Time for the Holidays

I am back in Minnesota flagrantly sponging off of friends and family for the month of December.  Current plans are to hit the road again in January.  Anyone reading this, take care of yourself.

A Sad Evening

I went to a social on the plaza of Socorro this evening as part of the Festival of Cranes.  Everyone who was there was an old fart so the band was playing old fart music.  I so wanted to be dancing with a woman in my arms that I left.  Now I’m sitting in Scout with a beer instead of a babe; at least Scout in gender neutral.

Scout

I’m sitting here in Scout listening to the wind sigh through the ponderosa pine that nearly hide one trailer from another.  Supper, a pot roast, is simmering away on the hotplate while I work on my computer.  The temperature always drops quite sharply when the sum sets.  Tonight the temperature doesn’t matter because my very small ceramic heater keeps Scout warm enough to be comfortable.

Night temperatures have been in the high to mid twenties for a few weeks so tonight’s temperature is not unusually cold.  High twenties aren’t so bad, especially if I have picked my site well and get early morning sun, Scout warms up as fast as it cools off.  After a half-hour of sunshine it feels warm and after an hour of sunshine and breakfast cooking heat its quite comfortable.

Let the temperature drop just a few more degrees and I don’t like it at all.  Even putting warm feet into cold shoes doesn’t help.  At 25 degrees, I creak when I first start moving and the toilet is always too far away.  So, I moved to a place with electricity. 

Scout is not cold proof.  Oh, it has insulation in the walls that works well at reasonable temperatures however I can see light where wall meets slant.  Now that it’s colder, those cracks also leak lots of chilly air.  At the table side its doesn’t matter so much, however when I sleep, I like to sleep cool so the heater is off and those leaks are inches from both my neck and my feet.  What to do, what to do. 

While shopping at my least favorite national chain store I found a package of four foam pipe wraps that just happen to be a very good size for fitting into those pesky cracks.  An extra bench cushion fits well against the outer wall I occasionally bump in my sleep.  Voila! Warm as toast.

With the 12v lights not working, I became creative with that problem too though it took a few tries.  One or two candles add a nice glow to the inside and are bright enough to read by, however it’s difficult to see into a pot so I used a flashlight for that.  Unfortunately holding a flashlight puts it too close to the pot and I mostly saw steam, like having your high beams on when its foggy.  Hanging the light would help, if I had a way to hang it.

Scout has some very sturdy looking levers that lock the sides to the top.  They also make very handy holders for light rods.  By light I mean light.  After a day of diligent searching I found two yucca seed stalks long enough to span wall-to-wall.  It was easy to find a shorter one that would reach across between the two rods.  And I have a yucca walking stick given to me after a New Mexico trip I couldn’t take.  It almost fits and I use it when I want a fourth rod. 

Hanging a flashlight over the pot works sort of, and the light, which is on a bit of cord, easily moves to over the table.  Even though it works, I wasn’t happy with it.  I tried the idea with a different kind of flashlight and it still wasn’t what I wanted.  The trailer guy suggested using a battery charger on my battery and then I would have lights.  Battery chargers are expensive and they take lots of space.  His suggestion did get me thinking about electric lights and I went through a home decor department where I found a very inexpensive clip-on light.  Again, success!  The clip easily fits my poles, the cord is long enough to move the light anyplace I want it and the light beam itself is clear and uniform.

Light, warm and a beautiful setting; now if I could just solve the problem of keeping a picture fastened to the wall ………..

Park Gossip

I’m in Manzano Mountains State Park, New Mexico.  The park is set in a hillside of ponderosa pine so the trees are usually whispering in the wind.  A weather front was coming the day I settled in however I didn’t need a weather person to confirm the front since I was aching.  Aching enough that I didn’t unhitch even though I paid for a couple of nights.

In the morning the wind picked up, the trees swayed and with every gust a show of old needles blew past my window.  It didn’t make me much difference as I sat at my computer editing photographs. Pretty soon I heard rain and it soon changed to snow.  It took most of the day for the front to blow through.  By the time I was feeling good, it was time for bed.

Day two was beautiful though too cool to be outside without a jacket even in the sunshine.  Usually the sun instantly warms everything by about 20 degrees however there was a wind blowing and the sunshine was just a bit cool.  I went for a walk along the nature trail that had numbered posts and no information and the trail brought me back to the campground in such a way that I could leisurely snoop out the other campers.

There are three of us here, myself, an rPod that I envy over and a large white tent of the type often used by outdoor vendors.  It appears to be attached to the mouth of a completely enclosed two-horse shaped trailer.   A young man was splitting firewood at the third trailer and we exchanged waves.
- - -
Its now several days later and I still have lots of curiosity about the other visitors.
- - -
Thank goodness for public toilets in parks.  My curiosity has finally been sated.  Today I met the people in the rPod and learned the white tent dwellers consist of a man and woman who live in the trailer full time and are traveling around.  The woman buys things at local shops and resells them on eBay.  Apparently she knows merchandise and has made some excellent finds.

There is a school bus that comes into the park at 7:32am and returns about 4:30pm.  The park ranger, who I had guessed to be retired and only working part-time, has a teenage son and the bus is for the boy.  That also explains why the ranger typically starts his day soon after the bus leaves.  He has an industrial strength golf cart type vehicle that the revs up and uses to drive around the campground usually twice.  I hope he’s working and not just making sure the campers are awake.

The rPod people are a couple who formerly lived in the state of Virginia and moved out to New Mexico in January.  Now they have a small condo in Albuquerque, and rPod and 130 acres not far from the park.

Pat offered to drive me out to their property, if I was interested in seeing it.  Well, I’ve been building an adobe house in my mind as I drive through some repetitious parts of the country so I jumped at the chance to see what they were doing and to pick up a little local information.

Some people are simply good at interfacing with where they live and Pat is one of them.   They have started acquiring the equipment they will need to live in the country so how to keep it safe when they are not always at the land became an issue.  Pat talked to the local sheriff and was told to buy a container and lock it up.  I’ve seen containers in yards, some with windows and doors added and I have wondered about them.  Most are rusty or still wear company markings and add to the general disarray of yards. There is a business in the area that sells containers.

Pat and George bought a used one which on their property and they are using.  While they await the arrival of the new one they also bought, they poured footings for the containers to rest on.  Each container will then be bolted to the footings and then they will have a shed roof built over their tops.  In the end, it will look like an old-fashioned corncrib with cribs on each side of a drive-through.

They also have a well, finding water was part of the buy-conditions.  George was building a frame for a solar panel to power the pump while Pat showed me around.  There are some interesting rock ledges begging for use and a small ravine loaded with rocks begging to be picked up.  We looked at the ruins of someone else’s dream, guessed to be from the 1920s. And I saw the spot they have decided for the house, maybe.  They are going to build a straw bale house.  Each of them attended building workshops and George helped another couple work on their house so he has some additional experience.

Building for this year is almost done.  Nights are in the lower twenties and they will be happy with finishing the storage shelter.  In the meantime, Pat is gathering materials for a mud and wattle shelter she is going to create.

On the drive back to my car I learned they had 14inches of snow last year and couldn’t even visit the land.  While no snow is predicted for next week, it is becoming colder.  Highs for next week are going to be in the mid-fifties.  Fortunately, I’m moving to a lower elevation tomorrow.

El Morro National Monument

There are sandstone bluffs nearly everywhere I look.  This one, El Morro, is a national monument because of graffiti.  Although there are petroglyphs on it, I believe it’s the writings of Spaniards dating from the late 1600s that gave it the monument rating.

The writings, some even in English are interesting to see.  Whoever the traveler was, the reason they chose this particular sandstone bluff is because of a large spring at its base.
Regardless of the writings, the part of the monument that grabbed me was the cliff dwelling on the top and the walk to reach it.  A pueblo supporting maybe 1500 people used to exist up top.

Now, I’ve learned to be careful about using water and still a couple of quarts plus drinking water is typical for me; that’s not counting washing clothes.  The Indians who lived there didn’t wear the kinds of clothes that take well to washing and I’m guessing they washed themselves down near the spring.  Still, there would have been children too small to carry water or reach the hand- and toe- holds cut into the steep bluff sides. There would have been a few people who were unhealthy who couldn’t make the trip and I’m hoping they let the really old people off from carrying their own water.  In my mind’s eye all I can see is a stream of people like ants climbing up and down to the spring, carrying water, on their backs maybe, to the top.

And that’s not all they carried.  The people were mostly hunter-gatherers and all that food would be carried up top too.  The energy needed to move all that food and water and the bodies involved in moving it all, boggles my mind.

What did those people gain by living up there?  Once I climbed up and stood on the top of that bluff, I knew one thing they gained.  I experienced a sense of magnificence standing on what felt like the top of the world.  There was also a sense of smallness and how nothing a person actually is.  And I felt a sense of belonging in a way that was much different than belonging to a family or a community.  I felt like I belonged to the landscape I saw in the same way a tree or a snake belongs, there would be a place for me if I chose to fit into it.

(Argue all you will about how man changed the landscape as soon as he picked up a rock from here and moved it there, or how killing an antelope upsets some balance of nature. And then consider the rabbit that digs a den or the ants that build mounts a foot or more high.  How about rattlesnakes, common out here, that kills to eat?)

I took the backway up to the top, using steps, and took the front way, using a switchback, coming down. The ruins are quite near the steps.  Excavation started a long time ago however there are only a few exposed rooms.  Others were back-filled, as happens at many places, to preserve them.

As I approached, I saw two people inside one of the rooms.  They were clearly conferring and then doing something to the wall in front of them.  Later I found out the guys are called “Living Treasure Masons”.  Isn’t that a wonderful name? I personally would have died to have such a job.

One of the men was willing to talk.  When the pueblo was first excavated, photos were taken of every item found and every wall after it was dug out and cleaned up.  Now photos are taken before restoration starts and after it is finished.  The men, using a picture of the originally cleaned up wall, were taking broken or fallen rock off the floor and fastening it back into place, using a mix of mud and water as was originally used.

The talkative one showed me a rock that had fallen out.  Because of the photo, he knew it had broken when it fell and where it went in the wall.  He assured me not only would the rock be replaced but also both parts would be stuck together before returned to the wall.  I’ve often wondered about restoration and how real it actually is, and now I know.

The pueblo is back toward the broader part of the bluff and my trail led me toward the front where the spring is located at the base. What I saw was mostly polished stone.  I know nothing of rocks except I like looking at it.  There is much to read about the geology of the area however my mind turns into a sieve when it comes to remembering any of it. Whatever kind of stone is up there, it changes from sand color to white.  I was there mid-afternoon and the sun glistened on it.  Everywhere I looked was below me; a long way below me.  There is enough rock around to feel safe however I wouldn’t want to be up there with a wind blowing.

And the trail itself is pretty amazing.  Someone has etched lines to indicate the path.  In places steps are chiseled out of the stone.  However, wind and water and whatever have weathered the marks and worn the steps so in some places the marks are nearly missing and the steps slide into one another.

I’m not an antelope, I’m slow and cautious and not very nimble.  For a bit, up there on top of the world, I too was wild, free and boundless.

Bluewater State Park, New Mexico

I’m staying at Bluewater State Park, slightly south of I-40 and more or less midway between Gallup,NM and Albuquerque, NM.

The road to it winds through some pretty hills, passes through a small nameless community consisting of a couple of businesses closed for the season, some clutches of trailers and the inevitable corrals.  The road crosses a cattle guard and abruptly ends at an open gate and an empty fee collection station.

There is a sign on the gate saying it will be closed at 6pm and if you return later, park your car off the roadway.  I’ve seen those signs before and the gates have not been closed so I didn’t pay it too much heed.

I found a spot, paid my fee, hung my copies of the permit and went to check out the facilities.  There is a sign on the door of the women toilet/shower room that says the door will be locked from 5pm to 7am to save on energy. I disbelieved that sign and the door was locked at 9pm when I tried to use the toilet.  I walked to another building thinking it was an outhouse.  No, it was another flush unit with the same saving energy sign however it was locked for the season.  Strangely, there were lights on inside and I counted over a dozen security lights that were on as I walked back to my trailer.  Clearly saving energy is not what the sign actually meant.  Maybe, I speculated, it meant saving water since hydrants are scarce.

When I tried again in the morning, the shower was in use.  Since I also heard a smallish child, maybe the water here is actually warm. With chronic sunshine I expected to see solar tanks on roofs for heating water however none of the parks I’ve visited have them and hot water barely counts as warm.  While I was fixing breakfast an unfamiliar car left the shower building and drove out of the park (there are only two of us here).  A bit later it returned with different people and again parked by the shower building.

A new idea takes shape; maybe locking the door is to keep the locals out of the outbuildings.  Unemployment in the Deming area is close to 30%.  From the many closed businesses I see in every town, unemployment must be hurting lots of people.  I wonder what water costs that a local family would come to the park to shower. I saw the driver’s face when he drove past me; he looked unhappy and I think furtive. The car itself was old and the paint was gone from most of one side.  I wonder what it costs in spirit to take your family to public showers regardless of the why?

POST-NOTE:  I talked to a woman in the shower today who, it turns out, is one of the outsiders.  She buys an annual daily pass and comes in regularly to shower.  The water is warm at this park because she has emailed administration several times complaining about the previously cold ‘hot’ water.

The woman was quite talkative and told me she lived in one of the trailers outside the park, that it belonged to a male friend of hers and that it had neither a septic system nor a well. Since she has no septic system they use a pail which she emptied before leaving the building.  I’m quite sure hers is the same voice I heard on the weekend showering with a little girl.

She made it quite clear that living independently outside of town was worth the inconvenience of no water.  I wondered what kind of interference she had experienced since using the park facilities does not seem particularly independent to me.

The Catwalk, New Mexico

On the western side of New Mexico, near the town of Glenwood is a point of interest called the Catwalk.  Back in the mining days there were rich mines in this area.  Unfortunately the only surface water comes from a little stream called Whitewater Creek.

Since the crushing mill needed more water for its electrical generators than the creek easily provides, workers lay a 4” pipe three miles up the Whitewater to a place where they could get reliable water.  The miners kept coming to the area and strikes kept producing precious metals.  A bigger mill meant a bigger generator so more water was needed.  So the men lay an 18” pipe.  Parts of the canyon is so narrow the pipe was suspended from the walls and the only way up the canyon was on top of the pipe, hence the name catwalk.

Today I walked up the first mile or so, the part that has been civilized for us tourists.  Nearly everyone else went up and came down while I was meandering my way.  I talked to some folks and overheard others.  In the process I learned that the water will get 20 feet high in the canyon during a bad flooding.  And the footings and foundations of past bridges and walkways that have been washed away are apparent.  I also learned that the pipe came up in flat sheets and were bent into a pipe shape during installation.  The workers would bend it into a pipe shape and then send a little guy inside.  It was his job to keep the pipe in shape while each rivet was pounded into place.  None of the pipe fragments were close enough for me to see if the little guy was the one who had to do the pounding or whether he did the holding.  The pieces were also riveted together.  I kept hoping they had more than one little guy.  The more I thought of that story, the more I wondered at its truth.  I’ve carried both flat and round and I think a round pipe would have been easier to carry. Official Catwalk literature says the smaller pipe was hand-made however it says nothing about the larger pipe.

It’s hard to imagine twenty feet of water roaring down the canyon.  In places I could see the Whitewater and on this day it is a placid little stream.  In other places I saw rocks scoured into fantastic shapes by the force of the flood water and there are tree trunks easily three feet in diameter lodged in improbable looking places. 

What was easier for me to imagine was a group of workers moving up the canyon to service the pipe. Some, maybe most, are young and many of them will still think they are immortal.  Maybe they feel lucky or maybe they are just being brash young men.  At any rate, I picture them reaching the part where they have to walk on the pipe.  I imagine them jeering and cheering each other on as the pipe becomes a challenge to travel it the fastest or with most skill or maybe with stunts.  Not all will indulge though some will.  My body would have probably followed the cautious however my spirit would have rejoiced with the wild.  And who knows, one day I may have joined them.

postscript:  Arrrgh! There must be an easy way to insert photos however it eludes me - and it IS NOT an oh well!

Gila Cliff Dwelling

Gila Wilderness

 

 One of the places to visit near Deming NM is the Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument.  It is one of the prettiest places I’ve been. 

Scout and I arrived about the middle of the afternoon and found the visitor center parking lot nearly empty. Rather than spend time looking inside, we went directly to the cliff dwelling trailhead.  One of the volunteers gave a brief ‘be careful and don’t take anything’ message and I was on my way.

Because of the fore thinking of Aldo Leopold, the Gila River and much of the surrounding land is protected.  The cliff dwellings themselves are in the Gila National Forest and on the edge of a wilderness area protecting, among other things, the Gila River headwaters.

The day I visited was sunny and warm with little wind.  The trail itself is slightly over a mile and set up as a loop.  I meandered along smelling fall leaves that reminded me of Minnesota.  I guess that’s not surprising since there are oak mixed with pine, ponderosa pine, growing in the shady side of the canyon.  Both sheer and eroded rock faces marked one side of the trail and what would be a stream in the rainy season marked the other.  I was told the head of the stream is a natural spring so the people of the cliff dwelling would always have water.  During dry times, the spring water doesn’t make if far down the canyon before it disappears.

As I poke along looking at fall flowers, lichen and patterns on tree trunks, I come to a photo-op sign.  At this point I can see across the canyon and behold a very nice wall at the front of one cave.  There is a row of holes along the top marking where roof beams once rested.  Vandalism started nearly as soon as the dwellings were discovered so there are no roofs nor many roof beams.

The trail crosses the canyon to the sunny side and I climb up a series of steps.  Now I’m passing by cactus and I see little soil.  What I do see is the baked earth look I’ve come to associate with New Mexico.  I approach the first cave.  It has the remains of a wall or two, a fire pit and some stone circles recessed into the ground that ‘they’ think held food or water pots.

I pass another small mostly empty cave and climb more steps into a large, long cave.  The temperature drops by several degrees and the acoustics are such I can hear my breathing sort of echo.  There aren’t any walls in here though the ceiling is blackened probably from smoke.  And the sand that covers the floor has been raked clear of footprints.

I find volunteer rangers next.  I had tried to imagine discovering and then moving to this cave as I walked to it.  The guy I talked to said there was a pueblo a mile or so downstream for 700 years so those people would have known of the cave and they never used it.  Then for some reason a group of people moved into it, build 40 or so rooms and only stayed one generation.  Because of the rains and how they scour the land, there is no trash heap at the base of the cliff and archeologists have found nothing downstream.

Pottery fragments tell they are probably Mimbres from the north.  Tree ring dating from the wood that remains say they build around 1280.  There are food scraps that indicate they used all the types of native foodstuff available in the area and also grew corn, beans and squash. 

On the trail back I continued to speculate on the inhabitants.  All sorts of stories flitted through my mind.  Were there old people or lame people?  They must have used an easier route than the one laid out by the park service.  It may have been a place of ceremony however they didn’t fast while they were there.  Lots of speculation and no answers later I arrived at my starting place to find the gate closed.  I had whiled away close to three hours walking a bit over a mile and looking at seven caves!  It’s a good thing Scout and I planned on spending the night.

In the morning I walked to a second site where there is one very small cave close to the ground.  There are only two rooms here with a small rainy season stream close by and the Gila River not far.  Whoever used it, I found it easy to build my own picture.  I like the idea of a holy man living in it.  I know Anglo-European culture doesn’t allow for holy men living in caves however other cultures do and to me it fits the area and the little I have learned of these ancient people.

Leaving was hard.  Sometimes I almost hear sounds that aren’t and feel the passing of something that isn’t.  Am I suffering from too much imagination?  I don’t know, except leaving was hard.

Gila River

Bad News / Good News

Bad news -
For a few days I wondered why I had decided to strike off into the well-populated unknown on my own.  The electric converter failed so I have no lights, the outlet still works if I have a camping spot with a plug however the lights are gone.  I had supper guests that night and watching the lights fade was disturbing.  We finished eating by candlelight.

A call to the closest Aliner dealer, there is one in New Mexico, gained me nothing; they don’t do warranty work for anyone other than there own customers.  I found two dealers in Arizona however one never answered the phone and the other seemed to be out of business.  Next closest was south of San Diego.  The fellow from there was quite helpful.  They would take out my faulty converter, send it to the manufacturer for verification it was faulty and then install a return unit.  The whole thing would take 8-10 weeks.

I moved to a different camping location, one without electricity, and dug out my new duel-fuel Coleman camp stove and found something wasn’t working so I could not pressurize the fuel tank.  A cooking campfire took care of that night and my back-up backpacking stove helped me through a couple more days, however it is volatile to light and needs to be used outside, I didn’t always have an outside table and my knees are creaky. I'd like all that to be an oh well, however it often turns into a damn!

Then, when Scout and I went to the cliff dwellings, my brakes smoked so badly going down some of the hills, I thought I had ruined them.  We cautiously took a less hilly way to the closest State Park.

Good News –
I finally called my son and asked his opinion on a California repair.  He was able to put voice to some of the mixed thoughts I was having.  At the end, I bid him good-by and headed in a generally western direction.  A couple of days later I stopped in Douglas AZ for a information break.  As I returned to my car, I walked around Scout as I usually do, checking tires and things before driving.  There on the back of Scout was the name of my dealership and the phone number.  Since I was in cell-phone service I called my guy.  He said swapping out a bad converter would take a couple of hours and he could do it whenever we came in.  He even suggested a couple of make-shift fixes for lights until I did come in.  So, no more trip to California!

I returned to New Mexico and visited the cliff dwelling, landed in a state park, unhitched and headed to Deming to have my brakes fixed.  I was able to get and appointment the same day I brought in my car.  The brakes are fine, the smoking didn’t hurt them.  The car guys also changed my oil for 2/3 the cost of having it done at home.  And the manager knows my son and had some nice things to say about him.

Finally, I had the receipt for the stove with me, I bought it at a chain that has a store in Deming and since I was well inside 90 days, they traded my bad stove for a new one. Guess that makes it a hot damn!

week 3

Finding places is a problem for me.  I’ve been frequently told directions and then the teller has added “You can’t miss it.” however I generally do.  Once I find a place its easy to find it a second time, however I still can’t tell the difference among a dirt shoulder, a dirt driveway and a dirt street.  Or I’m told, go past the dirt dam, well there are piles of dirt everywhere.  Some look like they are on purpose and some are hard to tell.  Most of them are in low rows and have been shaped into long barrows for out here dirt is dozed both to make water holding ponds and to direct water away for erosion control.  To inexperienced eyes, they all look the same.

When I did find the dirt dam, it was 20-30 feet high and the road hugged it for several hundred feet.  It would be easy to recognize a second time.  I didn’t care about the dams, I was looking for the pictographs that lay somewhere above the second dam.  (Pictographs are painted on rock while petroglyphs are scratched into the surface.) Eventually I found them and they are well worth the effort of locating them.  Naturally I chose the hardest way possible.

There was supposed to be a path, the can’t-miss-it kind, at the top of the dam.  There were dozens of paths and I was not clever enough to tell the people path from the cow paths.  So, I opted to walk in the valley to the end of a very eroded rock wall.  On the way back, I walked on the rock face climbing over broken stones, stepping where cows had stepped.  I figured if they could walk over rock looking for food, I could walk there looking for pictures.

Most of the rock was so badly eroded I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to paint on it.  When I was nearly back to my starting point, I saw a rock face that looked promising.  As I approached it, I saw a faint picture of a person sitting down holding a staff, however I didn’t know if it was old or the drawing of a clever art student.  There is a boulder in front of it that looks to be a good seat.  A couple of handy stones made it fairly easy to reach the top.  As I hoisted myself up high enough to see the sit-upon part, I saw large, bright pictures filling the top.  Wow! Expecting to sit and examine and instead seeing an array of quite wonderful drawings is still boggling.


Scout didn’t come with me on that excursion since I have learned pulling a trailer is both harder and easier than I thought it would be.  For years I’ve driven over bad roads and I have found if I am careful, Scout can come too.  Careful is the key.  One road we took was poor at best.  It had been graded since the rain months, monsoon season, so we did fine as long as I stayed around one or two miles an hour.  We were doing so well that I decided to visit a cemetery I’d seen from the road.  That road crossed a dry wash with a bed of small gravel rather than the stones I had been crossing.  We couldn’t make it.  I abandoned Scout in mid-bed and prepared for a rescue.  Fortunately I have both a tow strap and a come-along.  Together they were just long enough to reach Scout and pull her free.  Once she was out, I switched to the strap to pull her up the bank.  When we were on the level I hitched up and we were on our way.
 
The scenery makes it all worth-while. This is a state of strong contrast.  When it rains, the ground is so hard most of the water runs off so water control is a major problem.  At the same time, its desert so cactus are everywhere.  Parts of the state are very windy, roads here are closed by sand storms.  The combination of strong wind and drenching rain leaves intriguing weathering on both rock and land.  Since most of New Mexico was volcanic, there are cones everywhere rising up out of seemingly flat land.

And the contrast between owning too much and not enough is just as apparent.  I saw homes that easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and signs of people living in failed businesses.  Towns that were written up as thriving artist colonies a few years ago are now filled with closed shops.  And one town on the interstate has a loop called Motel Drive.  All the motels I saw on that road were closed.  Yet parts of the town was thriving and the community seemed to be doing what it could to attract customers. 

Maybe New Mexico is fortunate that tourism is a significant business.  Also I think government is a major employer, at least from what I have seen.  The border patrol is a huge presence in this southern part of the state.  Where I have been, patrols are frequent and installations pointing to the border are common.  Over two days, I saw one rancher on each day and dozens of border patrol vehicles each day.  I was feeling paranoid by the time I left that part of the state and the road signs didn’t help.  

We Have Arrived

Four plus days of driving and Scout and I are watching the morning sun move across the plain below us.  We are camped a little way up the side of the Florida Mountains in New Mexico at Rockhound State Park.  In the distance I can see Deming sprawled in a long thin line.

Calling my trailer Scout is neither creative nor cute on my part.  The trailer is an Aliner and my model is labeled Scout, in large letters across its backside.  What it actually means is I have a very basic small model.  It also means its light enough to pull with my car, a Honda Civic, if I don’t overload. (This year’s trailer model weighs 200 pounds more so I would have to pull it empty.)  Since I have been a tent camper for years I have the gear and know how to wash dishes without a built-in sink.

Aliners are low like a tent trailer however they open into a triangular shape with rigid walls and sides.  And the walls are insulated making it a bit warmer than a tent trailer.  Mine will be perfect for one person once I figure out where to put things.  Packing is a daily activity even when traveling with a trailer, and it may be the most important.  A couple of days ago I moved a box of books from behind the driver seat to behind the passenger seat.  Changes in drive performance were both subtle and advantageous.

When I tent camped with the kids it used to frustrate me that it took and hour and a half to get everyone up, fed and packed back into the car.  Now I’m finding it still takes that much time to get just me going.  I began starting my days earlier and discovered it still took until dark to reach the next stopping spot.  Admittedly I added some breaking points I found interesting.

While I was trying to find my park of choice in Iowa the first night I was intrigued by the southern horizon; it was sprinkled with red blinking lights as far as I could see.  That part of Iowa is hilly so I was seeing a spread that looked to be a couple of miles.  In the morning I discovered the lights were marking a wind farm that spread forever.  The towers themselves are in neat rows and the rows are hugely far apart and easily spread over a couple of miles or more.  I saw several other wind farms in Iowa though none as huge as the first one until I neared Dodge City, KS. 

The wind farm in Kansas has an observation spot and information board.  There I learned each wind turbine sits on one acre and the 76 windbines at that site are spread out over 5,000 acres.  Nothing said why so much space was needed; guess I’ll take a library stop to figure that out.

Between wind farms I stopped at the Watkins Woolen Mill State Park and State Historic Site outside of Eureka Springs, MO.  Logistics have always fascinated me so the woolen mill itself stopped being my main interest nearly as soon as my tour guide started talking.  Mr. Watkins and his family were a business people.  He needed bricks to build the mill so he started a brickyard.  The mill also needed wood so he started a sawmill.  Sawmills need power so he started breeding mules.  Animals, and people, need feed so he grew feed crops and also built a gristmill into the back of his woolen mill.  Once the mill was up and running it needed wool so he had sheep.  Part of the milling process involved sprinkling the wool with lard so he raised and butchered 80-120 hogs a year.  The hogs meant he needed some kind of lard processing operation and he also smoked the meat and sold it in his store.  He provided housing and meals for most of his workers so his wife and daughters had an acre garden.  They canned and sold extra at the store.  Mr. Watkins also planted an orchard and a couple of daughters developed a thriving market for dried fruit.  Meanwhile Mrs. Watkins raised 600 chickens and 150 turkeys. 

The woolen mill tour didn’t talk about family life so I will probably return to take the house and outbuilding tour.  I do know Mrs. Watkins didn’t spend all her time with her birds since she raised nine children and two foster children.  The brief bit of information I have says there were typically 15-20 people living in the household most of the time.  Meals, laundry, dishes, mending – Mrs. Watkins had to have been a match for her husband!

Earlier that day I’d stopped at a little park and found hickory nuts.  Mostly I found husks but with searching I collected 12 intact nuts and proceeded to crack them.  Of my 12, 3 had wormholes I’d missed while picking them and 6 were moldy inside.  My three remaining nuts looked pretty good so I ate them; two were green and the remaining was one of the tastiest nuts I’ve eaten.  I hope the squirrels did better than one in twelve, or maybe they did since I had the leavings.

At the woolen mill campground I found pecans.  Most of those nuts seemed sound though I tried only one.  I think it was green since it was very puckery.  That campground was the first time on this trip that I had to back into my camping spot.  I’m still learning how to back up. By the time I was situated I was thinking oh nuts! and was not really interested in finding any.

Much of eastern Kansas is rolling hills; I did not remember that from past trips and found the landscape rather interesting.  What I do remember is sunflowers and I saw only one field of them.  One little town had a sign that said “Kansas, the wheat basket”.  In the background was a pile of corn higher than its surrounding trees.  Next to it was a smaller pile of milo.  The wheat harvest was long done so it too may have been piled as high.

Once the land leveled out, I started feeling wind gusts from semis when they passed me going the other direction.  One or two weren’t a problem however when there was a string of them, Scout was buffeted and had to be alert.  As I neared Dodge City, KS those semis were mostly pulling empty livestock trailers.

After Dodge City I took less popular roads as I angled through a corner of Oklahoma.  There I found many feedlots.  Usually I saw clouds of dust well before the feedlot came into view.  There are feedlots in Iowa too (pigs seem to be gone) though the ones I saw were not as large or as dusty.  To be fair, Iowa was much wetter than what I found in western Kansas where the ground was cracked and even flies stir up dust.  All the rivers I crossed had long bridges spanning nothing except green growing things.  Some had ruts where drivers had gone four wheeling.  They must be mighty rivers sometimes but not now.

On my road last day I crossed the Pecos River and there was water in it.   Anyone who grew up with Zane Grey and cowboys knows about the Pecos.  There were no rustlers and I did not find any empty shells when I stopped. Still, a bit of yesterday’s mystic lingered as I skipped a stone across its surface.

Roswell was next on my list of stops though not the UFO stuff for me.  Roswell is host to the Eastern New Mexico State Fair.  Fairs mean cotton candy and I was ready to buy a treat.  Arriving in New Mexico, my destination state, had to be good for something.  Mostly it’s a 4-H fair with animal competition only for the kids.  I saw groups of kids with score cards doing judging.  A parent told me there is judging competitions for everyone from 8 to 18.  After watching the kids practice appraising quality, I spend some time following excited rug rats exclaiming over real animals.  Some of the sheep were wearing blankets, neck wraps and muzzles.  The muzzles looked a bit strange to me.  Later I learned that weight is an important part of competition and muzzles control what the sheep eats. 

After looking at the animals and talking to some folks I headed to food row for my cotton candy.  I found typical at-home fair food and NO cotton candy.  There were lots of stands selling funnel cakes but NO cotton candy.  I was so disappointed I left without finding out about funnel cakes.  And now I’ve landed.  Maybe there will be cotton candy someplace else.

October Starts

It’s a done deal. I am officially out of my apartment and on the road.  Right now ‘the road’ consists of visiting family and friends so it doesn’t feel like a trip.  Yesterday a friend, today family and tomorrow I’ll help mother celebrate year 96.  Then I can head south, as far as Mankato, again.

There is a light on the dash that has been annoying me for several weeks.  First its on and then its off, sometimes I feel the car do strange things and sometimes I feel nothing.  I talked to a friend with the same brand car and she said required maintenance could light the light.  Well, I needed an oil change before leaving so that made some sense, however the light did not agree.

How to choose a garage has always been fraught with anxiety for me.  There are many stories of rip-off mechanics and nearly none about good mechanics.  Over the years I’ve come to believe people guard their mechanics like a favored fishing spot or a place to find morel mushrooms.  This time a quick internet search for a mechanic led me to a garage with an interesting name and a couple of good reviews.  A phone call later I spent a fast five minutes waiting to hear how many hundreds of dollars and days it would take.  I could have been more trusting; the guy did have MPR playing. 

So after mother’s birthday breakfast I head south to the mechanic, who assures me the problem, while having strange effects on the car, is relatively easy to fix, will only take a couple of hours and won’t be costly.  I remain hopefully skeptical; if his appraisal is true I will guard his name as a prized camping spot.