"Bill's Excellent Adventure!"

10/25/07

It’s been about 14 days since my last post! Where has the time gone!

The truck…Got the camper shell last Friday while in the Monzano Mts south of Alburquerque. Long story, but jist is that they had the right model and color but wrong size! I had the choice of waiting three more weeks and let them reorder, or just picking another in stock at their installer. I chose the later and now had a more expensive cap with more features but in red! The dealership picked up the difference and the red/white combo is growing on me! I’ve put in insulation around the sides of the bed and one side has the wood/carpet treatment. The bed frame is built at 20” wide and 6’ long, put in several layers of dense foam pads used in back packing and use my thin backbacking air mattress. Sleeps very well thank you. My next move is to use some firm Styrofoam insulation over the windows that I will purchase tomorrow and pick up some storage bins to put order to my mess. I’ve picked up a 1000 BTU coleman propane heater and I am withholding judgment on whether to increase to a 3000 BTU unit once I have all the insulation in. Last night’s temp dropped to 39 and even without further insulation the heater got me up to 55. I’m wearing long johns and cover up my sleeping bag with a wool blanket, but I must say I’ve been quite cozy every night.

Since Manzano, I stopped for a night at Elephant Butte, drove to the Very Large Array Radio Telescope, camped a night at Cabrillo SP south of TorC. Drove to City of Rocks via a gorgeous mountain road high into Ponderosa Pine country. Left City of Rocks and traveled south to Deming and stayed at the Pancho Villa SP for a few nights. Will got my plates for the truck to me at City of Rocks. Met some really nice folk, especially a 711 year old by the name of Roger. Roger used to be a ranger for the Forest Service in Maine, moved out here with his wife who passed away. He is an avid and rugged outdoorsman, a real individualist with a lot of spunk. He kayaks, rafts and bicycles about everywhere out here and goes on 5+ day backbacking trips by himself. He and I hit it off immediately and rapidly became good friends. He lives in Deming on 10 acres. Today he left for a 50 mile bike ride (just a warm up for this guy!) He’s planning a 40 mile rafting trip by himself up in the Gila National Forest around March to run what should be a Class III river! He taught me a lot about the area, how to backpack out here and how to safeguard yourself, especially us older farts! He was tent camping in a teepee styled tent that was a well made model that can really hold up in bad weather and winds.

Roger introduced me to three couples that had befriended him when one of his sons died at 36. They all come out of southeast Arizona and are all retired couples. One’s a retired Army Lt Col, another is a retired sheriff and I unfortunately cannot remember what Dennis did for a living before retiring. Nice people…they invited me for a desert treat my last night sitting around a fire. A very enjoyable and pleasant experience.

Today, I decided on staying at a Comfort Inn in Las Cruces to take a break from the outdoors and take a good soak and eat a pizza! On the way here I stopped at the War Eagle Air Museum and, of course took lots of pics for those interested. I should have those up before dark on the website.