Tomorrow is the April Fool’s Open Mic starts at noon, come relax have a drink, smoke some bud and enjoy. New stage and Dusty Nail General Store debut will also be tomorrow!!
Make sure to visit the Dusty Nail General Store and help support all we do here at Plateau Hame De Colquhoun . You can also purchase registrations for the Nomad Gathering in the Desert May 19th to the 21st. Weekend full of entertainment, live music of Jer Killinger Singer/Songwriter and J5th & the 77 Riders , outdoor movie “Off the Map, bonfires, meetings, vendors.
Campsites are still available for the Apri Fools open mic. You can register tomorrow at the Dusty Nail General Store or reserve your site through the website.
If you need to drive your vehicle to the stage tomorrow to unload please notify us ahead of time. No parking by the stage, circle or campsites. Please park in the designated parking lot.
Directions can be found on the website, signs will be up. Do Not follow GPS.
Dusty Nails General Store is a little store that you can visit during your visit at Plateau Hame De Colquhoun .
April Fool’s Open Mic a FREE event on April 1 starting at noon, will be the grand opening of the store. Bring a chair and drinks, talent and enjoy a day in the desert, with beautiful views of Ladrone, Rio Grande Valley, Sandia, clear days you can see Mt Taylor!
We do not encourage drinking, and/or high driving. You are welcome to sleep it off in your vehicle parked in the parking lot. We do have campsites available if you’d like to book a site contact us or visit our website to book.
We will be selling Registrations for the Nomad Gathering in the Desert in May. This is the only place you can purchase registrations without going online.
We got the Dusty Nail build pretty much finished. Now we start cleaning and setting up the inside.
We are excited to have the new stage and Dusty Nail General Store ready for the April Fool’s Open Mic !
I have so many ideas on how I want to decorate the inside, I’m not sure I will be able to accomplish my ideas by the next event. I will probably put off these ideas until after the Open Mic.
The next projects
First will be a shower. We have everything to build the shower. We will be looking for a good 275+ gallon IBC tote, cheap, food grade with good tread on the spout. If you know of one please contact us
We are planning on adding another road, 2nd parking area (can be used for parking or campsites) and a few more campsites.
We also plan on moving our private residence area back. This will give more campsites. Give us and the dogs more privacy while having events and or campers.
But before we can move our spot back we have to build the 5k solar setup. This one will only be dedicated to the “Beast” class A. The big solar is for the Greenroom, Bluemoon, maybe shower, and sound/lights during events.
If you’d like to come visit and see what we are doing. We welcome you to attend one of our events. April Fool’s Open Mic on April 1st, Nomad Gathering in the Desert May 19 to 21, Haunted Hay ride in October, (more events coming soon)come camp, or contact us to come and visit a few hours.
One more week until the April Fool’s Open Mic ! We have so much work to get ready for this event. The weather has slowed us down to a crawl on finishing the store.
Make sure to bring your talent next Saturday starting at noon.
The April Fool’s Open mic is open to all, it’s FREE. There will be vendors, food vendors, music, bonfire, camping is available by booking through our website or stop at NEW (hopefully finished) Dusty Nails store to purchase a campsite or buy tickets for the Nomad Gathering in the Desert . Nomad Gathering is $20.00 for the weekend. Kids 10 and under are FREE!!
Directions to Plateau Hame De Colquhoun can be found by following the links below!
Plateau Hame De Colquhoun is a family owned business. On top of a desert mesa overlooking the Rio Grande Valley. Ran totally off-grid using solar and generators to run any sound and lights needed for an event.
Our family had site managed, built other semi off-grid event centers for other businesses for many years. But our dream was to do something similar for ourselves. Our dream became a reality in 2020. We had been asked to come to New Mexico for the winter of 2019-20 and help clear, build an event center. During this time we saved all our money we could with hopes to make a down payment on a vacant piece of land in Minnesota.
But plans changed, we loved the New Mexico winter so much that we started looking for vacant land anywhere in New Mexico. when we came and looked at this piece of land we fell in love right away. The land was secluded, majestic, peaceful, raw, and a perfect place for our dream.. On January 3 2020 our dream started to become a reality. A dream of building a safe space that all are welcome. A place where you can find peace and relaxation (Dependent on mother nature) for a night, week or month, to be able to be yourself without fear of ridicule and judgement.
One of ore requirements when looking at land was that it be secluded, we wanted privacy, no issues with noise. This seclusion became our biggest fear, Will people be willing to travel the 11 miles of washboard dirt roads to be out in the middle of the desert. To test this we decided to try by opening a few sites for campers (at the time the land was untouched, no toilet, really rough road that was hard to get on to get in). To our surprise two days after posting we had a booking, a few days later we had yet another 7 day booking, and they kept coming. So we cleaned, mowed campsites, paths, built easier to travel road, compost toilet, and a communal firepit. This year we are working on finishing the community store front and a shower.
This is our 3rd year of campers. Each year we get more bookings and hope to continue to grow.
Last year we got to the point of opening the land for events. This has been a very scary jump for us. Some of the same questions we asked ourselves about campers. Will people come down these roads for unique event experiences?! The few events we held last year weren’t badly attended, those that did attend seemed to enjoy themselves.
April Fool’s Open Mic will be our first event this year. We have our fingers crossed that attendance will be better than last year.
The Nomad Gathering in the Desert is in May, this will be our first of such an event. The fear and anxiety are high for this one. There are so many questions: Will people show, will they like it, is the cost too high, is it too low, will we be able to cover costs, are we offering enough activities. Many of these are fears all hosts have. But especially for the first event, and at a place that is just starting out. A place many don’t know about, and some have fear that it’s a scam.
We try to ease fears by inviting individuals out, take a tour, talk with us, and hanging out. Come to the April Fool’s Open Mic which is free. We try to be as transparent as we can, it is what it is out here. Roads are passable for any vehicle (if you follow our directions and not GPS). Though the roads are washboards, dips. It’s really not bad for dirt roads, we’ve driven on interstates that are worse (umm I10).
I will cut this here. We wanted to share a little of our story. If you’d like to learn more visit our website, send us a DM, email or comment. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Yesterday we had 55 mph gusts, 30 mph sustained winds. Having dealt with winds many times, we have learned how to better deal with it. We try to make sure everything is anchored down, or protected. We were lucky we didn’t get too much damage. We did lose the cover for the dog food bin, water and sand got into the bag. We had the bin protected from the southern winds, but when the squall hit the winds and changed directions instead of south, it changed to the west.
I was on the phone with my Mom Linda Rone at the time I saw the lid fly by, but we couldn’t go out and grab it out of fear that when we opened the RV door the RV would fill up with sand. So we waited for the winds to settle a little to go out and try to save the dog food.
While talking on the phone just before the dogfood lid, I had seen a deflated balloon fly by that read “Happy Birthday”. We have no idea where this balloon came from.
We did have a few smaller items fly off, but nothing we hadn’t recovered. I had a big tote full of vendor supplies (about 50 lbs or more) stored under the Greenroom, that the wind caught and moved to the middle of the yard.
You can now book an RV or tent campsite for the April Fool’s Open Mic on April 1st starting at noon.
RV and Tent campers are allowed to stay 2 nights, gates open 3 pm March 31st 2023 (For Campers only).
General admission Gates open for April Fool’s Open Mic on Noon April 1st .
Campers may not come in during the event.
RV sites are for one RV, all extra vehicles must be parked in the parking lot during the event. 10 person max per site.
Tent sites are for 2 tents max 10 people per site. Extra vehicles must be parked in the parking lot during the event.
Entry to April Fool’s Open Mic is FREE. BYOB and 420 friendly no sales allowed on site. Must be 21 + to drink or have 420. We will ask those choosing to serve anyone underage to leave.
View of the Snow top mountains from Plateau Hame De Colquhoun . This morning the 6th of January most of that snow is gone. But still very beautiful views. When we looked at the property before purchasing the views were the selling point. 75% of the views are mountains, we can see Mount Taylor by Grant, Sandia by Albuquerque. We do get military aircraft traffic, a lot of refueling practices, maybe even a few UFOs.
If you’d like more information about us visit our website!
Recently we’ve had people ask what it’s like living in the middle of the desert off-grid. Well I’m not sure how to answer that question, it’s not much different than living pretty much anywhere. There are hardships and joy. We have all or most of the modern conveniences, lights, water, heat, TV, computers.
I would have to say not having a shower is probably the biggest difference . Building the shower is not a priority and has been put on the back burner for awhile. Not because we couldn’t use it, but we can easily take long hot showers in town. Whereas with the shower we are building you will be required to do military showers, due to having to conserve the water.
Another is the solar, we aren’t able to run electric heat or AC on it. We don’t use many electronic devices like air fryers, coffee makers, and toasters to name a few. It’s not that we can’t but they tend to draw a lot of electricity so it’s easier not to have them. We do however have a microwave and it works but it is used for storage.
If you have a continuous cloudy days you do need to conserve your electric. Meaning no TV, fans, even small things like charging phones can cause too much of a drain.
If you are wanting to experience this way of life. You are welcome to come out and camp or attend an event here at Plateau Hame De Colquhoun and see for yourselves!
A couple months ago we did something that we had no plans on doing. We got a puppy we called “Amigo”, he was 8 weeks old born July 20th. We asked about his parents mother being around 40lbs and father 80lbs.. Amigo seemed tiny to us, so we thought he would get around 50 lbs a perfect size for the RV, since Dreugan is 100 lbs, smaller dog would have been nice.. Though at Amigo’s last vet exam at 13 weeks, he weighed in at 24 lbs, which means he’ll get around 80 lbs maybe more..
That’s fine with us, sometimes smaller isn’t easier.. We broke all our plans with getting Amigo, when Litha passed we wanted to wait to get another dog, and planned on getting a med size (not puppy, we just got past the puppy stage with Dreugan) dog. But when we saw the puppy sign Brent and I both felt compelled to go look (we never go look at parking lot puppies). We got there and the first puppy to come to us was Amigo, he looked similar to Litha even with the same white marks on his chest (Amigo is a different breed, only color, markings are similar, we don’t expect him to be Litha). We tried to put Amigo back in with the other pups but he didn’t want to go.
So now Amigo is part of our family, he’s vaccinated, chipped and officially a family member. This may sound weird to some but we feel Litha picked him out for us. 3rd picture is Litha- June 2015 to Sept 2022 ❤️
Ka-Hoon Campground and Event Center 