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Showing posts from April, 2014

Blowin' in the Wind

Time to move again.  This time we are advancing north and west to Albuquerque. Today the wind is not so favorable.  It is coming straight out of the west and it is not a gentle breeze.  We'll have about three hours of cross wind and 1 hour of dead-on head wind.  So much for enjoying tail wind assisted fuel mileage. Alb. is a necessary stop for us on our way to the Grand Canyon.  We have a number of repairs that need to be done and Alb. has the service companies to do it.  We have appointments for the water heater, refrigerator and the infuriating satellite dish.  We have paid for a week at the Isleta Lakes RV Park but I have my doubts that will be long enough.  If anybody has to order parts there is no telling how long it will take. For the sat. dish we could not get a mobile repair service.  We have to pack up, hitch up and tow the trailer about eight miles to the RV repair shop that has a Winegard certified technician.  Aft...

Grocery Run with a Surprise

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Like living in a sticks and bricks, us fulltimers still have routine chores that have to be done.  One of them is grocery shopping.  The big difference is that we usually have to find a store because the last one we used is too far away to return to.  It is an adventure even to buy groceries. We consulted with some of our fellow Escapees members here at The Ranch and they all recommended that we go to Artesia instead of Carlsbad.  Their reason was two-fold; it was six miles closer and Henry's Barbecue . So we drove the fourteen miles to Artesia instead of the twenty to Carlsbad.  And being conscientious shoppers we never go to the store hungry so we stopped at Henry's and enjoyed some really good brisket and sausage. But the surprise I wrote in the title was not the good BBQ.  It was a display of sculptures scattered out over the length of Main Street.  Great big bronzes paying homage to early settlers, cattlemen and oilmen. There were two of...

Next Stop, Carlsbad, NM

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We are really enjoying Fort Davis but our time here has come to an end all to soon.  We are on our way to the next leg of our return engagement to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad, NM.  Actually, the exact place is Lakewood, NM, you would not even call it a wide spot in the road.  The only thing that identifies it as a town is the Post Office which is a single-wide trailer on a dirt lot.  The only permanent fixture is the flagpole that is cemented into the ground.  But about a mile away is "The Ranch", an RV park that is one of the private campgrounds in the Escapees organization that we belong to. Even though we are several hundred miles north of our winter post in Big Bend, this is still the Chihuahuan Desert.  SKP's The Ranch is midway between Carlsbad and Artesia, NM. The Ranch is what is called a Co-Op.  Escapees owns the property but they let long term leases to individual lots.  The lease holders build pads for their RVs, o...

Serious Star Gazing

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Another attraction of Fort Davis is its close proximity to the McDonald Observatory.  This is a full-on research facility with multiple telescopes, large and small with a great public program.  We decided to take in both their day and night programs. The day program is a solar viewing and tour of a couple of the more impressive telescopes.  Cyndee and I headed out for the 15 mile drive from Fort Davis to the mountain top where the observatory is.  Its a really nice drive and would be worth doing even if there were no telescopes at the end.  The visitors center was a nice facility although many of the interactive displays were in need of attention or outright overhauling. McDonald Observatory visitor center atop Mt. Locke. A barn swallow thought the visitor center was a good nesting place.  She is literally raising her clutch at the front door to visitor center. Pronghorns on the foothills to Mt. Locke.  The solar viewing occurs in a s...

Off to Fort Davis, Tx

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After being in one place for five months at Big Bend, the week in Midland-Odessa went by in a flash.  We're hitching up and heading for Fort Davis, Tx.  This will take us back to the mountains just north of where we spent the winter.  It is still part of the Chihuahuan desert but you wouldn't know it if the map didn't tell you so.  The variety of desert plants is a fraction of that in the Big Bend and vast fields of creosote bush, cactus and yucca are replaced by grass, cottonwoods, oaks, cedar and juniper. Even though this is still the Chihuahuan desert, it stands in stark contrast to its southern regions. This is ranch country.  Grass covers the ground and wildlife and domestic animals abound. But not all the cactus have been replaced by grass and trees.  On a hike at the top of skyline drive of Davis Mountains State Park we came across this claret cup. Our living accommodations have returned to, shall we say, "rustic" conditions.  We ar...

Getting Stuff Done.

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While in the big city we planned on taking advantage of services that have been out of our reach for the last five months, like a dry cleaner.  Our bedspread and pillow shams are dry clean only and after five months in the desert they are more than ready for cleaning. We drove around trying to find a dry cleaner, thinking we could get our laundry done in a couple of days.  Not so.  Every dry cleaner we went to wanted one to three weeks to do the job.  Oh well, next try, Albuquerque. For a long time an air museum known as the Confederate Air Force has had one of the most extensive, flying WW II aircraft collection in the world and they were based out of Harlingen, Tx.  But with Harlingen being on the Gulf Coast they were having problems with corrosion.  They pulled up stakes and moved the whole operation inland to a part of the desert known as Midland.  The CAF(now known as Commemorative Air Force) has built an impressive museum at the Midland ...

Civilization!

It is our first week of being out of the wilderness in the last 5 months.  Sure, we have had day trips for groceries but that is such a rush you don't get to take in much other than the grocery shopping you came for.  But here we are in Midland, TX in a crowded commercial RV park just off I-20.  Texas is in the boom-phase of the boom-bust cycle of the oil field.  And Midland-Odessa is a hot bed of anything oil.  Many,,, most of our neighbors in this RV park are here for work.  They have been in the park for months and may be here for years, however long the work lasts.  Having grown up in an oil town and living through the biggest of booms and the deepest busts, I know these people and feel right at home among them. Midland RV Park is typical for the area, flat, dusty and featureless.  There are no picnic tables.  No real space between rigs so no putting out chairs and sitting outside.  But then again you would not wan...

Last Hoorah at Big Bend

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We have completed our last day in the Chisos Basin Visitor Center and packing up in preparation for our trip to a return engagement at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  But before we go there are sights to see. Now that we are at the end of March and with the plentiful rains of October, November and the first half of December, the flowering plants have stored up enough water to put on a spring bloom.  The Torrey Yuccas were first to show and for awhile, the only thing to bloom.  But soon the creosote bush began to show their tiny yellow flowers and several of the hundred different kinds of little yellow desert flowers were carpeting the desert floor.  But now, on our last couple of days before departure, the cacti are the stars of the show. First up, the blind prickly pear: The blind prickly pear got its name because you can not see the spines on its paddles, but they are definitely there.   The flowers on the blind prickly pear are all yell...