About the park:
Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park is New Mexico's 34th state
park, encompassing 300 acres of bosque (riverside forest) along the
Rio Grande and 600 acres of adjacent Chihuahuan Desert. The park is
a refuge for wildlife and a haven for people seeing the quiet
enjoyment of nature.
The park is open from 8:00am - 5:00pm (Everyday) during Sept 1 -
March 31 (Winter) and
8:00am - 5:00pm (Mon-Fri) and 7:00am - 7:00pm (Sat & Sun)
during April 1 - August 31 (Summer).
Since this is a state park, there is an entrance fee of $5 per
car. You can get a yearly pass to all state parks for
$40. Walkers, bicycles, and unicycles are free.
Directions to Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park:
From Interstate 10: Take the Avenida de Mesilla Exit (Exit 140)
south to Calle del Norte (first stoplight) in Mesilla. Turn right
and drive 1.9 miles west until you cross the Rio Grande.
Immediately after crossing the bridge, the entrance to the park is
visible on the left.
From Las Cruces: Take Avenida de Mesilla (Highway 28) south to
Calle del Norte (first stoplight) in Mesilla. Turn right and drive
1.9 miles west until you cross the Rio Grande. Immediately after
crossing the bridge, the entrance to the park is visible on the
left.
The web site for the Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park
is:
http://www.emnrd.state.nm.us/PRD/mesillavalley.htm.
Activities:
Hot Chocolate. The purpose of this event is to 1)
encourage people to get outdoors and 2) introduce new people to
geocaching. This portion of the event will include a three
stage, temporary geocache allowing participants to compile
everything they need to create a nice hot mug of hot
chocolate. This multicache should take people less than 30
minutes to complete. We will provide instructions and hot
water.
We are encouraging veteran geocachers to help out with this
event. We would like the local geocachers to show
first-timers how to program and use a geocache. Then, the
veteran and the first-timer will go out together and gather the
ingredients together. During the trip, the veteran can tell
the first-timer everything they want to know about geocaching.
This event is designed to encourage everyone to invite their
friends (especially friends with children) to see what geocaching
is all about. We will have several spare GPS units for the
first-timers to use.
New Caches. There are at least two new geocaches planned
for this event. They should pop up the day of the
event. If not, cache pages will be handed out at the
event.
Education Activities. We will have people who can tell
first-timers about geocaching and we will have people who can talk
about the different levels of GPS accuracy in excruciating
detail. We may even have a display of different cache
types.
Prizes. There will be prizes for everyone, including new
geocoins, cache containers, and toys for the kids.