We’ve grown accustomed to rapidly changing weather conditions since New Mexico’s monsoon season started. Strong winds, heavy rains, and noisy hail have become nearly everyday occurrences. We were not, however, expecting to see a tornado blow through a state park at 8,200 feet elevation next to the sleepy little town of Eagle Nest surrounded by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

On Thursday, August 9th, the day after we arrived at Eagle Nest Lake State Park, the now typical afternoon storm clouds began to gather. I had just returned from fishing, catching two small yellow perch after figuring out how best to tie my line and avoid snagging the moss growing on the bottom of the lake. It more closely resembles seaweed, but everyone around here just calls it moss. Unsure how to clean and prepare perch and lacking a readily available internet connection, I filleted the two fish just like I learned in the Keys this past winter since they more closely resembled scaly saltwater fish than smooth freshwater trout. After placing a cast iron skillet on the stove to fry our tiny perch medallion snack, I noticed the wind picking up as we quickly pushed the windows closed.

“Look at the dust outside,” Ashley calmly mentioned, gazing out the window across the mountain valley.

I peeked through the window beside our dinette and spotted what looked like a dust devil blowing through the sparsely populated neighborhood beside the park. Having little experience with this kind of weather phenomenon, we watched in wonder for a few seconds as the tightly packed dust cloud slowly moved across the flat, grassy expanse. My wonder rapidly shifted to apprehension as I followed the whirlwind higher into the sky.

“I think that’s a tornado,” I replied, spotting a thin funnel cloud above the swirling dust that appeared to be growing by the second. “Get your shoes on, we need to move.”

Ashley began slipping on her shoes, moving with intent but not exactly speed. I encouraged her to pick up the pace, maybe more forcefully than necessary and certainly not using such polite phrasing. We rushed outside, pushing the RV door closed behind us and headed for what we hoped would be more protective shelter.

We’ve often halfheartedly joked about where we would run if we happened to be caught in severe weather while close to the RV. The easiest answer in most of the New Mexico state parks we’ve visited has been the nearest bathroom building. In this case, the closest building was the vault toilet. With cinder block walls covered in stucco and a sturdy metal roof, it was likely a better choice than remaining in the RV and hoping for the best. There was no way we could’ve made it to the larger park office building in time, nor could we have packed up the RV fast enough to drive away from the approaching tornado. It wasn’t as if we could even predict its path, as it appeared to be growing while remaining in one place judging from what little we could see around the muddy brown base.

After dodging prairie dog holes and scrub brush, we reached the small cement structure and sheltered behind the walls, watching the funnel change shape as the wind increased and large drops of rain slammed sideways into the building. With the cement walls between us and the wind, we peeked around the corner to snap a few photos and capture a short video of the twisting cloud. Bright balls of light exploded at the base of the cloud as the wind either blew transformers or crossed power lines. Chunks of debris whipped around the bottom of the dusty maelstrom and small spheres of hail bounced off the ground. Carried on the intense wind, the hail pelted us like thrown stones and we ducked inside the single stall bathroom for protection.

While inside the bathroom, we could no longer see the funnel cloud as it approached from the opposite side. I peeked outside surveying what I could before the winds increased to such a degree that I didn’t feel comfortable holding the door closed with both hands. I threw the lock and we huddled against the walls while the tornado passed.

Since we’ve never been through a tornado, we had no past experience to draw on for reference. I’ve heard that tornadoes sound like approaching trains, but we didn’t notice that as this funnel blew through the park. I can only assume that was because of its small size, classified in the following days as a “landspout” with the smallest possible tornado rating of EF0. In only a few minutes, the wind and hail slowed enough that we unlocked the door to risk a glance outside. The now-weakening funnel appeared in the distance over the lake, turning into a waterspout as it sucked liquid up like an over-sized straw.

This short video shows the tornado as it approached the park.  You can see the electrical bursts around the 30-second mark.

 

Quickly surveying the park, it was only then we spotted a fifth wheel two campsites over from us tipped on its side. Having seen its owner before the storm started and not knowing if he was still inside, I took off at a run across the campground keeping one eye on the disappearing waterspout just to be sure. Park and emergency personnel were stationed in the nearby parking lot and arrived at the trailer before me, fortunately, because I really had no idea what I was going to do anyway once I got there. They hurriedly asked me if anyone was still inside, and I could only tell them I didn’t know while sharing that we only saw one person at this site since we arrived the day before and hadn’t seen him during the storm. His truck was gone, but that wasn’t proof he wasn’t still inside as the emergency responders began pulling aluminum and plywood panels from the end of the ruined camper. With the hail picking up once again and more trained personnel arriving on scene, I told a park ranger I’d be taking shelter by the bathroom if they needed anything, rather than just standing around getting in the way.

The wind was still blowing hard enough that I had to protect my head with my arms from the falling hail as I retreated back to the vault toilet, and running into the wind felt like I was barely moving. We stood outside the bathroom as the last of the storm passed and the emergency responders finally confirmed no one was inside the tipped trailer. The owner returned to the park not long after the storm, obviously shocked to discover the state of his fifth wheel. Small consolation, but we made him some coffee and offered a place to hide out while he took care of the tedious but necessary barrage of phone calls and planning details that were to follow.

The now ruined trailer was the worst of the damage caused by the tornado. A nearby Class A sustained damage to the roof (missing and broken vent covers, A/C cover, etc.) and cracked windows, while the metal roof of the picnic shelter beside the tipped fifth wheel was dented and the concrete foundation cracked. Our RV appeared untouched, and a few sites in the opposite direction still had tents staked in the ground and various belongings sitting on the picnic tables as though nothing happened. No injuries were reported in town or in the park, fortunately. According to the National Weather Service, 23 tornadoes have been confirmed in Colfax County since 1950 (none before this year in the Moreno Valley where Eagle Nest is located) with two of the ten most damaging tornadoes in New Mexico occurring within ten miles of Eagle Nest.

After the excitement of our second day in the park, we briefly considered packing up and cutting our visit short in search of a different location better protected from the severe weather. After we heard that the tornado was an incredibly rare occurrence, we decided to just stay put and play the odds that another twister wouldn’t materialize any time soon. We experienced some brief gusty storms over the next week and a half, but thankfully no more tornadoes.

Eagle Nest Lake State Park lies along New Mexico Route 64, part of the ring known as the Enchanted Circle. With popular destinations along the route, including the artistic town of Taos and the ski village of Angel Fire, the Enchanted Circle draws visitors year-round. Eagle Nest is one of the smaller towns along the circle, serving as a summer vacation village with lodges, cabins, and RV parks catering to out of town guests. With a full-time population of around 250 residents, the town swells in the summer months to over 1,000 seasonal part-time residents. With extremely cold winter nights – averaging 250 nights annually falling below freezing – it’s easy to see why Eagle Nest is mainly a summer destination. Even during our visit in August, daytime temperatures typically reached only into the high 70s while the nights dipped to the mid-40s. Snow falls nine months out of the year accumulating around 63 inches annually, but the abundant sunshine typically limits the ground cover to about four inches even in mid-winter.

Eagle Nest Lake is New Mexico’s newest state park, added to the roster in 2010 as a result of donated land. The campground is very small offering only 19 developed sites (no electricity, but drinking water is available nearby) and no overflow camping area. So if you arrive without reservations and find all the sites filled, you’re out of luck and might want to consider nearby Cimarron Canyon as an alternative. We didn’t have a Verizon signal in the park, but luckily WiFi is available in town at the multi-use building which includes a library, community center, and senior center. No showers or fancy facilities at the park, however, the park office and visitors center is a cutting-edge building fueled by solar and wind energy, constructed with straw bale walls in a steel framework that are completely recyclable should it ever be torn down, and featuring energy-efficient coated windows and skylights. Pretty interesting to see and I recommend taking a peek inside if you visit the park. The center also contains a scale model of Eagle Nest Dam, which turned the ripe old age of 100 this year. The dam remains in remarkably good condition due to its shape which allows the nearby canyon walls rather than the dam itself to bear the weight of the water.

Eagle Nest Lake is a locally recognized fishing destination for perch, trout, kokanee salmon, and Northern pike (which were illegally introduced to the waters and are prohibited from being released back into the lake if caught). The lake is also open to motorboats, and trucks towing boat trailers arrive early every morning disgorging hopeful anglers for a day on the water. I fished from shore and managed to catch a whopping three small yellow perch during our entire visit, but I stubbornly stuck with artificial lures rather than using worms as recommended by local anglers. I hate earthworms, it’s an irrational phobia that I never outgrew but I just don’t want to touch them. My fishing prowess obviously suffers as a result, since I watched plenty of other anglers hauling baskets full of perch back to their vehicles (the limit is 30 per person) while I marched back to the RV with an often empty cooler. The scenery is, fortunately, well worth the time spent outside.

Connected to the park by a one mile trail along the lake, the nearby village of Eagle Nest is easy to reach on foot. Biking along Route 64 is also convenient – little traffic in this area, plus very wide shoulders – although the distance is slightly longer at around three miles, and biking back against the wind is definitely more taxing than strolling across the rolling hills. The trail leads through a disc golf course, which seems unplayable to me because the baskets are all surrounded by tall weeds and the “fairways” are littered with prairie dog holes big enough to swallow discs. We spotted exactly one group playing the whole time we were here, and they must have been local because a golfer told me he lost a disc in the overgrowth for a week one time. My disc bag remained safely stored in the RV.

Eagle Nest still retains the feel of a frontier town, complete with an Old West saloon featuring swinging twin entry doors and a creaky wooden floor like you’d see in the movies. Since the town is so small and really only populated during the summer, the few restaurants that are open tend to have limited hours and not a wide variety. Oddly enough, the Golden Eagle RV Park seemed to be a popular neighborhood hot spot, with an indoor/outdoor cafe open to the public (one of the two places in town to get breakfast, the alternative being the pseudo-50s style diner named Kaw-Lija’s offering coffee and pastries in the morning), entertainment on Friday and Saturday nights, and even a farmers market on Friday mornings during the summer. We routinely ran into the same people on our various outings into Eagle Nest and they were always friendly, eagerly sharing information on the events happening during the week and genuinely showing an interest in our well-being. We were even offered rides on multiple occasions (which we politely declined), since the seasonal residents at Golden Eagle recognized us as the couple who walks into town from the state park.

Two restaurants in town provide sidewalk venues for live music over the weekends in addition to the music at the Golden Eagle, but the most unique entertainment came in the form of a cowboy poetry evening at the RV park. Gaining mainstream popularity in the 1980s, cowboy poetry evolved from the Welsh cowboys of the 1800s using rhyme and rhythm to help remember stories. These tales are often humorous, occasionally melancholy, and always related to elements of real working cowboy life. Rocky Sullivan, award-winning poet and champion of the 2015 and 2017 National Cowboy Poetry Rodeo, shared classic poems as well as some of his original work to the small crowd gathered in the outdoor lounge area at the Golden Eagle on a Friday evening. If the modern electronic sound equipment had been replaced with a crackling campfire, or if the setting had been moved to the actual saloon down the road, it would’ve been difficult to remember we were still in present times as opposed to somewhere on the western frontier in the late 1800s.

The town’s unofficial mascot is a burro named Bosco, happily living out his days in a field at the end of a side road. Visitors are encouraged to stop and feed him carrots in exchange for a donation. We took the short walk to see Bosco and dutifully fed him carrots while snapping a few photos. It was as exciting as you might imagine.

We visited both Angel Fire and Taos during our stay at Eagle Nest, seeing only a portion of the Enchanted Circle rather than completing the entire loop. Angel Fire lies along the route from Coyote Creek to Eagle Nest, providing a convenient location to stop for groceries and sample some of the local flavor. We ate a late breakfast at a place simply called the Bakery and Cafe, which was pretty good (although we both salted our food, which we don’t often find necessary for restaurant fare) and clearly a popular spot among both visitors and locals. After breakfast and a walk around the small town, we popped into the Enchanted Circle Brewery to share a flight and possibly get a growler filled to go. The beer was average at best, and we didn’t take any along with us to Eagle Nest.

Our visit to Taos, however, featured much better beer from Taos Mesa Brewing. We had to drive to Taos anyway to pick up our replacement vent lids, so we took advantage of the trip and spent a few hours exploring the town. We both were curious to experience Taos, although we didn’t know if we’d add it to our route as we were planning earlier in the summer. The hail-damaged vent lids made the decision for us. Taos is loaded with shops, restaurants, and art galleries. We could’ve spent a week just getting a feel for the town, but we made do with our single afternoon. We bounced between galleries, took a spin around the Plaza, and wandered into the Taos Mesa Brewing Taproom location for happy hour. We lucked out choosing the brewery since it just happened to be close to the lot where we parked the RV, and both the food and beer were excellent (plus the happy hour prices were a welcome bonus). It’s too easy to get caught up in the tourist vibe of Taos, but the vibrant artistic community seems to create a genuine, lasting appeal that deserves more than a single afternoon trip. There’s much more to do in Taos, like seeing the Taos Pueblo outside of town to name just one thing, and we simply didn’t get a thorough tour of the area although we definitely enjoyed our initial visit.

With the wide variety of climates, activities, and towns scattered around the Enchanted Circle, visitors would have a hard time running out of things to do or new places to explore. We only saw a small arc of the entire circle, as Red River and Questa remain as unexplored territory waiting for a future visit. From the laid-back, (very) small town of Eagle Nest, to the vibrant, artsy community of Taos, this region of New Mexico holds appeal for almost anyone. Surrounded by mountains and national forest areas, the opportunities for hiking, camping, and other outdoor activities are endless. History buffs can explore ancient settlements and seek out mysterious petroglyphs carved in stone. Skiers and snowboarders can find prime slopes covered in fresh snow through most of the winter. And who knows, if you time your visit just right, budding storm chasers might even encounter a tornado – but hopefully not anytime soon.