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.