February 8, 2006 at 5:29 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
West Texas is so vast that it would probably be its own state if anyone lived here.
We decided not to push hard on the drive to Big Bend, so we came as far as this little state park. It’s the kind of place that defines “middle of nowhere”. The centerpiece of this park is a large natural spring, which forms a giant swimming pool that is 72 to 76 degrees year-round.
While I’m catching up on work for two days, Eleanor and Emma may gather their courage and go for a little swim, or even some snorkeling. Snorkeling in Texas? Yes, and if the water is clear enough we may even see some fish.
Bert & Janie arrived a few hours before us, but they are going to head to Marathon tomorrow to meet another friend. (That may be only an excuse, so they don’t have to go swimming!) We’ll all rendezvous in Big Bend over the weekend, probably in Rio Grande Village. Tomorrow I’ll take some photos of this Balmorhea State Park and give you a report.
February 7, 2006 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Places to go
Before I get into White Sands National Monument, I should tell you about our friends Bert and Janie Gildart, since they will be traveling with us for the next week or two. They are authors and photographers who work as a team to research and write hiking and nature books. Most recently they have published several books in a series for Globe Pequot Press on things to do in certain national parks. Bert also writes for Airstream Life magazine.
It’s great fun to travel with Bert and Janie because they are into hiking and photography (like us), and they seem to enjoy having Emma around. As I mentioned yesterday, they have a fairly new Airstream Safari 28 slide-out. They are parked just down the hill from us at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park.
This is a nice state park, and it’s a shame we are not going to get to explore it properly. Behind us is a line of ragged mountains with a canyon that is begging to be explored. Below us to the west is the wide-open expanse of the White Sands MIssile Range. The view is inspiring. This morning I watched pink light of sunrise illuminate the mountains 40 miles to the west, and slowly fill the valley’s playas.
But instead of hiking here, we headed to White Sands. This park is basically a collection of huge dunes made entirely of gypsum sand. The sand blows southeasterly from nearby dry lakes, and without a river to wash it away, piles up. Normally gypsum is water-soluble, so gypsum sand is very rare. But here conditions are perfect for it to accumulate in marvelous heaps with textures and designs made by the wind.
After a little orientation at the Visitor’s Center, we decided to go for the longest hike here, the 4.6 mile Alkali Flats route. Driving out on Dune Drive gives one the impression of driving on a frozen lake. The road and parking lots are graded white gypsum sand. The occasional buildings look like ice fishing shanties.
Hiking on the sand is difficult work. We were surprised that after an hour we had only managed to go one mile. But of course, we spent a lot of time paused to let Emma play in the sand. Every dune is a fantastic opportunity, for play (sliding down the dunes on a plastic sled is encouraged), animal track identification, and photos.
The hike took us over five hours to complete. By the time we got back, we were exhausted and my camera battery was dead. But I was satisfied with the photos I got, and I think Bert was as well. He shot several rolls during the hike. I’ve posted some photos on Flickr tonight if you want to check them. Click the link to the left that says “Pictures”.
Emma earned another Junior Ranger certificate, her third. She’s getting into it now. And we of course picked up another stamp in our National Parks Passport book. When I went to stamp the book, I was surprised to find we were last in White Sands National Monument on Feb 4 2000 — almost exactly six years ago. I hope we are back soon. There’s a lot more to do in this area.
February 7, 2006 at 6:17 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We are on the move again. According to Dr C., we have “done” Tucson and with his blessing we pulled up stakes and headed east on I-10 toward new and colder frontiers.
Sunday, as planned, was a day to catch up on a million little things. It’s important to have those times in the schedule or you start feeling overloaded. We got all the errands done, laundry, cleaning, re-arranging, etc., so we were ready to hit the road today.
We talked to Bert and agreed to meet up at a state park near White Sands National Monument. He and Janie were further north in New Mexico photographing bird migrations. For them it was only three or four hours drive time, but we ended up blowing the whole day between driving and stops.
One stop was to get the Airstream washed again. This time I tried a “self-service” wash designed specifically for RVs. Not great. I got the trailer clean “¦ mostly “¦ but I wouldn’t recommend it. The real truck wash service is still better, even at $40 versus $10.
We pulled into Oliver Lee Memorial State Park after dark, so we couldn’t get a photo for this blog entry. But tomorrow we are planning to spend the day out with Bert & Janie at White Sands and perhaps the New Mexico Museum of Space History, so I expect to come back with a pile of pictures.
From here on for at least a week, we’ll be caravanning with Bert and Janie. They have an Airstream too, a Safari 28 slide-out. (It’s sweet. Great space inside.) We are going to spend two nights here in Alamogordo, then head to Big Bend National Park in Texas for a few days. Then we’ll probably caravan together over to San Antonio. There may be some other stops as well. It should be great fun!
February 5, 2006 at 9:51 am · Filed under Places to go
Wow, we’re worn out. We’ve spent the last two days being tourists and it’s tiring. Today is going to be a slower day to catch up on business and relax a bit.
The big event of yesterday was the Pima Air & Space Museum. Fair warning: if you find wandering around 80 open acres and four hangars looking at old airplanes (primarily WW II through 1970s era) to be dull, skip down to the picture of Emma, below.
For Andy and I, it was pretty interesting. The Pima Air & Space Museum has an excellent collection of aircraft, thanks to the promixity of the Air Force Base next door, where hundreds of obsolete warbirds have been scrapped. Once in a while they just close the road separating the two locations and tow over another addition to the collection.
The highlights of the collection are an SR-71 Blackbird (2.5 times the speed of sound and built with slide rules!), several planes which were used as Air Force 1 including Kennedy’s, a Constellation, B-17, B-24, “Mig Alley”, plus many fighters, helicopters, a Guppy, an Electra (like Amelia Earhart’s) … there are hundreds of planes to look at. It’s a full day if you like aircraft, and they even sell an optional 2-day ticket. My advice: spring for the extra $5 for the tram tour to get more info and help keep the family from melting down. Also bring plenty of water, even in winter.
We also ran over to the ASARCO open pit copper mine for a tour later in the afternoon. It’s about 20 minutes south of Tucson on I-19. Unfortunately we arrived too late for the last tour (it leaves at 3:30). The Visitor Center is free and quite interesting if (again, like me and Andy) you like industrial topics. Emma bore up bravely but most of it was over her head. We’re going to owe her a major “kid day” pretty soon, for being such a good trouper.
I dropped Andy off at the airport at 5:30 this morning and so that ends our tourist phase in Tucson. We need to get the Nissan’s oil changed, load up for travel, pick up some necessities, and maybe try the pool. (They keep it heated to 90 degrees, we discovered.) Tomorrow, we head out for New Mexico, where we are planning to meet Bert & Janie Gildart in Alamogordo and visit White Sands National Monument.
February 4, 2006 at 7:39 am · Filed under Places to go
We are starting to see that Tucson has a tremendous amount to offer. No wonder so many snowbirds have landed here. We’re never going to see all the things we want before we have to head east.
Yesterday we drove about 48 miles over to visit Kartchner Caverns State Park, which was (as predicted) very good. We’ve seen a lot of caves over the years and this one is unique — well decorated, diverse, and comfortable inside at 68 degrees. They’ve installed a really good visitor’s center and the volunteer guide we had was first-rate. I would post pictures but they do not allow cameras on the tour at all. If you plan to go, be sure to visit the Arizona state parks website to get information first.
While were there, Emma and I went over their national map of famous caves in the US. We’ve visited several just on this trip (Lehmann Cave in Great Basin NP, the talus caves in Pinnacles Nat’l Monument, Kartchner) and soon we may drop in on Carlsbad if we have time. Last summer in our Argosy we visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, too. All great visits.
There’s a campground at Kartchner so you could stay overnight if you wanted to, but no much else to do in the immediate area. Tombstone and Bisbee are down the road a bit, but there are more convenient locations closer to those towns.
If you get hungry at Kartchner, you’re out of luck unless you have your RV with you. Benson is the nearest town with restaurants, about nine miles away. We can recommend Reb’s Cafe — a “real” place with reasonably good food. And they put plenty of the malt in the malted shakes, which makes Eleanor happy.
Our next stop was Sabino Canyon, which is part of the Coronado National Forest, northeast of Tucson. This is a great spot, also recommended. There’s a parking/admission fee but our National Parks pass (with Eagle hologram on the back) got us in for free. (If you visit a lot of US Forest Service spots, the pass and hologram are well worth the $65 annual fee.)
Sabino Canyon is a terrific place for easy hiking. You can choose paved roads suitable for cycling or strollers, or dirt trails that parallel the hills. There are horse trails, too.
Emma spots a roadrunner!
The scenery is great everywhere. For a really easy view, you can hop a tram up into the canyon and get off anywhere you want. The trams run all day, so you can design a hike that works for you, even one-way hikes that only go downhll. We got there late so we skipped the tram and just took a casual two mile walk so we could take our time and talk about what we spotted.
Emma gets a peek at the Saguaro fruit.
By the way, we are now in the Chihuahuan desert, rather than the Sonoran desert. It’s a not a lot different, but there are some variations in plants and animals. One animal that remains the same from the Mojave to here is the mountain lion, but of course we didn’t see any.
I spot so many unusual signs as we travel that I have started collecting them (photgraphically). Here’s my “Sign of the Week”.
February 3, 2006 at 8:04 am · Filed under Uncategorized
What a great day for visitors! Around noon, I was cycling around the park and dropping off copies of Airstream Life on the steps of every Airstream I found (we have four here now). When I got back, I found a fellow in a bright aloha shirt looking at our trailer. It turned out to be blog reader Mike Birch, who had deduced what park we were in from the clues I gave in the blog!
Mike and his wife Tracy were just stopping in to say Hi, but we couldn’t let them go that easily, so we ended up having a tour through the interior and then sitting out under the awning on a glorious Arizona day. They are heading west from Texas in their Airstream right now, and just happened to be crossing paths with us here in Tucson. They’ve offered us courtesy parking at their place in Colorado, which we may be able to accept when we come back west in May.
Unfortunately we had to cut our visit short because we needed to get over to the airport to pick up our friend Andy. He’s escaping the cold damp weather of Boston for a few days. Poor guy showed up wearing a fleece and blue jeans (we were wearing sandals and shorts). We took him over to a couple of gem show venues and then headed back to the trailer for dinner.
It’s very unusual to have a guest in our Airstream, but it is fun. Since we have the only Airstream floorplan with two bedrooms, we are actually quite comfortable. And the weather is great so we aren’t spending much time inside anyway.
February 2, 2006 at 11:18 am · Filed under Places to go
We are really lucky this week. The famous Tucson Gem & Mineral Show is in full swing this week, and it is great! All over the city, in dozens of venues, people have come from all over the world to buy and sell gems, minerals, pearls, jewelry, meteorites, fossils, crystals, giant geodes …. and Native American crafts, watches, rare coins … and kettle corn.
We started off fairly restrained, at the first venue we visited, not buying anything even though everything looked really great. In the second venue, I broke down and bought kettle corn for everyone. Eleanor bought a pair of cool bowls made of fossilized stone.
In the third and fourth stops, we completely lost control. Emma bought a trilobite fossil, Eleanor bought necklaces, and I bought a collectible watch. How can you resist? Everything is a good bargain, and the vendors will often drop their prices to wholesale just for the asking. It was a good thing the shows all closed up by 7 pm, so we were forced to go home.
Emma and her trilobite
It is also a good thing we don’t have a house back in Vermont, or we would have bought much more “stuff” to put in it. I saw some amazing fossil sheets, as large as 5 ft x 3 ft, for ridiculously low prices. Those won’t fit in the trailer …
When you live in limited space, the key to buying things is that you have to decide what to get rid of at the same time. Something comes in, something goes out. We just don’t have the room to accumulate “stuff” so we try not to buy things we don’t really need. This shopping spree was definitely an exception.
We will go back to more of the show today (after we pick up Andy, our guest, at the airport) but hopefully we’ll just look, and not buy. It’s an amazing event and I can highly recommend it for anyone in Tucson this time of year.
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