{"id":244,"date":"2005-06-06T10:35:18","date_gmt":"2005-06-06T16:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mjhinton.com\/wild\/index.php\/uncategorized\/new-mexico-needs-more-parks\/"},"modified":"2005-06-06T10:35:18","modified_gmt":"2005-06-06T16:35:18","slug":"new-mexico-needs-more-parks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/?p=244","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico needs more parks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Summer Season Starts Out Strong at State Parks\" href=\"http:\/\/abqjournal.com\/paperboy\/text\/\/news\/state\/358648nm06-06-05.htm\">ABQjournal: Summer Season Starts Out Strong at State Parks<\/a><\/p>\n<p>State parks around New Mexico are celebrating a successful launch of their summer season with a 34 percent increase in Memorial Day week crowds.<\/p>\n<p>    &#8220;The holiday weekend was terrific in New Mexico State Parks,&#8221; said Dave Simon, state parks director. &#8220;It was safe and it was fun-filled.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>    Visits at all 32 state parks increased from 222,000 for the week leading to Memorial Day in 2004 to 296,000 this year, Simon said.<\/p>\n<p>    &#8220;With lake levels continuing to rise through June and dozens of programs and special activities scheduled, the 2005 summer excitement in state parks is just getting started,&#8221; Simon said.<\/p>\n<p>    Elephant Butte Lake State Park saw a 14-foot increase in water levels from a year ago. It experienced an 80 percent increase in visitors from 72,800 in 2004 to 131,000 this year.<\/p>\n<p>    Nearby Caballo Lake State Park experienced a 100 percent increase in visitors during the week leading to Memorial Day this year with 18,015. It had only 9,021 visitors during the same period last year.<\/p>\n<p>    Sugarite Canyon in northeastern New Mexico also saw a huge increase from 2,477 last year to 5,005 this year.<\/p>\n<p>    All totals released by the parks officials are based on visitor numbers from Monday, May 23, through Sunday, May 29.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the large crowds, no major accidents or injuries were reported at state parks over the holiday weekend, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>    Navajo Lake State Park had more than 19,000 visitors for the week.<\/p>\n<p>    About 6,000 visitors made their way to Eagle Nest Lake State Park for its first Memorial Day weekend as a state park. A free fishing clinic and survival strategy demonstration were credited for drawing some of the visitors, state parks officials said.<\/p>\n<p>    More than 5,200 visitors went to Santa Rosa Lake State Park in eastern New Mexico during the week. That&#8217;s a 26 percent increase.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Drop Elephant Butte and Caballo and you have an average of over 650 visitors per day per park. If I went to any park and encountered 600 people, I&#8217;d leave. New Mexico needs more parks. mjh<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ABQjournal: Summer Season Starts Out Strong at State Parks State parks around New Mexico are celebrating a successful launch of their summer season with a 34 percent increase in Memorial Day week crowds. &#8220;The holiday weekend was terrific in New Mexico State Parks,&#8221; said Dave Simon, state parks director. &#8220;It was safe and it was &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/?p=244\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">New Mexico needs more parks<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}