9/25/07
I am currently at a Days Inn in Alamorgodo and have been doing luandry, shower and a nap and updating the website and this blog for the past 5 hours...about what I expected to have to spend on it. Check out the new maps on the "Itinerary/Maps" link and the new link for the "Great American Western Novel I am slowing hacking away on.
Tomorrow, I head up into the Sacramento Mts behind Alamorgodo to a place called Sunspot and several overlooks. This will be south of a place called Cloudcroft. I'll then go to Riudoso just because and then camp at Three Rivers Petrogyph north of Alamorgodo. My plans are then to spend several days down in the southwestern quardrant of NM then head into the eastern edge of Arizona. I expect my pace to pick up and be back in Albuquerque by the first week in October to get my truck cap put on then head back into the SW quadrant to see more cool stuff.
I decided to blow off the Hot Air Balloon festival...too many people and costs to much to stay in the local area. I'm not sure where I will camp yet but it may be south of the city about 40 miles.
9-8-07 evening –
Went to Roswell to see the dog show about 10 am. A good turnout but the show was out in an open field, no action while I was there and the humidity (probably 45%) was already taking its toll. I opted to bypass the dog show and drove to Sonic for breakfast (flies and all)! Then went to a theater and figured out I’d come back and see 3:10 to Yuma”. Went to Target and then to Home Depot to look for flypaper to kill some flies around the campsite. They didn’t have many registers open and it was close to time for the movie so I put back my purchase and sat in the second row for the movie. It about killed my neck and eyes sitting so close to the screen, but it was the best I could do as I got there about 10 minutes past show time but before the movie. I got seated and the movie started! Close call. It’s a good movie with an interesting story line.
Back to Home Depot to get the fly paper and headed back to the camp about 4:30. Put up all 4 strips and we’ll see what they collect in the morning when the flies are at their worst. Such problems I have, right?
9-10-07
Well, I’ve pulled out of Roswell, NM area and drove about 50-60 miles further south on 285 to Brantley Lake SP. Once I got to the turn off I had to drive about another 7 miles to the campsites. Another arid place in the desert but plenty of shade and a shelter. Found out after I had every thing set up that they only have primitive and electric sites here. I had set up in the electric section. It cost me $8 for two nights. That’s okay though since I can work on the laptop without worry about draining a battery!
Only four or five others here in this loop. Chatted with an old timer with a nice fifth wheel rig. He tows it with a Dodge diesel ¾ ton truck. He is on his fourth rig having been on the road now for 14 years! Can you imagine? He left Cleveland and never looked back.
My site has plenty of shade with 4 rather large pine trees and a stone wall to provide shelter from the winds and sun. They are calling for rain tonight and “the skies are cloudy all day…” (sing along children!) There is a good breeze this afternoon as well. I’ve put the tent up partially under the shelter and partially under one of the pine trees to keep the infernal heat down. It’s actually pretty mild this afternoon with the high right now in the 80’s somewhere.
I am in the process of adding a couple of features to the web site:
One, a map of the US, showing my general path. You will be able to click on a state and get specific details about my travels for that state. I am going to start with New Mexico and build in links to the slideshows for those areas and attractions I experience. Mercedes gave me this idea…cudos to you M.! You’ll be able to get to the map through several avenues. One the “Itinerary” link is now labeled “Itinerary/Map” and second, through a link in the blog. I will have a lot of work to do on this feature, so stayed tuned and check back often.
Second, since I like to share about everything I am doing, I have built in a new link for my budding Western Novel. I’ll also put this link in the blog as well. I’ll post the versions of the novel as it progresses. All versions will be in the PDF format for viewing. I have the 9-10-07 version posted by the time you read this.
Tomorrow, I plan on going to Carlsbad Caverns and then back here for the night. On Tuesday I plan on going back north a few miles and take a left over toward Clod Cloud and another SP. There is also an Apache reservation in that direction I’d like to travel through as well.
Bill’s Excellent Adventure!” continues!
(Remember the sacrifices made on 9/11 in your own special way.)
9-11-07
What a night! After dark last night I sat in a nice pleasant warm breeze. I sat and watched two thunderstorm fronts move in on the campground, one from the north the other from the east. The one from the east won out. After I had gone to bed, the pleasant breeze morphed into at least a 40-50 mph winds gusting higher. My tent, facing east, took the brunt of the winds. Although nothing snapped, like poles or tore, the tent essentially ‘shrunk’ to half the space with the front bowing in to an extreme degree. I got up and took 100 mph tape and lashed the two front poles to the upright steel beams holding the shelter. Then I took a bungie cord and hooked into the front center stake loop and hooked it into the frame of the table anchored in concrete.
I attempted to get to sleep to no avail. With the wind blowing directly into the front of the tent, and lightening all around, I opted to get into the truck, ultimately to sleep there all night. After moving my pillow to the truck and getting settled in, the rains finally came. I couldn’t see what was happening to the tent, so I just resigned myself to “whatever happens happens.”
Upon awakening, the only thing I saw was a huge puddle of water on the fly on my side (I had opted yesterday to not stake the fly down which might have kept the puddling to occur, but who knows given the hard rain and winds.) I pulled the fly down to drain the water and got my long johns and sweat shirt soaked! I tentatively looked inside the tent expecting to see a disaster. Much to my surprise water had soaked through but was absorbed by the quilt I use to cover the air mattress. That was all the ‘damage’ there is. The duck tape held up fine and the plastic connectors for the poles survived the stress. This tent is more durable than I had imagined.
Thank goodness for the truck as there would not have been any way to sleep in the Pontiac. I also will be glad once I get the cap installed on the truck so I don’t have to worry about the wind and rain and wetness.
I may stay in camp today and just pull out to Carlsbad Caverns tomorrow and take another route thru part of Texas to El Paso and travel up I-25 in NM to the point I want to get to for the night. It will save me about 100 miles of backtracking I figure.
More later today!
9-12-07
This is Wednesday morning about 8 am. I decided to sleep in the truck again last night. The weather was okay, but I like listening to late night radio talk shows and the reception on my portable radio is not very good out here in the middle of nowhere. Also, with the humidity levels as high as they are, it was more comfortable to close myself up in the truck. It’s always a trade-off, comfort vs comfort, if you get my meaning…lower humidity vs a comfortable bed.
I really think I’ve made the right decision to get the truck. Can’t wait to get the cap and set it up the way I imagine. Good chance I will not need the tent after the cap is installed. I really get tired of setting up the tent, blowing up the air mattress, moving other things I tend to use inside the tent, even though its an easy chore. To do it every day is a chore, hence, part of the reason I tend to stay put several days at a time.
Met a fella yesterday evening who works for the park service doing maintenance at all the state parks. He’s got an Argesy camper that is a small unit like I am after. It’s an older unit and weighs in at about 3000 lbs. I’ll keep looking for a lighter unit and I imagine the new ones are probably made lighter with newer composite materials. Anyway this guy’s been living at state parks for about 7 years. Forget his first name but his last is Hernandez. Said he had about nine years to go to retire. He was born on a ranch to the west of here and his nearest neighbors were about 30 miles away. So his tendency is to be a loner and really has a problem, like I do, with these RV’rs who come to ‘camp out’ and even if there just a couple of sites taken with a lot of vacant ones, they seem to pull in right next to another RV, play music too loud and have their new neighbor complain! It’s nuts, they seem to gravitate to the outside to get some peace and end up next to others trying to do the same when they just need to park their rigs in another part of the campground. It’s crazy.
Today is looking good weather wise. Clouds are moving out and sun is coming in strong. I’ll pack up in about an hour, go to Carlsbad Caverns and take the tour. I thought about heading further south into Texas and over to El Paso, but Hernandez said the route is really boring given the flat desert. He suggested going back north and cutting across west through the mountains if I wanted to see some neat scenery. I’ll probably figure out which way saves me miles and gas and take that one. I’ll have a chance later anyway to cut through the mountains when I make my back to Roswell for this mounted shooting contest this weekend. There’s also a rodeo in Carlsbad this weekend as well. Right now my plan is to get to Oliver Lee SP by Alomogordo in the Lincoln National Forest for a few nights starting tonight. Come to think of it as I look at the map, it might be a good plan to head back north past my current location and cut though the mountains. Got a feeling Oliver Lee will be at altitude and a might chilly!
Hernandez knows some of the horse ranchers out here and pointed to a far off ridge about ten miles off where a friend of his own gobs of land. Said he had one of his horses killed by a mountain lion. They set out traps and caught two lions and had them removed.
He also recounted a story of a friend of his and his friends 12 year old son were out in the desert hunting and found themselves running for cover inside their truck bed as a wild pig charged them. Later about four more pigs showed up circling their truck and eventually chewed through all four tires, flattening them. They stayed in the truck bed all night and had to hike out the next morning after the threat had passed. Obviously, you can’t get very far on four flats and one spare. He said you just have to pay attention and not leave food out or in your tent to keep from attracting the critters.
Here at the campground, there are white tail rabbits and larger jack rabbits running around everywhere! The jack rabbits are neat looking with their large ears and larger bodies, I say they probably weight about 15-20 lbs…they are pretty goods size animals, bout the size of a medium size dog of the same weight.
I’ve been working on the ‘Great American Western Novel’ Wrote about three hours yesterday afternoon. It is nice to have electricity even though I can live without it.
Well, bout time to get to tearing down camp, packing the truck and move on to the caverns.
More later.
9-13-07
After a night of restless sleep, for which I blame on some little critter (I guess it was little!) that kept walking on the backside of the tent with a crunch-crunch sound, I awoke thinking it could be a mountain lion or a bear searching for food, thinking I might make a good meal! My imagination was getting the better of me, given my bear experience at Philmont Scout Ranch 47 years ago, and I was almost paralyzed with fear. I decided to test my theory that it was something small so I swatted the tent a couple of times and made some noise. After a few minutes it was back again! I kept thinking it was chewing a hole in the tent bottom trying to get in , so I beat the tent again. Did this about three times and finally I just said to myself, ‘what will be will be’ and fell back asleep again to awake at first light. I checked out the tent and didn’t see any signs of anything chewing a hole so I guess all is well that ends well, as they say.
I am missing my radio…I mean I have it but there is zero reception back up this canyon I’m in. By the way, I have spent two nights now here at Guadalupe Mountain. It’s a pretty neat place.
I was trying to figure out what to do with myself today and I realized I still had the ticket for the Kings Palace tour at Carlsbad Caverns, so I drove back about 40 miles to the Caverns and got there just in time for the 10 AM tour. While not as spectacular as the “Big Room”, this was a guided tour by a park Ranger named Beth. The added history and geology lesson she provided was enormously helpful in understanding the formations and the 16 year old, Jim White, a local ranch hand that discovered the cavern network back in 1898. He retired (or died) at age 65, still working as their senior park ranger here.
This is one amazing cavern. We were in the tour for two hours and although I wore a sweatshirt and shorts, I was quite chilled to the bone when it ended. It is a constant 56-degree. This tour took us to a depth of 830 ft. I asked if there had been any seismic activity of any note in the area and she indicated that back some years ago, the military had detonated a nuclear bomb underground about 25 miles away. They had closed the caverns for safety and several park rangers volunteered to go underground to monitor any vibrations. They watched some of the small ponds and neither did they feel any tremors, there were no ripples produced in the ponds.
Drove back into Carlsbad proper, about 20 miles, to fill the tank up and drove back to Guadalupe Mountains and stopped off at a ranch called the Frijole Ranch. They have a small cultural museum there run by the park service. Interesting history to the area. Perhaps I’ll elaborate on the ranch in the slideshow narrative.
Before getting back to the campsite I drove about another ten miles further west and saw El Capitan mountain peak. That and the mountains and valleys from my perch were an awesome site to behold.
Once back to the camp at about 5 pm or so I man stopped to chat with me. He and his wife are on a 4-week trip out west from the Netherlands. He was excited about showing me free and cheap campgrounds through out NM and Arizona! He has two years to go before retiring from a cheese factory over there. Nice fella. Think I’ll invite he and his wife down for morning coffee before they head out.
Speaking of heading out, I’m thinking of staying one more day and taking a less strenuous hiking trail through the canyon tomorrow morning.
9-14-07
Still at Gaudalupe National Park in Texas for my third day here. Today, I took the plunge and took a hike. Cost is $5 for a five day hiking pass. I decided to take what looked like a less strenuous trail, called the Tejas Trail. This route cuts across the canyon floor and slowly climbs to a trailhead wheren Bush trail and Tejas intersect…I didn’t make it that far! After 2.5 hours I got to a pinnacle where the trail turns backs onto itself. From this vantage point, I had this incredible view back down the Pine Spring canyon where the campground is located. The other side of the ridge was another extrodinary view of another canyon. Judging from the map, I decided I had worn my body out sufficiently for one day and took a rest and came back down the trail. There was probably still another mile of hiking on the Tejas Trail before coming across a back country camp site and the Bush Mountain Trail.
As I forgot to bring my altimeter watch with me(dumb move) I had no idea how high up I managed to get myself! As the camp ground is at 5700+ ft, and the surrounding peaks were at 8300+ft. I roughly figured I had climbed to about 6300-6700 ft. That’s still a good height of about 1000 ft for an old guy like me with a right hip giving him trouble! I left at about 9:30 am reached the summit at around 12:00 noon, then took another 1.5 hours to decend to the parking lot. This climb made for a good 4 hour hike.
What did I do after that? Climbed in my truck, turned the AC on and drank a Fresca, what else?! Oh, yeah, read more of the western “El Paso”.
Spent the rest of the afternoon working on pictures, getting dinner and semi-straightening out the truck on the inside (what a mess I can create all by myself!)
Norm attempted to call me last evening and I’ve tried to make several calls today only to keep having the signal drop. I found out I am in a strange area for reception. My cell phone cycles through Sprint network, to Digital Roaming to analog roaming. It can’t make up it’s mind which signal to stick with! As a result it doesn’t keep a signal for me.
I’ve had my fun here…tomorrow I am going to hit the road to El Paso, then head north to Oliver Lee State Park back in NM. This park in close to Alamorgordo, NM and White sands National Monument. Good chance I’ll stay put here for the duration till the 25th, but I still will have 1 more night to stay elsewhere to not exceed my 21 days at state parks for the month.
I did manage to get a call from the Ford dealership. My cap will be in the first week of October. I’ll need to figure out my accommodations to coorespond with the cap installation.
9-15-07
Well…today was rather uneventful. I packed up at Guadalupe Mt National Park and drove through El Paso and headed north to Alamogordo, NM. The drive was much more scenic that I had been led to believe. After passing El Capitan in the Guadalupe Mt range heading west I entered a huge valley referred to as the Salt Flats. There was a sign of to the right guiding visitors to the Salt Dunes of Guadalupe Mts. I chose to keep going as I had no idea how far off the dunes would have been. Out here it could be 30 miles or more easy.
I drove about 170 miles to El Paso. Coming in from the east it’s not much to talk about. Just a continuous series of junkyards, car lots and strip joints. Passed by the airport and missed my turn north and ended up almost in the downtown district. Found my way to I-10 and figured out how to head the correct direction! El Paso seems to sit in a bowl surrounded by desert mountains. Driving north I passed Ft. Bliss and heading out of El Paso on both sides of the road were military maneuver areas. Further out was White Sands Missile Range. This is a really huge area stretching from just north of El Paso to above Alamogordo. It is about a 70-mile drive between the two cities and all the land to the left (or west) that you could see belonged to White Sands. Quite a sight to say the least.
I arrived at Oliver Lee Monument State Park about 2 pm I guess. Oliver Lee is about 14 miles south of Alamogordo and another 4 miles to the east of Rt.54 nestled against a mountain range. The wind was blowing hard all afternoon; it was hot and slightly humid. The view of the entire valley is rather awesome though it is dotted with small communities that look like deserted towns after a nuclear explosion! Not very scenic I must admit. The mountain peak behind my sheltered campsite is about 8700 ft. The campsite reading I took is at about 4700, so it’s quite an imposing sight. I’ll check out the hiking trails tomorrow. Across the immense valley is another mountain range that is part of White Sands. The gypsum white sands national park is north of Alamogordo some 10 miles I think. This entire area is desert, of course, with small scrub brush and a few stunted trees added for color. I watched the valley below and saw these dust tornadoes or dust bowls generate. At one time I saw 4 funnels at once coming down the valley. They last a few minutes then die out. Not large in size, I doubt they pose much risk to humans or buildings.
It is a pleasant evening with some gusty winds. I set up my tent with out the fly under the shelter. It’s a tight fit but works. I really can’t wait to get my top for the truck bed! It will be in the first week in October…probably just in time for the change in weather out here!
Well, I don’t want to go to bed just yet so at 9 pm I’m writing this entry listening to Kim Kammado talk radio. She’s the “all things digital” gal.
Enough for now. More on the flip side!
9-18-07
Been a quite day. This is my fourth day here. I took a three-hour nap yesterday afternoon and found myself awake most of the night! Got up at dawn and drove into town to use WiFi, but to no avail! Just can’t seem to get a strong connection any place, including the Visitor’s Center. I was too smelly to go inside and attempted to connect from the parking lot. Stayed in town till around 9 am got gassed up and drove back to camp. Ate breakfast and put my lantern battery on to charge off the marine battery system. Went to the bathhouse and took a good shower so now I feel civilized again!
This is more interesting a place than I originally thought. This Oliver Lee Memorial State Park is only 480 acres, but is rich with history. It is named after a late 19th century cattleman, later state house representative, state senator, one of the founders of Alamorgodo, wily businessman, who at one point owned over 1 million acres here in this valley. The location of his home (ravaged by floods last year and under reconstruction) is in a place called Dog Canyon, nestled against the Sacramento Mt range in a basin called the Tularosa Basin. This is a huge basin area covering 4500 sq miles that also contains the white sands, the southern end of which you can see from the campgrounds.
Temperatures range from 100 degrees in summer to 0 degrees in winter. Needed to be quite a hardy individual to survive this place. From the SP you can see 50 miles to the next mountain range to the west and to the south probably another 50 miles to another mountain range.
Oliver Lee had a homesteader who worked the land here for about 20 years by the name of “Frenchy”, who came over from France. He lived alone and some of the stone fencing and parts of his small two room home are still evident. He served as the ranch foreman for Oliver for a number of years. His death was somewhat mysterious as he was shot in the chest with one round and died at age 51. Back in the 80’s a relative of his came over from France to visit the area and add some local color to the Frenchy.story. See the photos for September for a few shots of Frenchy’s domain in those days.
As best as I can remember, Oliver lived from around 1895 and died at 76. Quite a rugged individualist, with a lean build and walrus mustache. Struck quite a handsome rugged pose on his horse, with a Winchester, a colt on his hip, cowboy hat and chaps, and a bandana tied around his neck.
The park has two main trails. One is a nature trail which has been damaged by flooding and is only open for about 600 ft. The other is a 5.9 mile trail, virtually straight-up the Dog Canyon. I plan on building my confidence and see if I can make it to the 2.9 mile marker and turn around. The elevation climb is over 3000 ft and may well be more than my hip can take. The Park Ranger also indicated there are many diamond back rattlesnakes and scorpions along the trail. Not sure I want to risk life and limb to exhaust myself attempting such a climb and get bit! We’ll see if I throw caution to the wind and make the attempt.
The park display indicates that the scorpions really won’t kill you and that the diamondbacks are shy and will get out of your way…yeah, right! If I do attempt the trail, it will be early morning when it is cool and probably when both are more active.
Currently there are only about 5 or 6 other campers here in the 38 sites available. It’s been pleasant and quite, allowing me to play my radio louder than I normally would.
Took another two hour nap this afternoon…probably screwed up my sleep again for tonight!
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