first full day there was rainy and cold so we took the opportunity to drive over to Sierra Vista to get some shopping done. We returned to the park by mid afternoon and made arrangements to check out the Wagon Wheel Saloon in Patagonia with John and Tina.

On Wednesday morning, we tried running around the park and along the birding trail. We don’t do much trail running and this probably would have been fine if it wasn’t the day after some heavy rains. The trail was muddy and we were forced to stop and pick our way around puddles as we did the short loop on the trail. Needless to say this turned out to be our slowest pace in quite some time! Later that morning, we drove into Nogales to pick up a few items at Walmart and have some lunch. Nogales is a border town with half the town in the United States and the other half in Mexico. As you drive into town, you can see the border wall along the hill tops on the outskirts of town.

Thursday turned out to be the best day of our short stay. Dan got out of bed early to do some bird photography along the birding trail that we ran on Wednesday. The trail was a bit drier and the birds were out, filling the cool air with their songs. Benches can be found at several locations along the trail and Dan stopped to sit on one for several minutes to enjoy the quiet solitude of the area.

In the afternoon, when the air temperature had finally climbed into the 60’s, we joined John and Tina for some kayaking. It had been a while since we’ve had the kayak out and it was nice to get some use out of it. The water was calm and the birds were bountiful. It was fun trying to get as close as possible to them before they either dove under water or scurried across the surface to get away. We stayed on the water for almost two hours, looking for birds and just taking in the beauty of the area.

This was our last full day in the park so we got together at John and Tina’s site (they had the best site in the park – ranger’s words not ours) for a final meal together before we went our separate ways. It was wonderful to share these few days at Patagonia Lake State Park with John and Tina. Our spring and summer plans differ drastically and we will not be crossing paths again for some time. We are both planning to be in the southeast next winter so we look forward to hooking up with them again then. As someone recently said about this lifestyle, once you’ve been doing it for a while it becomes as much about the people you see as it is about the places you go and sometimes you go places just to see the people. We have made some RVing friends where this is certainly true.