New Mexico Casino Camping

After a week at Bar S RV Park near Grants, New Mexico, it's time to head further east across New Mexico. We are still in Indian reservation territory. Many of those tribes take advantage of the well-traveled I-40 corridor to entice travelers into their casinos. Lucky for us, they also entice RVers in with well-priced RV parks. We have boondocked in casino parking lots before, but here in New Mexico they offer full-hook-up 50 amp sites. The one at Dancing Eagle Casino was full every night because it offered all that for $11.38 per night. That's a great bargain! 

As we look out our windshield, you can see how close our neighbors are. But we actually took the picture of our only wildlife sighting--the little bird on our windshield wipers.

The other perk to camping here is the cheap food found in New Mexico casinos. We ate the Rib-eye Steak and Shrimp special one day, and the famous Laguna Burger (with those New Mexico chiles) on the other. Dancing Eagle Casino is owned by the Laguna Tribe, but just a few miles down the highway is the Acoma reservation. We made that drive late one afternoon when the golden sun was lighting up the sandstone rocks and the cottonwood's fall leaves.

It's another beautiful drive where colossal rock formations rise randomly from the prairie floor.

One of those random mesas is the reason for most of the traffic on this lonely little road. This was our first view of Acoma Sky City.

We have to really zoom in to be able to see the pueblo built atop the mesa in the picture above. It is called Sky City because it is built 367 feet above the prairie below. Unlike other Indian pueblo ruins we have seen, this one still houses Acoma Indians. In fact, it is the oldest continually inhabited settlement in North America.

Quite a tourist destination, for a mere $25 each, we could have visited the cultural center and then been transported atop the mesa for a tour. That's way over our usual tourist budget, so we're content with seeing the mesa from the highway today.

The cultural center is actually closed by this time of the day, but we are enjoying the lovely lighting as the sun is sinking low.

From a viewpoint a mile away, we can look down and see the little adobe houses clustered on the top of the mesa. We're sure it's a fascinating tour. But we've heard that a lot of the time spent on the mesa is used to show the visitors the ceramic wares for sale by the Acoma tribe artists.

The real reason for this evening trip is to arrive in time for the music scheduled at Sky City Casino. There's a dance floor, and we were two-stepping to a talented live band for the rest of the evening.

So after a week of hiking and national monuments, we changed it up for a couple days of casino camping our way across New Mexico.