A stop for Dinosaurs and Pronghorns on a long travel day

As we get closer to Oklahoma, our driving days always seem to get longer. We've had over 50 years to explore the area closer to where we were raised and then raised our own family. So we have less reason to stop as our journeys weave closer to Oklahoma. But we decided to make a stop near Clayton, New Mexico, during this day's drive. We left the motor home parked at the little town of Clayton, and drove the pickup 13 miles to Clayton Lake State Park.

It was too cold and blustery to go kayaking on the lake, but the real reason we wanted to visit here was to see this rock area surrounded by a wooden walkway.

When the earthwork was done to build the dam that formed Clayton Lake, they discovered some curious indentions in the rock. Those indentions turned out to be more than 500 dinosaur tracks. These tracks are some of the best-preserved in the world. 

The signage along the board walk helps to explain what we saw. The sign says, "Two different dinosaurs made these footprints. The rounded, blunt-toed prints on the left were made by a plant-eating dinosaur . . . while the tracks on the right were made by a meat-eating dinosaur. Their tracks are much smaller in size and have a more pointed heel impression." The sign includes a picture of the tracks color coded to make them more obvious.

We could compare the professional picture on the sign with the one that we took this day.

Another sign pointed out the tracks of large meat-eating dinosaur that was 40 feet long and named an acrocanthosaurus.

In our picture we could see the three toes with claw marks from the dinosaur's talons.

Another sign explains that this is the most prominent track. It has three toes and a squared heel, and was made by a plant-eating dinosaur.

What you can't tell from the picture is how big that track actually is. Denisa's foot looks small next to that plant-eater dinosaur track. Another thing you can't tell from the picture is how cold and windy it was on this side of the lake. We would have stayed longer at the dinosaur tracks, but we were cold!

We thought we were finished with our stop at Clayton Lake State Park, but we decided to make the drive around the lake. That's when we discovered the Rock Garden section on the other side.

We always love to find unusual rock formations, and we found some interesting hoodoos to explore.

We have wandered into another of God's wonders as Mark climbed to the top of some of the rocks to look over the lake.

Because of the blustery weather, we almost skipped this stop. But were glad we came. It allowed us to stretch our legs and get some exercise climbing and hiking in the middle of this longer-than-usual travel day.

As we drove the 13 miles back to the motor home, we got a close-up view of three pronghorns running across the plains. The fastest land animal in North America, these guys were just jogging today.

We stopped the pickup to watch them. We saw a hundred of these animals as we drove through this section of New Mexico. But all those sightings were from a distance when we were driving 65 miles per hours. It was nice to be on a road where we could stop and enjoy this wildlife sighting.

We watched as they ran across the road in front of us. The sturdy fence on the other side stopped them. While they can run fast, it looks like they don't have the springy legs of a deer that would jump easily over that fence.

So they paused momentarily, and headed back from the direction they had come.

We took way too many pictures, but it's not often that pronghorns pose when they're so close.

When the pronghorns finally loped over the hill, we drove back to the motor home and hooked the pickup behind it. We finished up our 176-mile drive today, stopping at a no-hook-up BLM campground outside of Felt, Oklahoma. The motor home crossed the last state line for a while, as we'll be parked for over a month visiting friends and family in Oklahoma.