Bottomless Lakes State Park is a fun hiking, exploring, and camping destination only 15 miles southeast of Roswell that features awesome colorful pools of seemingly bottomless lakes surrounded by cliffs. It is directly beneath the western edge of the Llano Estacado and not far from the Pecos River.

You can visit 8 of the 9 lakes but only one of them allows for swimming, canoeing, kayaking, and even SCUBA diving if you’re into that sort of thing. That lake is Lake Lea and it’s 90 feet deep. The aquatic vegetation and minerals in the water is what gives the lakes the color and illusion of extreme depth.

There are three trails but I’ve only done two of them. The Bluff Trail is a 2 mile trail that takes you above the lakes and lets you peer down into them. If you’re brave you can scramble out onto rocks ready to take their plunge into the sinkhole. The other trail, The Wetlands Trail, is a .6 mile loop trail through, you guessed it, wetlands.

I’ve camped there twice; once in a camper and once in the bed of my truck under a severe thunderstorm that threatened tornadoes and lit up the black evening in lightning fireworks. A word of warning: the mosquitos here are ferocious and will attack ceaselessly in the evening and at night. Also be on the lookout towards the west where you can see the Sierra Blanca peak and her mountains.