February 3, 2007 at 8:19 pm · Filed under Places to go
The observatory was great last night, until the full moon rose and obliterated the darker objects in the sky. Emma saw the a few bright stars, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Orion Nebula, and a star cluster. With a Meade LX-200 telescope, you can really get a nice view. Check out the Butterfield RV Resort in Benson AZ if you want to try the telescope some time.
Of course it was a homeschooling event as well. Emma didn’t really appreciate how far away or how large stars were. It was fun to show her a blue giant star and explain that the light we were seeing has been traveling for 1400 years to get to our eyes. We also talked about how nebulas are giant clouds of gas in which stars are born, a concept that Emma seemed to find fascinating. Of course, a six-year-old’s grasp of these things is pretty limited, but at least we’ve gotten a start.
A few geodes at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show
Today we moved about fifty miles to Tucson and set up at Beaudry’s. Our Google Earth location. There are at least three other Airstreams here, and hopefully we’ll meet up with some of their owners on Sunday. But today we headed straight out to one of the many Gem & Mineral Show venues to look at more rocks.
Emma spent most of her time watching the ground. Lots of fragments end up discarded on the ground, and nobody seems to mind if she picks them up. So I ended up with a pocket of a wild variety of small stones collected by Emma: opalite, lapis lazuli, goldstone, “sleeping beauty” turquoise, black opal, fire citrine, green catseye, and several other interesting bits we can’t yet identify. None are larger than 1/2″, and some are just tiny chips.
The nice thing about the show is that every venue is different, with all kinds of interesting stuff — not just rocks. Jewelry, crafts, beads, food, Indian art, leather, tools, etc. The other nice thing is that admission and parking are free. We saw just one venue today, so there’s a lot more for the next few days.
Book report: Dr C sent me a copy of “On The Border” by Tom Miller, which I finished last week. It’s a great series of vignettes of real life in the Mexican border zone in 1980s. Miller argues that the border is functionally its own country, with unique laws, rules, customs, and problems, and he documents it beautifully in stories both funny and sad. Although the book is a little dated now, my experience with the border suggests that things haven’t changed much since 1985.
Miller couldn’t foresee the massive increase in border paranoia that would come. Concern over drugs, terrorism, and “UDAs” has made the border more tense, more complex. But the book is still good reading if, like us, you spend time in this unique territory.
February 2, 2007 at 6:30 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Eleanor and Emma got out for a little more rock hunting this morning before we packed it up and headed west. Even with the cold wind, Rockhound is a fun place with just awesome, ever-changing views.
The sign at the dump station made me pause …
Sign of the week
How exactly do you “dump slowly”? Not to get into too much detail, but opening the black tank valve less than fully is not a good idea. I’ll leave it at that.
We pulled the Airstream along I-10 to Benson, AZ today. There’s not a lot along the way, except for three more tourist traps run by the same organization. This time I was granted permission to skip them.
We have at last gotten into the gorgeous scenery that I have come to associate with southern Arizona. In the afternoon the sun lights the desert floor and the craggy mountains all around, and the skies become so blue it doesn’t seem real. I can see my camera will be getting a workout in the next few weeks, although it will have to go in for service at the “camera doctor” in Tucson soon.
Our friend Joe recommended this RV park. It has the unique distinction of having a good-sized telescope on site in a real observatory, and nightly viewings with an astronomer. Tonight the show starts at 7 pm, so we’ll be there. The skies are marvelously clear out here in Arizona, and the viewing should be spectacular.
Our Google Earth location.
February 1, 2007 at 6:16 pm · Filed under Places to go
It’s a good thing we went rockhounding yesterday and didn’t wait for today. The wind is blowing so hard and cold we can barely stay out for a few minutes. The national weather service says it is gusting occasionally to 40 MPH but it seems like 40 is the rule rather than the exception. Just opening the door of the trailer is an effort against the wind. I should have put the stabilizers down when we arrived, because the wind is hitting us broadside and making the trailer rock like a cross-country train. But now it’s cold and I’m comfortable in here, so we’ll just enjoy the ride.
Days like this make me feel almost guilty for being so comfortable in the Airstream. There are couple of intrepid rockhounds in a tent nearby, and their tent has been battered all day but is somehow still standing. They have to be freezing — the wind chill is about 27 degrees. Meanwhile, we are living cozily. I have been working on the bed all day with the furnace purring. Eleanor and Emma have been homeschooling and working on bead art projects. At lunchtime we took a short hike down the road, paid for another night of camping, and let the wind blow us back to the trailer for hot lunch and root beer.
Rockhound State Park is a beautiful spot. The campground is not much to look at, although it is in good condition. But the setting is marvelous. To the southeast we have craggy peaks covered in a light snow. To the north, the hill rises from the campground to expose ledges of rock filled with jasper. To the southwest, flat open ground is criss-crossed with the streets of Deming, and the sun beams down through gaps in the clouds to illuminate the desert in gold. Far south, we can see another range of mountains in Mexico. The visibility today has fluctuated but at times it is incredible — probably 75 miles.
At night the air is so clear that the lights of little Deming (5-9 miles away and 1,000 feet below us) glisten like they’ve been polished. It looked like a miniature Los Angeles last night in the full moon. If the wind doesn’t blow me to Las Cruces, I’ll break out the tripod and try to get a night shot.
We have discovered the identify of two of our rocks: red jasper and yellow jasper. The yellow is particularly beautiful. We’ll ship it home to Papa to see if he can polish it up.
We have also solved another mystery: the amazing refrigerator smell. A week or so ago, we noticed that everytime the fridge was opened, an incredible odor rolled out. This odor, reminiscent of bad meat mixed with garlic, was so intense that we’d immediately want to open the windows no matter how cold it was.
Last night I had had enough, and emptied out the refrigerator in search of the culprit. I found nothing except some jars of mustard and black bean sauce that had some slight odor to them. But this morning Eleanor found it: the darned stinky cheeses we bought back in Austin! That Cowgirl “Red Hawk” cheese is really powerful. Mixed with a little gorgonzola it can find its way through a sealed plastic bag.
The offending cheese has since been double-sealed in bags and the smell is — thankfully — gone. You may find it amazing that we’d eat something that smells so bad, but it tastes better than it smells. I guess it would have to …
January 31, 2007 at 6:45 pm · Filed under FAQs
We’ve been flailing around with our itinerary lately, making changes every day because of whims or weather. I suppose that’s how it should be, so we can explore what interests us, but the time came to get serious about our plans for the next few weeks. So this morning we pulled out the maps, the weather reports, and our lists of obligations, and put together a plan.
The first decision was to move on rather than exploring Las Cruces. As a place to live it was never high on our list, and from my online searches there didn’t seem to be a lot to keep us here recreationally, either. Las Cruces is one of those places that is near a lot of stuff.
The second decision was to skip Silver City. This was a tough call, since I like that town and there are fun things to do in the area. But the weather has not been cooperative lately, and Silver City is up around 6,000 feet. We may return later.
The third decision was to attend the Tucson Gem Show. We were in Tucson for it last year and liked dropping in on all the various venues. This meant booking a moderately expensive stay at Beaudry’s RV Resort, because most places in town are full, but the location is very convenient. We’ll do a few days there for the show and then relocate a bit further out of town.
And the fourth decision was to face reality: we have a lot of on our personal and work schedules in February, and the only way we’re going to accomplish it all is to park ourselves for a solid month. So we’ll stay in Tucson through the first week of March.
But we won’t be sitting still. We have plans to explore two national parks, make an overnight trip up to Phoenix, visit Bisbee, fly to the Florida State Rally, check out local real estate, and make our plans to go to Mexico in March. Somehow all that will get done while I work on the Summer issue of the magazine.
We can’t get into Tucson until Feb 3, so we’ve got a few days to kill. With the weather cold, we decided to head to Rockhound State Park, in Deming NM. Our Google Earth location. This park is at 4500 ft elevation but that’s about as low as we can get in this part of New Mexico. There is snow just a couple thousand feet above us, but here it is at least above freezing, and there’s frequent sunshine.
Collecting rocks in Rockhound State Park
Rockhound State Park was Emma’s choice. You can collect jasper, agate, opal, and quite a few other types of gemstones here. A short steep hike from the campground rewards you with beautiful views in all directions, and heaps of stone to pick through — no rock tools necessary!
We found a lot of jasper, plus some other pretty stones we haven’t yet identified. The rangers in the Visitor Center will probably help us with some, and we may call on our friend Mike Bertch, who is waiting for us in Tucson, to identify the rest. While we were up hiking around, I also found a cactus with my knee, which required me to gently roll up my pantleg (in 40 degrees and a cold wind) and carefully pluck about thirty tiny spines out.
Near Deming, NM. Click for larger
Along the way here, Eleanor got a hankering for a tourist trap along I-10. Now she has a new leather hat, which you can see in the first picture. Emma has new moccasins too. I think that takes care of our tourist trap needs for a while …
January 30, 2007 at 7:56 pm · Filed under Places to go
Below a gray sky we bid adieu to the RV park, checked the post office one last time for any late packages, and towed the Airstream seven miles from our base elevation of 3,600 feet to the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns National Park at 4,400 feet.
The Visitor Center and cave were virtually abandoned, which is not surprising considering the abysmal weather. All the winter tourists seem to be fleeing for warmer spots, which strikes me as an excellent plan except that there aren’t any warm spots outside of southern Florida and Mexico. We had no trouble parking all 50 feet of Airstream & truck in the lot. The cave was so deserted that we walked for over 30 minutes before encountering another person.
We hiked down the Natural Entrance, which is about a mile and 850 feet of descent. This hike is strenuously cautioned by the park service. “Evalute your physical condition before attempting this walk!” “Weak knees are common!” Huh. It’s a walk downhill on a paved trail with handrails. Last time Eleanor did it seven months pregnant.
Our National Parks pass got us in for free. Except now it’s the “America the Beautiful National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands Pass,” and now it costs $80 instead of $50. They’ve dropped the $15 eagle hologram, too. This new pass basically covers every Federal site that charges admission (but it doesn’t cover camping fees or added-value tours). We got this latest pass in Vicksburg when our National Parks pass expired, and using it today saved us $18, so we’ve got a few parks to go before it pays off.
The cave is supposed to be a constant 56 degrees, but in winter the cold air above settles into the cave and causes a constant breeze at certain points on the Natural Entrance hike. Since today the temperature at the entrance was 29 degrees (with fog), we had a chilly hike in.
Still, the cave is magnificent and amazing for both its natural features and the incongruous man-made ones. This is confusing for Emma, who at one point marveled at the huge open space replete with hanging stalactites and said, “I cannot believe this is not man-made!” This is from a child who has visited numerous large caves and lava tubes and who can readily identify cave draperies, popcorn, soda straws, and “bacon.”
Carlsbad is a park from the old school, so it features things you won’t see in other parks from a more enlightened era. For example, at Kartchner Caverns State Park in Arizona, they are so concerned with protecting the natural condition of the cave that visitors are sprayed with a fine mist to remove dust, and walked through several air-tight doors to control humidity. At Carlsbad, they have a restaurant in the cave.
Stamps in our National Parks Passport
The restaurant was built in 1928, and not surprisingly the bathrooms directly adjacent arrived shortly after. There’s also a mailbox, so you can post a letter from below the Earth’s surface. In fact, you can do quite a bit of shopping underground if you care to. After an hour of hiking we stopped in for a snack and asked Emma if she wanted to see more cave, or ride the elevator up and out. “More cave!” So we hiked the entire Big Room tour too, for a total of about 2.5 miles.
Considering that it was a totally dismal day, hiking underground beat the other options available. I had hoped for clearing by the time we emerged, but at 1 pm it was still very cold and cloudy, and we high-tailed it for the south. Along the route (Rt 62/180 to be specific) you have to climb up to 5,695 feet in the Guadalupe Mountains. Up there it was dense fog, temperatures in the upper 20’s and windy. I had to drive carefully, constantly on the lookout for ice on the road, until we descended back down before 5,000 feet.
We are covering a lot of miles in order to have time to explore some things in New Mexico and Arizona before we have to fly out. So we have stopped for the night in Las Cruces, boondocking in the retail center while we consider our options. We may stay here a few days (in which case we’ll get a campground) or move on, depending on how things look.
January 29, 2007 at 9:15 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Three faithful blog readers have emailed me to say I talk too much about food. (You know who you are.) So today I’ll talk about water for moment. Specifically, how to deal with drinking water while we are in Mexico in March.
The big advice you get from people about traveling in Mexico is “don’t drink the water!” Montezuma’s Revenge, a.ka. “traveler’s diarrhea” is the big fear. In most cases, it comes from drinking local water that has normal bacteria that our delicate US-based systems aren’t accustomed to. It can also result from critters in the water (worms, parasites).
So the first line of defense for an RV traveler is to make sure the water in your fresh water tank is safe, for showering, brushing teeth, etc.
We’ve got a couple of methods to assure the water in our tank is safe. We can fill it with known good water (bulk bottled water sold in grocery stores), or we can pre-filter it with a charcoal filter to remove excess organic materials and then chlorinate the water each time we fill the tank.
Chlorination is pretty simple: you just add a measured amount of bleach to the water, and let it sit a prescribed time before using it. We’ll use a second charcoal filter at the kitchen sink to help remove some of the bleach taste (which is already built into our Moen faucet) and also let the water sit before bottling it for the refrigerator.
Another good tip I got for masking the bleach taste is to add Kool-Aid, iced tea mix, Gatorade powder, or lemon/lime flavorings to the water. But most likely we’ll just use the tank water for showering and stick to bottled water for brushing teeth, cooking, and drinking.
Beyond that, we’ll follow the advice I got from my friendly Airstream M.D.: be careful about eating local fare or questionable grocery items, peel all fruit and avoid ice or open drinks. If we were going to stay for a long time and eat out a lot, we might consider Hepatitis A vaccination as well, but that seems to be overkill for a one or two week visit where we’ll mostly be eating our own food.
Today’s outing was to Living Desert State Park, up in Carlsbad. It’s really more of a zoological park, featuring landscapes, animals and birds native to New Mexico. It’s a nice spot on a sunny day, since the bulk of the exhibits are outdoors. For $5 (kids under 7 free), it’s a cheap half-day out, and very educational. As with any zoo, a long lens is essential to getting good animal photos.
We would have gone to the caves, but weather suggested otherwise. It was a sunny and dry day today, perfect for walking around the park, whereas tomorrow we’ve got a chance of rain — or even snow. I doubt that will really happen, but in any case tomorrow seems the right day to explore the caverns. Then, we’ll head southwest.
January 28, 2007 at 7:48 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Seeing the Google Earth image of our campsite last night started me thinking. It’s amazing how we can go somewhere but not really know much about what’s around us, until we start asking questions and poking around. In this case, I had realized we were in an oil field when I spotted a derrick by the road, but had no idea how many oil wells were surrounding us.
This morning I decided to make some mental notes as we drove through west Texas along I-20, and then Rt 285 north from Ft Stockton to New Mexico. Tallying up the things I saw as we drove turned a “boring” drive into a really fascinating one. Everything was worth noticing: oil wells, small gray deer among the cedars, ranch gates made of stone, sagebrush, mesas and buttes.
The things we saw today tell me that we have crossed the line from low elevation and arid climate to a much drier high desert climate. At first, I-10 cuts through rolling hills, revealing cliffs of yellow limestone and millions of years of geologic history in sedimentary layers. Then around Ft Stockton, the ground becomes flatter and the plants gradually become more and more scattered. The cedars that help define the hill country are almost gone. The temperature drops more rapidly in the desert air at sunset (it was 37 when we arrived and has since dropped into the 20s) and even Emma’s hair is telling me that humidity is much less than it was a couple of days ago in Austin.
We decided to skip Marfa and head north to Carlsbad Caverns. Emma’s still nonchalant about the caves, but Eleanor and I want to see them again. The last time Emma was here, she was still in the womb, and Eleanor was carefully walking down the cave’s natural entrance, eight months pregnant.
We’ve parked at the only place in Whites City, at the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Whites City is basically a tiny intersection at 3600 feet elevation, bearing the usual tourist stuff (restaurant, gift shops, motel, post office, etc). It’s a cousin of many such places around the country: Wall Drug in South Dakota, “The Thing” in Arizona, “South of The Border” in South Carolina, etc. Whites City is not nearly as interesting as those larger brethren, but definitely cut from the same cloth.
It was once much more of a tourist trap than it is today. Along the highway leading here, you can still see the remains of dozens of black-and-red billboards advertising the place in its heydey. The few readable signs are a tip-off to how long ago that was. My favorite said, “WHITES CITY. KODAK FILM — FLASHBULBS”. When was the last time you bought a flashbulb?
Best Western has taken over the former Whites City motel, but it still features a low-budget RV park out back, of the type you see all over the west: a dusty (or muddy) dirt parking lot, decaying facilities, questionable electric, wide open spaces and a view of the highway. Full hookups, $20. Many other western parks are cheaper, running as low as $10 but there’s no competition in Whites City, so they can charge more.
There are about six or seven rigs here in the lot. It’s far from a luxury resort, so they must all be cheapskates like us, or unwilling to make the 20 mile commute down from Carlsbad. The first hint of the park’s status is the broken gate with a fragment of splintered wood sticking out. A sign warns that trailers must swing WIDE to avoid hitting the gate. They’re not kidding. It took us two tries to make it through without a long scratch on the streetside of the trailer.
At our site, the first electric outlet we tried was mis-wired (reversed ground and neutral according to our tester), there were no caps to the sewer outlets, and the grill is completely rusted and burned out in the bottom, rendering it unusable. A heap of old Whites City billboards are piled just beyond our site in the cactus. Deep muddy ruts at the edge of the campground give testimony to a mighty battle that recently occurred with a large RV that was apparently trying to turn around and got stuck. The entire place has an air of benign neglect.
But we don’t care. It’s just a place to park for the night, and as long as the water is potable and the sewer doesn’t back up, it’ll be fine. The high desert feels good, even at 37 degrees.
Housekeeping notes: (1) The blog is now on Mountain Time. (2) I can’t post pictures because we are on Verizon’s “extended network”. For some reason, the slow speed of that network doesn’t agree with our blog software and I can’t get photo files to upload. I also can’t successfully FTP them. So any photos you see in tonight’s or tomorrow’s blog entries are the result of my emailing them to one of my correspondents, who posts them for me.
Our Google Earth location.
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