We rolled into Lincoln, just down the road from the Smokey Bear Historical Park, not expecting much. We ended up spending the remainder of our day there. Lincoln was famously at the center of the Lincoln County War that took place from 1876-1879. Now, most of the town is frozen in time as the Lincoln Historic Site and may just be the best preserved town in the west.
After our exceptionally windy night at Valley of Fires Recreation Area we were on the road moving east again, and found ourselves in a chilly Capitan, New Mexico, home of the Smokey Bear Historical Park. The historical park (both indoor and outdoor displays) features a lot of vintage Smokey items, as well as Smokey's history, and Smokey's grave. Despite the "all fire is bad" messages of the past, there were displays acknowledging that fire is…
The day after Thanksgiving we packed up and departed the Navajo National Monument. The weather forecast was predicting quite a change in the weather, with a shift to snow and cold, so we scrapped our initial list of northern New Mexico sites to visit on this trip, and made a big move south. We stopped off for a quick break at the Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site which has been in operation since 1878.
