CuRVWander

New Mexico is not an unknown to us.  We grew up (our first 30 years) in the panhandle of Texas, just a short four or five hour drive to Angle Fire or Taos.  We could leave home at 4:00 am and be standing at the ski lift by the time they opened.  In the summer Wheeler Peak was our favorite backpacking destination.  Park at the trail head at 9,000 ft, hike the seven miles to base camp at 11,500 ft, barf for a couple hours until the altitude sickness let up, and then do the peak the next day, topping out at 13,160 ft. But that is all northern New Mexico.  We've squeaked out a couple of quick trips to Santa Fe and Ruidoso but didn't really get to explore outside of those towns.  Now, thirty more years later, we are back in the "neighborhood" and we are going to take advantage of it and explore a little. This set of four days off, with cooperative weather, will give us the opportunity to explore a national park, White Sands, another NWR, Bosque del Apache an...

We are getting settled in to our new volunteer assignment at Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge.  Life in a wildlife refuge is different than our previous positions in national and state parks.  In the latter, the departments we worked for, their primary (or so it seemed) mission was to serve the people, at this wildlife refuge people are not first on the list. But that is by design, it is a wildlife refuge, not a public park or zoo.  This refuge has just shy of 25,000 acres in its borders, only about 3,000 of it is accessible to the public.  The rest is fragile habitat and wildlife that is limited to human exposure. However, that does not mean that Bitter Lake NWR is unfriendly to the public, just the opposite.  This facility has a really nice and relatively new (2011) Visitor Center and Headquarters building that was designed with the public very much in mind.  And this is where we work out of each day we are on duty. The entrance to the visitor c...

For the next three months this will be our "office".  It is the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center.  The entrance is a pueblo-ish style and a bit plain-looking.  But the inside and the back, facing the marsh, is outstanding!  Pictures to come later. We've had our training and got our work schedule.  We'll be on duty three days a week, 8 to 4.  Our first month our days are Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  We'll rotate in May and do Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Some of the local residents have come by to check us out.  This Roadrunner was too busy hunting to be bothered with meeting the new volunteers. A not so common Swainson's Hawk gave us the once-over. There was also a volunteer event scheduled in our first few days.  The refuge is improving the habitat in the area for monarch butterflies by planting milkweed (essential to monarch reproduction).  The refuge had obtained 110 milkweed plants and lots...

Today is the day we reach our goal.  We should arrive at Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, about seven miles outside of Roswell, NM,  a little after lunch.  It has been a flawless trip so far.  We have slipped past the worst of the weather and have not had the slightest hint of a mechanical problem.  Until that is, this morning. We did all the normal prep work for hitching up and were getting the truck lined up to hook up for the short trip to the dump station.  Eased back with the king pin slipping into the jaws of the hitch but instead of the familiar "clunk" of the jaws locking around the king pin, there was nothing.  Several more tries later and it was time to take a different approach.  The Binkley hitch head was taken off the towers and turned upside down to inspect the inner workings, which are really simple.   The Binkley head shown with the jaws in their closed and locked position, which mine would not do. This...

Each day of this cross country trip has been warmer and dryer than the last.  Today follows that trend as we leave Weatherford, Texas and make our way to Brownfield, Texas.  Only today we have a breeze that is a little stiffer and it is a cross-wind.  We are going to say adios to our 10.5 mpg fuel economy. Cross-wind aside, we have a short distance to cover on I-20 and then we get to move off to Texas State Highway 84, turning north going from Sweetwater to Post and then turn due west on Highway 380.  Best day yet.  These state highways are great, uncrowded, smooth, flat, and scenic (if you like the desert).  This was a relaxing day of driving even with fuel economy dropping to about 8.0 mpg. Our goal for the day is Brownfield, TX.  Specifically, Coleman RV Park which is a city operated park.  Nothing fancy, a complete opposite from our last night's stay, both in amenities and price.  The place operates off of a donation box, just give wh...

Today's destination is more distant than anything we have done this week.  We will cross all of Louisiana and most of Texas before arriving at our campground for the night. It's a sloppy, rainy start to our drive.  And warmer too.  In an earlier post I mentioned that we were heading out from our Georgia starting point at a time that might let us get through a gap in severe weather that was crossing the southeast.  So far so good, we have had rain but no thunderstorms, hail or tornadoes.  But it has been close, just last night, some of the communities we went through on our way to our current campground were hit with strong, damaging storms.  Some were hit directly by a tornado. But weather is not our nemesis today, no, it's the road.  I-20 has turned into a real beast as we approach and pass through Shreveport, LA.  We spent nearly an hour at a speed of less than 50 mph, much of it at 35 mph and still were getting jarred so hard that I worried...

Another chilly morning and it couldn't be better for towing.  Although today it looks like we may have to navigate in some rain before we get to our next stop, Delhi, LA.  Another nice weather feature continuing today is that we will have a gentle wind at our back.  The fuel economy of Big Gulp has been around 10.5 mpg, that's pretty good for weighing in at 31,000 pounds and presenting 35 sq ft to the wind in the form of an end cap for the 5th wheel. Today our entire day will be spent west bound on I-20 except for the quick on/off from and to the campgrounds.  For the most part I-20 is a good road, heavy with truck traffic as one would expect, that is until approaching large towns/cities, then it gets a little dodgy.  Meridian, Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi got a little uncomfortable.  Cracks, potholes and uneven segments really put the suspension through its paces. Our goal for the day is Poverty Point Reservoir State Park just outside of the one-...

Day one of our journey to New Mexico finds us starting out under grey, cold skies.  Perfect!  Engine temps, transmission temps and tire temps will all be low.  Heat for those components becomes an issue on hot summer days.  It is not unusual to see exhaust gas return temps run steady at 900 deg and tires to level out at 130 deg with tranny temps hitting 195 deg, engine and tranny spiking under changes in load.  But there will be none of that today, we'll be lucky to break 50 deg air temp. Our travel time is arranged as we typically do, we try to find a campground that is within a 4 to 5 hour distance.  That amount of time keeps us from having to rush to get out extra early in the morning and gets us into our campground for the night well before dark.  It is also how long I can tow our heavy trailer on one tank of fuel.  Getting to camp before needing to refuel lets us get unhitched and set up for the night with plenty of time to find a local fue...

It has been a good while since we have hooked up and moved our cabin on wheels.  We landed in the North Georgia area in September of 2016 to help our kids move to a new house, took on a volunteer job with the Corps of Engineers that quickly morphed into a contract job that lasted until the end of October 2017.  After the contract ended we moved back to the volunteer group for the Corps where we stayed until now, April 2018.  Each of those changes involved a move but they were all accomplished in about an hour of driving.  Breaking down and setting up took longer than the drive. Now we are up for a 1,300 mile drive through six states, one of which we'll spend two days getting across, Texas.  Our destination is Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico.  We'll be parked for the next three months inside the refuge on one of four RV pads built specifically for their volunteers.  The nearest town, Roswell, is about seven miles away. But first we ...

My last posting to this blog was in October of 2017 and even then I only covered our exploits through June of that year.  It was a bit of a stretch to find something to write about.  I had already whined about how terrible people were in an urban camping area.  We just put in our 15.5 hours a day in the gatehouse, visited the kids on our days off and did routine chores and shopping that went along with living in a major metropolitan area.  Hard to find much to write about.  But here it is April of 2018 and there is finally inspiration to write again. Our contract with the United States Army Corps of Engineers at Lake Allatoona concluded at the end of October.  From there we moved over to the volunteer group and joined nine other couples at the Volunteer Village on the north shore of the lake. Pretty nice digs at the Volunteer Village on Lake Allatoona. The winter was spent doing routine things like patrolling closed campgrounds doing half-days on th...