Lake Navajo, Colorado

We left Colorado Springs on Saturday, August 24^th, after hitching up the boat to the motorhome. Julie followed me in our GMC Yukon and we headed down I-25. We had planned to stay a RV park outside of Monte Vista, but it had gone out-of-business and was overgrown with weeds. We had stayed there last September on our way home from Lake Powell.

We looked at our RV park guides and decided to stay just west of South Fork at the Riverbend Resort. They told us on the phone that they had a pull-through site that would be long enough for our motorhome towing a boat. We had driven past this RV park many times over the years but had never stopped there. We learned while checking in, that the resort was used in the movie “Vacation” with Chevy Chase, as Clark Griswold and Bevery D’Angelo who played his wife.

The Riverbend Resort was a typical RV park in the South Fork area, with many, many Texans staying there for the summer. We had a challenge leaving the next morning getting out of our site and the RV park as the turns were a little tight with the boat in tow.

We stopped for breakfast in Pagosa Springs on our way Navajo State Park. We really looked forward to our 2-week stay at Navajo as it really feels like we’re full-timing and not on the road every couple of days. The majority of the lake is in New Mexico. You cross the state line right outside of the boat ramp we launch from.

The lake level was down 70-feet, the lowest it’s been in over 10-years, according to the park rangers. The lake is low because little snowpack last winter and because water has been released for crop irrigation downstream.

We took the boat out on Wednesday and although the lake was down, it was still 150 to 190-feet deep in the main channel. The water was beautiful blue-green and we went 25-miles down the lake to the dam. We stopped at the marina and enjoyed ice cream before we headed back to Colorado. While at the marina, we saw an improvised “houseboat” using a tent trailer camper. 

My sister Marcia and brother-in-law Mike joined us at Navajo on Wed, Sept 4^th for 4 nights. On Friday, we rode the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge railroad train up to from Durango to Silverton and back. It was the first time any of us had ridden this train and we had beautiful weather. We head to Page, AZ and Lake Powell next.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

sandjcornelius@msn.com