Sayings: Land Ho Water Ho Yo Ho Globel (sic) Warming Adrenaline Rush It’s a Dry Cold It’s a Sunny Cold It’s a Dry Sweat Squirreled Don’t Squirrel With Me F*&%ing Pit Bulls Go ‘Tangs DALAS (Driving Around Looking At Stuff) SALAC (Sitting Around Looking At Computers) SATAS (Sitting Around Talking About Stuff) AJ Kokopelli “I have a theory: The altitude makes you fat.” – Jenny Coleman Garde Moo … Woooooo! Night Crap (Cap)

1/24/11 Monday … Naweedna to Marysville, OH …Trip anxiety – neither of us slept well Sunday night. We got up early – before dawn showed her crack – and started loading the boxes of stuff we’ve kept in the house for fear of freezing, and finished necessary preparations including morning beverage and shower. I’ve been going out to the back porch to run the water and flush the toilet when the outside temps are down in the wee numbers. It was all of -9 this morning so I performed the now familiar ritual. Hmmm, the cold water ran normally, but the hot water tap produced nothing, zilch, nada, not a drip. Panic flushed through me, but then rusty water started flowing. Must have been right at freezing for the hot water. I put on coveralls, opened the crawl space door, and went in to check. Oops, I forgot to put insulation in the little vent windows when I winterized this fall. I did that now, and left the 100w light on to add just enough heat – I hope. Then I crawled out, shut the door, and tried to put it out of my mind. Onward to NM.

By 8 AM, we were crunching down the driveway with very cold snow squealing under our tires. The first 2 days of the trip had definite destinations: Terri & Gunter’s in Marysville OH and Joe & Berniece’s in Nashville TN. We needed to make time and that means IOF (Icky Ol’ Freeways). Soooo, onto I-390 to Dansville, short jaunt on NY-36 to I-86 (formerly NY-17), west to I-90, then I-271, finally I-71 to Delaware, OH, where we picked up “smaller” roads to Marysville.

Somewhere along the line, I formulated the anxiety-induced question: Did we unplug the coffee pot? It is very revealing how these things come to mind once you can’t do anything about them. We are both sure we did, but … at least we know we did not leave the iron on ;-)

Roads in NY were clear but almost completely white with salt. Just west of Salamanca we saw an immature Bald Eagle perched in a tree overlooking the Allegheny River. Ah, nature. Along this stretch of highway, they find it necessary to put up signs informing the vehicle occupants that this is a Scenic Area. Why some areas and not others? Why is it necessary – do people have to be told it’s scenic? We believe this is one of the most scenic IOF’s we’ve seen – this part anyway. The weather was actually very good – cold but clear – until we got to I-271 east of Cleveland. Then it started snowing and continued to do so all the way to Marysville. We only saw 2 other RVs the entire day – both RoadTreks.

Since we were on IOF’s, we had access to broadband Internet all day so we had fun keeping Terri informed of our progress. This technology thing might just catch on. At least, it makes for some interesting exchanges ;-)

TripEMails.DOC OR TripEMails.PDF

We arrived at the Paradox Ranch around 4, greeted Terri, Gunter & Calvin, and retired to the living room for an I’m-done-with-driving-for-the-day libation. Stress removed and details caught up on, we headed out to dinner. The original idea was to go to the famous Bun’s, but when we got there – we found it CLOSED on Monday. Not to fear, Marysville has the wickedly famous Old Town Inn, so we headed there. They almost never close, but this Monday was slow, so we got to sit in the much-desired “porch” table. It reminded me of the porch on the Prairie Home Companion set (full screen, see bottom picture in left sidebar).

In honor of Janie’s upcoming 60th, we went all out with potato skins, garden salad, filet mignon, onion rings (really good), green beans … all accompanied by a nice bottle of Layer Cake Shiraz and topped off with 1 lava cake for 4. Burp … We were back at the Paradox for more conversation and turned in around 10 PM. Yawn … big day tomorrow.

1/25/11 Tuesday … Marysville, OH to Mt. Juliet, TN …We were up early, enjoyed our morning beverages and bagels (with delightful honey-nut cream cheese – and bid our good friends goodbye – for now – with hospitality like this, we WILL be back. We completed our Volvo diagonal across OH, went around the Queen City, and continued on across the hump of KY to Louisville. I-71 in KY was badly rutted and clogged with truck traffic. Grit your teeth and motor on. I rediscovered the strange reality of having to speed up as traffic became more congested. You just get caught up with the flow and have to go with it. Onward …

I-65 between the “villes” of Louis and Nash was much better … still lots of trucks but better road surface and spacing. Shortly after going around Louisville, we lost the snow cover that had been present since leaving Naweedna. Ah, but fate would provide us with more. Read on …

Joe and Berniece get home from w-w-w-work around 4:30, which coincided nicely with our ETA. Like yesterday, we exchanged emails with Joe all day – we could really get used to this (TripEMails.DOC or TripEMails.PDF). Unbeknownst to us, we had crossed into Central time just over the TN border; we’d gained an hour, so we had some time to slow down and smell the roses or perhaps the residue of last night’s feast. We pulled into a welcome center and was greeted by Janna, one of 3 women behind the counter with absolutely nothing to do. “You need some help, hon?” Why yes I do.

Joe had told us about the “storm” coming tonight, so we asked Jenna about that and the Natchez Trace, our next destination after Joe’s. Man did we get an earful. Yes, they were predicting 2-4 inches of snow starting after 9 PM. Temps were to be just above freezing, but the wind would be brisk enough to keep the snow from melting. We had looked at the Trace’s web site before leaving NY and discovered that was closed from milepost 420. Hell, the Trace is only 444 miles, so that means it is nearly all closed. Oops, that conclusion was the result of North-centric thinking.

Janie & I had both assumed the mileposts start at 1 … on the northern end. We should have remembered the Trace was used by river boat-men (Kaintucks) who floated down the Mississippi on cargo barges, sold the goods and barges in Natchez, and then returned home via the Trace. Thus, it makes sense to start the mileposts at 1 IN NATCHEZ. More thought would have led to the conclusion that the northern end was most likely to be closed due to snow. That means only the northern 20 miles or so was cordoned off. The southern 420-some miles were open. Duh and Yay!

Well, Janna set us straight and gave us a number to call to find out if the northern end of Trace was closed and, if so, where to get on. We told her where we were heading for tonight (Joe’s), she whipped out a couple maps and started annotating them. As she highlighted the route for us (upside down), she interjected things like, “My brother lives at this corner. My other brother lives at this corner. My other, other brother used to live here.” It got to be pretty humorous real fast.

Janna just kept whipping out maps and brochures until Janie had an armload of neatly folded paper-products. The best part of Janna’s directions had us getting off I-65 just 4 miles down the road and taking back roads down to Joe’s. Yay, we get to do a little touring without our new-found trucker friends. By now, it was raining steadily, which I welcomed because it washed off some of the road grime accumulated over the past 2 days.

We were still a little confused by the time thing. Clocks in RVan showed THREE different times: Eastern (regular and daylight savings) and Central. So as we moved from the front seats to the bed, it was 3:34, 4:45, and 5:45. Just too much for our feeble brains to deal with. So we pulled into Woods Ferry boat launch on the shore of Cumberland Lake (formed by damming the Cumberland River), and I reset all clocks to one time – Central – I think. We scanned the lake shore to find several gulls and just about as many Great Blue Herons. It was good to be in a quiet location with birds to look at – and to know the actual time.

We pulled into Joe’s very nice circular-driveway a little after 5. Hey, this is a really nice house; Joe and Berniece have done very well for themselves. Are we worthy of such heady trappings? They have good jobs, a nice house in a wonderful neighborhood, and 2 very good sons: Chris (16) and Joe (off to college at Middle Tennessee State in nearby Murfreesboro). Yeah, we are very proud of our “children” and “grandchildren”. We got the 25 cent tour and settled in the kitchen for dinner: a good, hearty stew and some beer (Yuengling Black & Tan as fate would have it). Oh yeah, there was a delightful banana-nut bread and loads of animated conversation – unfortunately dominated by yours truly after the second beer. Some of the abuse was heaped on poor Chris who joined us in the kitchen. He is “into” vinyl so I proceeded to bend his ear about music stuff. I’ll send him a compilation with tracks by his favorite artist: Johnny Cash. What we got here is a retro-boy … I love it.

I eventually throttled back and we headed out to RVan ~10 PM. It was 34 outside, but with the furnace’s help, a comfortable 55 inside. We prepared for winter camping by zipping together two 40-year-old down sleeping bags as a double-thick comforter. They provided such good insulation we discovered they “remembered” the cold from the north, but once we got the bed warmed up, it was really very comfortable.

1/26/11 Wednesday … Mt. Juliet, TN to Meriwether Lewis Campground, Natchez Trace TNWell, it did snow, but not until after we were zoned out asleep. We awoke around 5 to white ground, which we couldn’t see very well due to heavy condensation on our windows and darkness outside. It was still 34 out and 55 in. We fixed our morning beverages and rearranged things as darkness gave way to twilight. We’d told Joe to turn on the front porch light when they are ready to receive morning guests, but before we noticed the light, we heard a welcoming meow uttered by the housecat Joe had let out after turning on the porch light. I could see little cat tracks in the snow, but they were only ~1/2 inch deep.

We gathered up our stuff and went in the house. There we watched local weather people showing their fascination with what we northern-tier people consider a routine dusting. There were reports from on-scene reporters at what seemed like every street corner in and around Nashville. Ah, but it was still snowing with a fairly strong west wind; there may be more accumulation before this whole thing blows over.

School was closed, so Chris and Berniece had the day off – she’s a school nurse. Joe, it seemed, could go to work whenever he wanted, so we sat around the kitchen table for a couple hours talking about things and watching birds at their feeder. They have a wider variety of birds than we do. It was pretty neat. We looked at maps of the Natchez Trace, I called to see if it was closed, and, if so, where we could get on.

The obviously over-stressed and less-than-happy woman at Trace headquarters told me that the Trace was closed from milepost 420 north. That’s only about 24 miles, so it seemed we were good to go – assuming we could actually get to the Trace. A quick look at a map showed the nearest town to milepost 420 was near Fly TN. Okay, we never been to Fly, TN; seems like an altogether fine idea. Onward ...

Joe whipped up some sausage and toast. It was yummy, and after leaving just a couple patties for Chris, who wasn’t out of bed yet, we headed to the shower. Joe decided to go to work, so we thanked him for his hospitality and hugged him goodbye. Once showered and dressed, we also thanked Berniece and gave her a big farewell hug … and threatened to descend on them again on our way home. It may not be in your best interest to be so nice to us ;-)

It was ~10 AM before we pulled out of Joe’s driveway. The roads were clear but still wet. I don’t think they had been salted, so we only had to deal with road spray from the surprisingly sparse traffic. Lots of people were taking the day off – or at least the morning. We were grateful for that.

The road signs were plastered with snow and we managed to miss our turn for Fly. But we did see a tree with about 6 Black Vultures hunkered down against the unusual cold. Driveways were covered with limonite stained pea-gravel that I remember from other trips through the mid-South. Although we missed Fly, we found the equally interesting Sawdust TN and shortly thereafter we turned onto the Trace at milepost 408. We immediately took a right, and drove up to where the Trace was barricaded. It was beautiful. Tree trunks were all plastered with snow on the west-facing sides; finer branches and twigs were also covered with snow. It reminded me of those 50s Christmas trees with fake snow blown on them … I think they called it flocking. The real thing was much better.

The Natchez Trace Links: Wikipedia, America’s Byways, Map, Web Pictures

Our Pictures: Picture Picture Picture

It was around 11:30 and we essentially had the Trace to ourselves. I put RVan on cruise at 35 MPH (the lowest possible) and we just turtled along looking at the wondrous surroundings. The stress accumulated over 2 days of IOF driving was melting away – even if the snow wasn’t. We saw more Black Vultures, Red Tails, Bluebirds, Juncos, a small flock of Meadowlarks, Flickers, and one lonely-looking Killdeer. The only other vehicles were an official pickup truck and 2 tractors, which were about 3 models bigger than mine but had the same 5 foot snow blade on the back. If this is their snow removal equipment, it’s a good thing it doesn’t snow more down here.

When we got to MP 428, we discovered the road was barricaded. No matter mind, turn around and head south. We were coming to a pullout called She Boss Stand when we noticed 2 horses ambling out of the parking area and across the road. They’d obviously escaped from their quarters and were having a grand old time just walking down the Trace munching the grass along the road. They really looked quite content – a little surreal but still happy. Picture

Somewhere along the Trace, we came to a pullout with a snow-covered exhibit podium covered with 2-3 inches of snow. A previous traveler had patted the snow down to spell out GLOBEL WARMING. Sarcasm? Realism? Science? Why didn’t we get a picture of that? We thought we had one, but it’s now only a mental image.

The Trace was originally an animal path, then an Indian path, and then a more formal trail (trace) for Kaintucks who had floated down the Mississippi to Natchez, then used the Trace to walk/ride back. Thousands did this, so there was a need for inns along the way – stands, as they are called down here. One stand was operated by a white woman

and her Indian husband. He didn’t speak much English, so if someone asked him, he’d point to his wife and say, “She boss.” Hence the name: She Boss Stand. Ha! Things haven’t changed all that much have they?

We got to Meriwether Lewis CG a little after 3 and set up housekeeping in site #17 … we’re the only ones in the entire campground, so it should be nice and quiet tonight. The gathering evening light with snow plastered to the trees and frozen to their twigs made the whole scene look like a Bev Doolittle painting. It was beautiful and serene - what we call “serenery”.

There are 3 campgrounds on the Trace and all are FREE. They have no hookups, no dump stations, and no showers, but they do have clean, heated bathrooms with running, albeit cold, water. The restroom at Meriwether Lewis was essentially new. We had it all to ourselves; it felt like the whole place was just for us. Yeah, we are that special - brand new restroom, clear, deep-blue sky, the remains of a waning gibbous Moon, a ruddy glow to the East - all just for us – alone. Wonderful.

1/27/11 Thursday … Lewis Campground to Jeff Busby Campground, Natchez Trace MS …We awoke to a clear sky immersed in a winter wonderland. It was 25 degrees outside, but a very comfortable 55 in RVan. The big orange ball was just cresting the east ridgeline – things were looking very good. We had all day to saunter down the Trace and that is just what we did. We saw Fox Squirrels scurrying around in the snow, then a small group of deer ambled across in front of us – two backsliders were from this year’s crop. There were Phoebe, Palm Warbler, Coots, Terns, Loons, Gulls, Bufflehead, GBH, Ring-Necked Duck, Red-Shouldered Hawk, Towhee, and possibly a Mississippi Kite. And … maybe a Coyote skulking into the scrub along the road.

We had been on the Trace for 24 hours before we were passed by another vehicle – or even had one in view behind us. It was glorious. The Trace is much like the Blue Ridge Parkway in that it has limited access, no commercial vehicles, no private businesses on the road, no trucks, no billboards, no signs other than road signs and markers for the many historic and natural attractions along the way, 50 MPH speed limit enforced and for the most part obeyed, and narrow but excellent pavement. You are wrapped in scenic quietude as you motor along. We saw very few vehicles until we got to the environs of Tupelo. The Garmin that A.J. recommended recorded our progress: Max Speed = 50 MPH (coasting downhill); Moving Average = 31 MPH; Overall Average = 21.5 MPH. The overall includes when we were stopped at the many pullouts where we read the signs describing the significance of the location – like the Old Trace.

How can it get any better? - Have more roads like this! Think of all the wonderful places that have been rendered barely tolerable by garish billboards and out of control commercial development. Grandfather Mountain leaps to mind. Ok, so turning every highway into a national park may be a little over the top, but really, shouldn’t there be more than the BRP and Trace? You can have all the commercial stuff located a few 100 yards away to preserve the illusion of naturalness. Ah, but I digress.

Natchez Trace Interactive Map

During this day, we exited TN, passed through the NW corner of AL, and started our diagonal trek across MS to Natchez. We expect to stay at the second of the 3 campgrounds on the Trace tonight: Jeff Busby CG. It is named in honor of the legislator who initiated the legal wrangling to get the Trace made into a national park. The campground is located just north of Kosciusko, which is mostly famous as Oprah Winfrey’s hometown. We stayed in Kosciusko when we took my Mom to see my Dad’s brother John in ’98 (AZ-98 Trip Log). Tomorrow we hope to stay in the third and last campground on the Trace: Rocky Springs. A year or so ago we read a book by Nevada Barr (what a wonderful name) about Jeff Busby CG: Deep South. I’m very much looking forward to see it in reality. More about that later – let’s get back to today’s activities.

Somewhere along the line we lost the snow cover. It started to thin noticeably, then was only on the tippy-tops of the grass, then started to look like heavy frost, and then … it was gone. Before the day was out, we saw very green grass along the edges of the road – grass that looked like it would need mowing before too long.

At the Tupelo Visitor Center, we were greeted by a very friendly rangerette. She all but insisted we watch the movie, which we did. After that, we quizzed her about where to get gas and, more importantly, where to get BBQ for today’s lunch, tonight’s dinner … and maybe other meals. She brightened considerably at the mention of BBQ and immediately started drawing a route to Bishop’s. We had to backtrack about 1/4 mile then take a side road toward Saltillo MS

We quickly found Bishop’s and a nearby Exxon station. Filled up the tank and went in to get goodies to fill us up. Bishop’s is a fairly typical, locally-run BBQ place with all the requisite offerings. We studied the menu that covered nearly the entire eastern wall of the dining area and decided on: pulled pork, baked beans, coleslaw, gator taters, and a bottle of their special hot sauce … to go. The gator taters were for us to nibble while we drove the 3 miles back to the Trace to find a nice spot to dig into the rest of the offerings. So what are gator taters - home-made potato chips with a little sweetening to make them interesting. Pretty good, pretty greasy, finger food.

We almost stopped at the visitor center to share with the rangerette who suggested Bishop’s, but she can get her own. After waving at the building, we went on to a pullout explaining the Black Belt. The limestone weathers to a clay-rich soil. The lowland nature of the weathered limestone collects water and leads to accumulation of organic residue. That results in the rich black soil that stretches from here in MS across the northern part of AL. The Black Belt area used to be a major cotton producer, but now is mainly a cattle grazing area.

The pullout was open with a nice view of the Black Belt out to the west. It was warm enough to open the cargo doors, so we stood outside and chowed down. How was it you ask? S’all good, but we agreed the beans were the clear winners. The meat was tasty, but would have been dry without being drenched in sauce. The slaw was useful for cutting greasy-residue of the meat and taters. We had plenty of leavings for tonight … and maybe tomorrow. Onward …

We pulled into Jeff Busby CG a little after 4. We were not alone. Three other RVs were huddled around the restroom. We found a nice spot ~100 yards away, and here we sit doing our “office work” and watching it get dark. My beer is gone and it is time for Janie to plate up the BBQ goodies. Life is good.

1/28/11 Friday … Jeff Busby Campground to Rocky Springs Campground, Natchez Trace MS …The day dawned gloriously: 37 degrees out; 48 in. We had actually taken off 1 of the 2 sleeping bags and it was very comfortable all night. Yesterday we covered about 150 miles between Meriwether Lewis and Jeff Busby. Today will be an easy day - only ~100 miles to Rocky Springs CG . Ah, all day and not far to go … we have time to stop and take the trails that pop up enroute.

Our first stop was Cole Creek Nature Trail, a short walk through a Bald Cypress swamp. Yeah, I said Cypress … and Tupelo Trees. Many trees were dead snags with Black Vultures sunning themselves and waiting for thermals to form. Blacks behave a differently from our more familiar Turkey Vultures. They roost lower in the trees, and, more importantly, don’t seem to be as wary. We got some good views of the bird only a mother could love. Just as we were about to leave, one of ‘em stuck a Thunderbird pose with its back to us and its front to the morning sun. Neat.

We saw a tree trunk floating in the water with, count ‘em, 12 turtles also catching morning rays. We certainly wouldn’t see that this time of year back home. Just beyond the turtles was a dead snag with 2 birds perched in it. The larger one was a Black Vulture, but the other on turned out to be a Red-Shouldered Hawk. The hawk flushed and glided off out of sight. The vulture stayed and gave us the Thunderbird pose later.

We stopped at the Kosciusko Information Center to see about finding a place to buy a small insulated container for my morning coffee. Since I started drinking brewed coffee, I’ve experimented with different systems. Right now it’s the Melitta L’il Joe, a plastic device that sits on top of my cup and accepts a #2 cone filter – just like the coffee pot at home. Put in the grounds, pour hot water over ‘em, let ‘er drip into the cup. The problem is it takes so long for all the water to drip through, my coffee gets cold. So, if I had an insulated container to drip into, it should keep warm and make 2 cups at a time.

When we entered the VC, we were greeted by a very nice – and knowledgeable – black lady who turns out to be from WI. We asked her if there was a Wal-Mart or Target or some such nearby, she said, “Why, there’s a Wal-Mart just down the road.” While looking at the displays, we discovered that Kosciusko is not only Oprah’s hometown, but also that of James Meredith, Roy Oswalt (Phillies pitcher), and Charlie Musselwhite. It also turns out that Charlie shares a birthday with Janie – but predates her by seven years. Hey, he’s my age. We like Charlie a lot for all the right reasons.

Wal-Mart is not as nice as the Trace except when you need to buy something. The very friendly greeter was standing at a lectern-like thing-y, and a person standing next to her looked at his left wrist and said, “The sermon will start in 15 minutes.” Ah, local humor – you gotta love it. We asked, “If you were a small, wide-mouth thermal-container, where would you be?” She said, “See that jewelry counter? Turn right and go back a few aisles, you’ll find ‘em on the left.” That’s exactly what we did, and we scored a 16 oz covered mug for I can try out tomorrow. $5, made in China, of course.

Back to the Trace past the Trace Headquarters which has a large pool at the entrance. In that pool we saw a GBH and … a Great Egret. Our first, but not last by any measure. Just a few yards down the road I saw what looked like a sandbag along a drainage ditch. Nope, this sandbag had legs and ears … it was a dead (or soundly sleeping) feral pig. Another few hundred yards farther we saw a couple dozen Turkey hunting and pecking along the roadway. Holy crap, from Wal-Mart to Egrets, Pigs & Turkeys in less than a mile. Great.

Picture Picture

Coffee was gone, caffeine had worn off, and hunger had set in, so we stopped at Holly Hill pullout for brunch. While I waited for Janie to serve up some granola – I do the driving; she does the cooking – a car pulled in and a couple got

out. The woman offered me a good morning, which I returned because it was a glorious day. I then asked her about those green clumps in the otherwise barren trees. I would have called them Mistletoe but wasn’t sure. She confirmed my conjecture. Then, recognizing my non-southern accent, asked, “Where y’all from?” I choked back the impulse to say, “From where we don’t end our sentences with a preposition” and told her our tale of WNY and -9 degrees and lots of snow and we were going to drive across TX to meet up with our friends NM from AK … Her response was: “There’s nothing past Dallas.”

Ok, I feel the need to say something here. “Nothing” is what we like. We are going out of our way to drive across the Staked Plains of western TX. We love the desolate parts of TX, OK, KS, NE, SD, ND, and beyond into Canada, although we haven’t gotten that far yet. Yep, we are all about “nothing” - we like the places that others find boring. Call us crazy, but that’s the way it is. For our money, there is “nothing” in east TX and everything in west TX. But I don’t want to offend our friends who live in east TX, so I’ll just say there is nothing there but them, and we love each and every one of ‘em. So there you go. Onward …

At milepost 78 we saw our first Spanish Moss, and just a bit before that, we’d spied Palmetto mixed in the underbrush. Then there were some Yucca-like things. Oh man, we are truly in the South. This has been one of the best days imaginable. The sun shone wall-to-wall; the temps climbed to the low 60s. It actually got up to 80 in RVan at one point. I am more impressed with the Trace than ever. There have only been 2 “congested” areas in the nearly 400 miles we’ve covered. The first was the environs of Tupelo and the second was when we fell under the influence of Jackson. Other than that, it’s been extremely enjoyable. We are still averaging under 40 MPH moving and under 30 MPH overall. That allows for a lot of DALASing (Driving Around Lookin’ At Stuff). Just what we like. And the weather for the last 2 days could not have been better.

We arrived at Rocky Springs CG a little after 3 PM, picked a site and immediately headed out for a hike down the Old Trace to the abandoned town of Rocky Springs … and the Methodist church and graveyard. This little hike has been anticipated since we read “Deep South” by Nevada Barr. Nevada Barr worked for the National Park Service and was a ranger here, so the story is based on fact mixed with fiction from her fertile imagination. It was a good story and we wanted to see the terrain and structures described in the book. What a great experience on an absolutely gorgeous, spring-like evening … plus we got to see some birds: Red-Headed Woodpecker, Phoebe, Pine Warbler, and a solitary Bat (I know, not a bird, don’t give me any grief). This is the second Warbler we’ve seen … we thought they all migrated to Central or South America. Hmmm, maybe they are on their way back … so soon.

As great as the Trace is, it is only 444 miles, so tomorrow I go back to work. We plan to take the most expeditious route and save sightseeing for the way back – or another trip. IOFs lead to major metropolitan areas we have to navigate around … but once we get west of Dallas … there’s the “Nothing” we love, so can we can start touring again! At least that’s the plan. Let’s see how it pans out. Onward …

1/29/11 Saturday … Rocky Springs Campground, Natchez Trace MS to Fairfield Lake SP, Fairfield TX …We awoke a little after 5, to 52/37 degrees in/out and a clear nighttime sky featuring a bright crescent Moon and Jupiter almost side by side. Janie tried to take a picture but … she was distracted by the hooting of a Barred Owl off in the distance – and shaking hands from the cold – and slow shutter speed – lots of jiggles rendering a somewhat interesting image that looks more like a flock of white birds and their poop. Check it out.

Picture

We were on the road shortly after 6 wending our way down the last 50 miles of the Trace. Along the way we saw Crows working on 2 road kill biomasses – 1 in each lane. On our side was an Armadillo; on the other, an Opossum; both belly up. We fanaticized about what might have been going down when they were killed. Possum: “I’m more primitive than you.” Armadillo: “No, I’m w-a-a-a-a-y more primitive.” Bam, bam, both dead – now who’s more primitive? Crows: “Breakfast.”

Then we came to another triple play. Within ~100 yards of each other, we saw a small herd of yearling deer go scurrying off into the underbrush. Then there was a Red Tail bounding around in the ditch. And then we came across a large flock of Turkey standing on a mowed bank next to the road. Every few hundred yards were Crows picking edibles off the pavement. And then another bit of unusual road kill – a Beaver. What’s up with all this road kill on such a tranquil roadway? Dunno.

Our last stop was the Loess: windblown material from the deglaciation of the north. It seemed pretty weird to see Loess at our southern most point, but there it was in all its glory. At 8:30, we were at milepost 1 of the Trace. Bittersweet feelings coursed through our bodies. We were anxious to get on with the trip, but the Trace has been so good, we were reluctant to leave it. For the record, while on the Trace our moving average was 35 MPH; overall average, 25 MPH. That’s the kind of driving we like, especially when there is so much to see.

Unfortunately, we have to do the grownup thing and today is a work day for us. We found the city of Natchez very easy to navigate on a sleepy Saturday morning, so that part went well. Almost immediately, we picked up US-84

and headed across the Mississippi River. I really wanted to get a picture of the bridge and flat land beyond but … the light changed and we had to move on, so I’ve put someone else’s picture in the link. Beep, beep …

We kept seeing strange signs along the road about Camino Real. They showed a sketch map of GA, AL, MS, LA & TX with a wiggly line cutting across all 5 states. Janie googled it and discovered that US-84 follows an old road for travelers leaving GA and heading west to make their fame and fortune. Hey, another trace. Ah, but this one is not nearly as nice as the Natchez. In fact, it got a little gruesome as we got closer to Shreveport. But once in TX, when it wasn’t coincident with a more trafficked highway, it was pretty nice … and … it headed to the Llano Estacado (Palisaded, Stockaded, or Staked Plains – much more about that later).

As we motored along Camino Real, we saw a very good sign: a GBH sitting bolt upright in the tippy-top of the tallest tree in the area … and pointing our way west toward NM. We crossed the storied Red River at noon; the Sabine River at 1 PM and stopped at a roadside park west of Tehana TX for lunch. Guess what we saw blooming in the grass: Spring Beauties. Holy crap, it will be April or May before they bloom at home.

We rumbled into Fairfield SP, Fairfield TX late evening in need of a shower and a dump station. We found both … and … a nice lake reflecting a glorious sunset. This isn’t the SW yet, but we can certainly see and feel the influence. It was warm enough to sit outside. Yay!

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1/30/11 Sunday … Fairfield Lake SP, Fairfield TX to Mohahans Sandhills SP, Mohahans TX …We were up at o’dark thirty … actually a little after 4 AM and on the road before dawn. Well, that’s what happens when you go to bed at 8. It was an incredible 65 degrees out, 74 in, and a little overcast, trapping yesterday’s residual warmth. Early Sunday morning meant we only had to watch for wildlife on the road, so it all went very smoothly. Last night we planned a route south of Dallas/Ft Worth, across the Staked Plains and into the Valley of Fires in NM. We found a nice road (TX-6) that we could pick up in Waco and take NW to our destination.

We started out on US-84 through Mexia: nice pavement, paved berm wide enough to drive on while locals zoom down the two-lane road at speeds in excess of 70 mph (the legal limit). We have no intention of going 70 on any road; certainly not this two-lane. Fortunately, the little traffic existed was very gentile – hey, it was Sunday. As the terrain rolled by, the Oak woods typical of East TX became scrubbier and eventually gave way to the Juniper of West TX. Just outside Waco we saw a Bald Eagle perched in a tree surveying Lake Waco. Neat.

We picked up TX-6, a wonderful road with very little traffic, that passed through interesting little western towns. Main Streets with western porches hanging out over the sidewalk and supported by actual rustic cedar trunks and saloons and BBQ joints and … one place we would have stopped if it hadn’t been only 8 AM. An authentic rustic sign proclaimed it to be “Beans & Taters”. Is that what they served or were those nicknames of the proprietors? Whatever, beans & taters always sound good to me, though they don’t smell too good when I’ve finished with them.

We are seeing lots of cattle and an amazing number of goats. Hmmm, I wonder if Texans realize they might be providing goat meat to Muslims? Hey, the money spends, right? Hico was a neat little town with 20’ tall spurs outside one building … and a 5’ tall companion, and the requisite Billy the Kid statue/story. People certainly are creative. We’re seeing old buildings with interesting murals and lots of Dr Pepper signs, both new and old. Just off the road to the south is the occasional bluff looming above the otherwise flat terrain. Every now and then we’d see a bluff crowned with a HUGE house; significantly larger than the McMansions we see at home. They were at least 3 stories with one level completely encircled by a wrap-around porch. These “homes” were larger than some of the towns we passed through. Lots of money; I wonder how much of one of these “mansions” is actually used.

Here’s a sign one doesn’t see often: “Watch For Cowboys Praying”. Sure enough, just outside Dublin TX was a barn-like structure completely surrounded by parked pickups and a few cars. People were out tending to grills and tables – a Sunday BBQ, y’all. Across the road a store advertised Roping & Horse Equipment – just what a cowboy needs - along with his Bible.

Hey, it’s time for breakfast. While Janie prepared the granola, I decided to have a look-see at the weather. We hadn’t checked it for a few days because it was so nice we assumed everything was going to fall our way. Wrong! I looked up Lubbock, the largest city in the area and discovered to my horror there was a weather advisory for Arctic air moving in. The prediction: by Tuesday it was going to be ZERO degrees in Lubbock. Holy crap, it was a balmy 65 this morning and in a couple days it would be zero. Recalculating, Recalculating …

After studying the map and the weather prognostications, we decided it would be prudent to get on I-20 and head SW as fast as we could. We continued on TX-6 to Eastland where we picked up the “big” road. Onward to Abilene, Sweetwater & its companion town: Stinky Creek (“Stay for the day then GO AWAY!”). Who names these places and who comes up with these sayings? The Sweetwater name looms big in our personal history. Back in the 70’s, Mikey & Bob were trying to come up with a name for their bar. I wanted to call it “The Bar” because that’s how we were

going to refer to it anyway: “Hey, goin’ to The Bar tonight?” They took a map of TX, closed their eyes (after a few adult beverages), and pointed … to Sweetwater TX. That became the name of the bar. Good thing they weren’t off a quarter inch or it would have been “Stinky Creek”. “Hey, you goin’ to Stinky Creek tonight?” ”No, I’m going to Sweetwater; later I may fall into Stinky Creek”.We like the current motto for Sweetwater: “if you are bored here, it’s your own fault” – good attitude.

There’s another interesting aspect to Sweetwater. It bills itself as the Wind Energy Capital Of The World. We passed literally miles of wind turbines: some atop the far ridgeline; others in neat rows like an orchard of white, graceful windmills dotting the plains. It was interesting to see the mixture of wind turbines and old oil-wells. The whole Permian Basin is covered with oil wells, and more are being drilled by the big rigs we saw scattered about. It’s all about energy … we need it to get to NM. Gas prices are still in the $3 range: lowest = $2.85; highest … well, that was back in NYS at around $3.50. Hey, it’s only money, right? RVan averages a little over 15 mpg … and that includes the 16.5 we got while cruising the Trace. Yay!

We motored on past Big Spring, Midland, Odessa, avoiding Crawford. Along the way, we saw a group of at least 20 Sandhill Cranes standing in the open scrub about a hundred yards from the road. Amazing. Eventually, we ended up in Monahans TX where we found the most incredible state park within sight of the freeway: Monahans Sandhills State Park. It seems there is a band of sand dunes – up to 70’ tall in places – in the area; this part was acquired by the state in ‘57. There is a neat sign over the entrance road – like those ranch signs you see out west – and the visitor center looks like it was designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright disciple. We signed up for a campsite, grabbed our binos and western bird book and headed to the nature trail. Birds were flitting all around and we were anxious to see what they were. For such an apparently barren habitat, there was an amazing number of birds. This place is a birding heaven.

Even before we started the trail we were greeted by a Cactus Wren and a Pyrrhuloxia, both sitting in the same Honey Mesquite. We were only about 10 yards into the trail when we flushed a pair of White-Winged Doves (life bird). On the walk we discovered Canyon Towhee (life bird) and Black-Throated Sparrow (not a life bird, but it’s been a long time). The life birds are unique to the extreme SW along the Mexican border and this park is on the very eastern edge of their normal habitat. We are essentially in the desert here. Janie just reported that we’ve seen something like 54 species of birds on the trip so far and 10 unique ones here in Monahans. Great place; we’ll have to come back.

Okay, so here I sit with the doors open. When I started writing this, the setting sun was warming me almost to the point of discomfort. But now, the sky is a ruddy red where the ol’ sun used to be and the evening chill is filtering in. I’m going to need more clothes … and beer. Janie went off exploring with the camera. Hmmm, camera, sand, bad combination, but good shots.

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After dinner we turned out all the lights, opened our skylight curtain and gazed like school kids at the myriad stars. Oh, the stars at night are big and bright dum, dum, dum, dum … out here in Monahans Sandhills. Ahhhhhhh …

1/31/11 Monday (Janie’s 60th Birthday) … Mohahans Sandwhills SP, Mohahans TX (2) …Happy 60th to Janie. We decided to celebrate her day by doing … very little. We got up at 6:30; 48 in; 35 out. The 1% Crescent Moon and Jupiter were still very visible in the eastern sky. We enjoyed our morning beverages watching the sun rise over the distant dunes. We’re not in NM yet, but it was still enchanting. Then we geared up for a 4 mile birding trek down the park road to the visitor center, around the little nature trail and back. When we started, it was a chilly 35 degrees. We wore tights under our long pants and – count ‘em – four layers on top … plus knit gloves. And we were still a little chilly. Ah, but the sun kept rising and by the time we finished it was 65 … and we were HOT.

So what did we see on our little birding trek? Lots of the same birds we saw yesterday plus a Loggerhead Shrike, immature male Kestrel, Red Tail, and Vesper Sparrow. We spied the Shrike in a Mesquite and just as we were enjoying it, the Kestrel flew in and scared it off. They compete for the same sort of prey, and the Kestrel is dominant. The whole outing lasted about 2.5 hours – longer than we intended. But we fully enjoyed it – except for the getting too hot part at the end.

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While Janie was doing I don’t know what, I transferred some drinking water from our 2 gal storage bags into our 64 oz bottles. Then we packed up our stuff and headed out for Monahans, the town, where we scored some bread, milk ($0.99 for a half gallon) and lunch meat. Then we filled up RVan with $2.99 10% ethanol gas and headed north on the smallest roads that went anywhere. We just wanted to get off freeways and tour the countryside. All in all, it was an 80 mile jaunt that took us to Kermit (named after Teddy Roosevelt’s son who hunted Pronghorn in the area) and

Wink. Yep, Wink … THAT Wink … the place Roy Orbison spent his formative years. So what happened on this little outing?

Our drive took us through very flat land dotted with pump jacks (oil-well rocker-heads). Most were inactive, but some were pumping away looking for all the world like those tourist-trap wooden-birds you put on the side of a glass of water and they dip in and then bob back up and then repeat. It wasn’t too scenic otherwise, and the towns we drove through looked pretty depressed. But, hey, it’s not an IOF.

Our lives are pretty sedate; we don’t live on the edge, as they say. In fact, most of the time, you can’t even see the edge from where we stand/sit/drive. So while we were white-knuckling it down the overcrowded freeways, I had this little thought that brought a smile to my face. What do we actually do for the coveted adrenaline rush of youthful exuberance? Well, we do wild and crazy things like … drive around in a parking lot without our seatbelts on. Oh yeah, we are wild and crazy people.

However, we did have a little adrenaline rush in Kermit. It was in a parking area, but we weren’t driving. It was in the town park, which, like most western towns where space is abundant, was several acres in size and quite nice (green rectangle on the Kermit map). As we finished, I walked over to the driver’s side and, to my horror, saw oil dripping from the left-front wheel well. I looked around and found oil all the way back to the left-rear wheel well. I opened the hood and checked for obvious leaks and then checked all our fluid levels. No noticeable leaks and all levels were just fine. Back to the wheel wells. Hmmm, the oil is also splattered up onto the top of the wheel wells – like it was flung there from the tires. No oil on the tires, however. Hmmm … I quickly reached the conclusion that we’d run over some oil … with all the oil wells in the area, it seemed a pretty safe assumption. Still, I was more than a little concerned. Surely I would remember driving through that much oil?

Hoping for the best, we drove through town past an old filling-station converted into a vehicle repair facility. As we drove by, one of the mechanics came out and started crossing the road. I did a U-turn and pulled up beside him. “Do you work at that garage?” “Yes.” “If I pulled in, do you suppose someone would have time to look at our van?” “What’s the problem?” I explained the situation, he took a look and said, “That’s just oil from the road; they oil the roads.” Ok, I felt a little better. But still, it looked way more like fresh motor oil than road oil. Whatever, we did another U-turn and headed to Wink.

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Originally, the town was named Winkler after a Civil War hero from the area. Later they found out there was already a Winkler, so they just went with Wink. The water tower with the name emblazoned on it is a shocking pink – you really don’t expect to see such things in TX. Right there on Main Street was the Roy Orbison Museum. We stopped in front of it; Janie got out while I took notes. She came back and said, “Open by appointment a month in advance.” Okay, we don’t have an appointment or a month to wait, so we took some pictures and went to the Post Office for stamps. The woman there said it hadn’t rained in this area for 6 months. If someone even thinks about lighting a match, they stomp on ‘em. We’d noticed things were pretty dry, but we also assumed that was pretty normal. Guess not.

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It was Janie’s day, and she was setting the itinerary. She took a look at the map and said, “That sand hills place was very nice; let’s go back for another night.” Well, she didn’t have to convince me; I was ready to sign up for a second night before we left this morning. We drove back through Monahans, the town, took some pictures of the neat metal signs, and ended up back at the park visitor center. While Janie was registering, I had a long conversation with the ranger dude, David Dotter, we talked to last evening. He wanted to know what birds we saw, so I told him all I could remember – my “brain” was busy paying for our campsite.

Monahans SP Map

Ranger Dave paused for a moment, like he was trying to think of something, and then he said, “You want to take a hike?” I said, “Sure.” He then took me over to an aerial photo of the park. He pointed to the visitor center, then the road to the campground. Then he said, “Go back to the Pump Jack Picnic Area, duck under the barricade, and follow the jeep track to the boundary fence; take a right along the fence until you get to the cattle guard; then use your imagination and follow the tracks out to the place where the animals dig in a low spot for water. It’s a couple miles, but you should see lots of interesting stuff out there.” Wow, okay, it’s only 3 PM and we were wondering what we were going to do with the rest of the day. Oh, we need to be back to camp by 6 because it was supposed to start raining. Yeah, right.

We set up camp in #22 (#25 last night), geared up, and started walking to the Pump Jack. Sure enough, there was a barricade, so we ducked under and followed the road to the fence. Hmmm, this seems like a long way … we continued along the fence … still longer … to the cattle guard. Then we trudged along the very sandy and mostly

covered tracks on and on and on … until we got to a rise. Looking around we could see the Pump Jack … wow, not very far at all … cross country. It turns out we were doing 2 legs of a right triangle; the view back to the Pump Jack was along the hypotenuse. Eventually we came to a sunken area with lots of vegetation … must be the water hole. Down we went only to find some dry pits dug out by deer and such … no water whatsoever. Hey, it was a good hike.

So what did we see on our evening outing? A ten-point Mule Deer grazing off in the distance. There was absolutely nothing green to be seen, so he must have been eating dried vegetation. Yummy. As we came to a small rise, a Northern Harrier swooped across our path just above head height. Seems odd to see a ‘Northern’ Harrier this far south, but a quick look at the book showed that they winter here … and even further south. Judging from all the rodent and lizard tracks in the sand, he could make a good living here. We also came across another Loggerhead Shrike. They are very striking birds. We flushed a few very large grasshoppers (locusts) along the way. I’ll bet the Shrike would like to make a meal of them.

When we got back to camp, we took several minutes to dump the sand out of our shoes and socks, toes and pant legs. Then we headed for the showers to wash off the rest. Angry-looking clouds are moving in from the NW, and we expect much cooler air to move in tonight. But it is 63 right now, my beer is gone, and it’s time to rustle up some grub. We’ve had 2 four-mile treks today, so I’m looking forward to something substantial.

Janie had a good day, which just happens to be day 13,260 of our life together. Yeah, we keep track of these things, so get over it.

2/1/11 Tuesday … Mohahans Sandhills SP, Mohahans TX to Siesta RV Park, Las Cruces NM …About 8:30 last night, RVan started rockin’. No, not for that reason. The much advertised cold front arrival was announced by stiff, gusty winds … and plummeting temperatures. It was in the mid 50s when we ate dinner; by the time we went to bed it was 40. There was a little rain during the night and that little bit of moisture was flash-frozen leaving a solid crust on the usually pliable sand. By the time we got up, it was 22 outside but a relatively toasty 38 inside. Thanks to the furnace, that 38 quickly jumped to 55 by the time we crawled out from under the fleece blanket and double thick down sleeping bags.

It was cloudy and the sun was slow in brightening the dark, so we sat in RVan and enjoyed morning beverages. Finally pulled out of Monahans SP around 8:30 and quickly got on I-20 headed toward El Paso. Yesterday I noticed 2 speed limit signs posted along the highway a few yards apart, but didn’t pay attention to the actual numbers. Today I read ‘em. The first one gave the speed limit for trucks (70, 65 at night); the second one was for everyone else (80, 65 night). EIGHTY … they expect me to go eighty? No way; certainly not today. Fortunately, there was very little traffic and it was going slow in deference to the weather conditions. Those conditions were tolerable by NY standards, but I feared they were going to deteriorate … and they did. We found solace in the frontage (or access road) that runs along both sides of I-20; speed limit 70 for a regular two-lane road. Ah, but there was essentially no traffic, so I could cruise at 45-50 while the others zipped by on the “big road”. That was great – until we got to the dead end. Back on I-20 until the access road showed up again.

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Van Horn TX sits in a low spot in the first true mountains we’d seen and, as you might expect, provided the most snow for the day. The roads were actually covered in some areas and a tad slick. Almost everyone throttled back and we fell right in place behind a United Moving Vans truck that had settled in at 50. Janie amused me with readings from the Texas Travel Guide that provides interesting stories about many of the towns in the area. Van Horn’s entry made us both giggle: “The town so healthy we had to shoot a man to start a cemetery.” It gets even better when you read on and learn that the first man buried in the cemetery was the guy who coined that phrase. It seems he got in an argument with his brother-in-law about water rights. That argument was settled the time-honored western way – the brother-in-law shot him dead. Ha!

Van Horn is also famous for Chuy’s Restaurant, which is in John Madden’s “Haul” of Fame. As you might guess, we did not stop. Aside from being able to set your own pace on the access road, you go through the little towns that I-20 bypasses. One of those was Sierra Blanca, which bills itself as “Sierra Blanca, the Nation's Largest Sewage Dump”. Right there in the middle of town that only stretches 2 Texas-size blocks we found The Lodge. Although it was given a 5* rating back in ’08, it seems to have fallen on hard times in ‘011. It is now a defunct motel with wonderful stone work and western appointments that has, alas, gone to seed. Ah, but there’s hope because there was a big banner hanging across the building: Temporarily Closed For Remodeling. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no evidence of remodeling other than the sign. Across the road from The Lodge were the remains of the old State Theater. It was a sad but picturesque image.

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Well, we were making pretty good progress, and the next thing we knew, we were nearing the outskirts of El Paso. Our toilet flusher valve was not working properly – you have to push the trap door down to empty the bowl. That’s

not a real problem for winter travel like this, but it will have to be fixed before an outing when we have running water and need to flush the toilet without getting quite so personally involved, if you know what I mean. We’d seen lots of RV places in bigger cities along I-20 and thought we’d stop in El Paso. If no one could help us there, then we’d try in Las Cruces. Janie looked ‘em up on the Internet and we stopped at the first one we came to: Horizon RV. That leads to a very long story that, fortunately, ends well for all concerned.

The Horizon RV place only sold used RVs and those back-half of pickups people use for trailers. There were also several old bikes stacked up against the building. The building – hmmm, how do I describe it? Let’s start with the “parking lot”; it was littered with RVs, RV parts, trucks, truck parts, bikes, bike parts; stuff like that. Paved? No way. All sand, and not flat sand, more like miniature sand dunes. The building was pretty much a shed with old weathered wood and a storm door with glass, but no screen, that was blown open by every gust of the wind. There was a western-style porch with old truck seats for furniture. Normally, I would just have turned around and gone to the next place, but I wanted to find out what the problem was, if it was common, and how it could be repaired. Soooo, I swallowed hard and went in.

“I have a toilet problem.” The middle-aged but very trim and neat looking guy (Mark) asked me to describe my issue, then he said those traps sometimes get solids stuck under them and all that’s needed is to take a wire and run it around to clean it out. We discussed the particulars a bit more before we went out to look at it. It was then that he got a bit of a frown and said, “This is a ten year old toilet; this sort of thing happens. You can try to fix it, but you’d be much better off replacing the whole assembly.” Now this is what I expected. You know, local repair people taking advantage of travelers. Back in his office, I spent about half an hour just talking to Mark about the toilet and things in general. I notice a BBB certificate on the wall. I learned that he is an avid biker, has done missionary work, is originally from Hamilton Ontario, moved his family to Mexico, then to El Paso, going to be 60 in March … we sort of bonded. By that time, I had developed a trust in him, and there wasn’t any other business to interfere with doing our work. Let’s give it a shot. He got out a catalog and looked up the price of a new toilet and showed me what it would cost; they could do it in about an hour at $75/hr. Okay, that sounded pretty good even though I was pretty sure it would end up being more like 2 or 3 hours before it was all done.

It was about then I saw this bundled up man/woman (I couldn’t really tell because the face was almost completely covered) come pedaling down the extremely busy road, pulling up in the sand in front of the building, and leaning the bike against the porch. Eventually, this biker person came inside and sat down in an old car seat. No one uttered a word. I saw all this while Mark was calling the “big RV store” to see if they had a toilet in stock – they did – and he called his “‘worker guy” to pick it up. After that, Mark & I continued our conversation. I pumped him for information about RVs and learned quite a bit: don’t get a Port-A-Potty, for example. During that discussion, Mark made reference to Mike – the biker person. So now at least I knew it was (probably) male. After Mike left, Mark said Mike was a homeless guy and he, Mark, had given him the bike and sometimes buys him lunch.

While we were waiting for the toilet to arrive, we talked about biking. Mark told us about a 125 mile trail that heads north out of Montreal. Really nice, Beavers and everything. We told him about the Natchez and showed him the web site for the Rails To Trail Conversancy. Then Mark decided to show us his bikes. I thought maybe they were the derelict-looking things out back. Nope, he pulled out a really nice road bike from the back room. It was very light and sophisticated looking. He said he got it from some guy who decided biking wasn’t for him – a $2000 bike for $400. Then he pulled out his Trek hardtail. Real nice. Next came an older road bike that he got at a yard sale for $40. The seat was worth that much. It had a couple of broken spokes so he swapped out a wheel from one of the $10 yard-sale bikes out back and viola he’s got a very serviceable road bike.

About that time the white pickup with the worker guy, Bobby, and our new toilet arrived. Bam. The toilet was being installed before we knew it. Oops, there was a bit of a problem with the water line connection, so they had to take Mark’s other white pickup down to the hardware to get some parts. That left us in the office with Nathan, who seemed to be some sort of partner and was currently living in one of the pickup campers Mark had for sale. Mark had actually showed me the inside earlier when we were talking about campers. It seems Nathan has done a little of just about everything – and we quickly found out why. Nathan can’t focus. He’d start a story about his missionary work in China and end with a detailed description of a portable, solar-powered shower he was working on. Was that in China? No, that’s right here. We were relieved when Mark and Bobby got back with the plumbing parts.

While Bobby did his magic in RVan, I asked Mark why so many people have white pickups out here in the west. I remember them from previous trips and had noticed them this time. You know those nice, brawny 4x4 white-pickups that you see pulling out of dirt roads. They are almost always splattered with red mud. Why so many white pickups? Mark thought a bit and said, “Maybe because of the heat. A dark vehicle will get pretty hot in the summer, or maybe because of all those white government trucks.” Ah, that must be it. All my problems have been solved. Janie paid the guy for 1 hour of labor; we shook hands and wished each other well. On to Las Cruces.

OMG, look at that mass of black clouds on the horizon. As soon as we crossed into NM, we stopped at a welcome center to check on the weather and get suggestions for places to camp. The nice lady said they were expecting up to 4 inches of snow and it would be starting any time now. Ah, so that’s what those dark clouds mean. We had

hoped to go to Aguirre Springs National Recreation Area. There was camping there but it was described as “high desert” and the road to it as “steep”. Hmmm, maybe not the best place to go if they are expecting 4 inches of snow. When we told her that we were headed for Silver City tomorrow, she said, “The road to Silver City was closed today. Maybe it will be open tomorrow.” Great, we need to get off this road and in a campsite NOW. Back to RVan and on down the road looking for a place to park.

Look, there’s an RV place right there. Exit here. We did. Although there were several RVs parked in sites, there was absolutely no one in the otherwise open office. We waited and waited for someone to show up. I went out back and flushed 4 White-Winged Doves. Holy crap, just a couple days ago these were life birds, now they are hanging out in RV parks. Still no one came out, so we got in RVan and left. Their loss, but we still need a place to hole up for the storm. Onward …

Okay, there must be a Wal-Mart in Las Cruces – they allow you to park overnight in Supercenter lots. Yep, there’s one right off I-10 very close to an AAA approved RV place (Siesta RV Park). Let’s check it out. Wal-Mart looked like a good backup; there were other RVs there and it was in a good neighborhood but still close to a very busy road. We found the RV place … hey, pretty nice. We went in and found out we could get a site for $19. Okay, free at Wal-Mart amid the hubbub of a main artery or out on the edge of the desert with a view of the mountains to our east. Here’s our $19; we’re home for the night. It’s going to be a COLD night and even colder tomorrow. We’ll be cuddled up for sure.

2/2/11 Wednesday … Siesta RV Park, Las Cruces NM to Silver City NM …11 degrees out, 51 in; light snow; 2-3” overnight; Happy Groundhog Day (do they do that out here? Maybe Happy Marmot Day)

We were buffeted by a busy north wind all night and it deposited a significant load of snow here in Las Cruces. RVan windows were plastered with the stuff. I had to get out, open the running board compartment, and dig out the ice scraper that we’ve been carrying around for 10 years but never used – before today – in Las Cruces NM - sheese. I assumed the 11 degree temp would result in solidly frozen snow. Oh contraire, most of it came off with just the brush of a gloved hand. Strange. Still, the ground was covered and it didn’t look like it was going to melt anytime soon. Soooo, we went to the bathhouse – and a short conversation with the proprietress. She told us that Las Cruces was mostly closed – schools and businesses – AND - the road to Silver City was closed – again or still. Hmmm, guess we’ll have to mill around here for a while and hope things improve.

Around 10 we saw the “man of the manor” sweeping off his porch, so I took the opportunity to ask him about the weather. He had a slightly different story: I-10 was open, the road to Silver City was okay, Silver City, at 5895’ would have some snow issues but they should be cleared up by afternoon. Holy cow, how did he know the elevation right down to the foot? I’m guessing he’s a retired trucker - they need to know these details. Ok, I guess we’ll fire up RVan and give it a shot. We can always come back here for another night if need be. Onward …

We had only gone a quarter mile when a guy in a pickup hit the gas to pull out in front of us and fishtailed 270 degrees. Fortunately, it was only an embarrassment issue. These people really aren’t familiar with slippery conditions – even if they put oil on their roads.

When we got on I-10, we discovered the road to be clear due to the truck traffic – and – traffic was proceeding with respectful caution: “We were all in this together so let’s be sensible.” We were grateful for that attitude because we couldn’t retreat to the access road – it was completely covered with snow & ice. We must soldier on with the Big Boys. Ah, but we were entertained by Chihuahuan Ravens and Lark Buntings. The Buntings looked very uncomfortable and hungry as they pecked at last fall’s seed leavings along the side of the road.

Soon enough we were in Deming where we picked up NM-180, known locally as North Gold Street. So here we were heading up Gold Street on our way to Silver City. Just precious, as Janie says. NM-180 heads NW, like an arrow, up an impressively large pediment surface until you get to the Grant County Airport where it turns due N toward the mining town of Hurley. At that point, we were in the foothills of the Southern Rockies with the valleys narrowing and increasingly large spires closing in.

Next came Bayard and shortly after that, Santa Clara where NM-180 takes a sharp left and heads west into Silver City. The snow cover had been diminishing as we motored up the pediment, but picked up once we got into the progressively narrow valleys. We’d been in communication with BAWB all the way along and he told us to pull in the Wal-Mart parking lot and call when we arrived. We did that very thing, and while we were doing it, we noticed a 2010 Forester creeping up on us as we talked - they were sitting in the same parking lot waiting for us. We got out, hugged, and jumped up and down. We’d made it to Silver City and the reunion was underway.

BAWB instructed us to leave RVan and get in their car. It seems Albertson’s has a 10% senior discount on Wednesdays. This was Wednesday, we are 3/4 senior, 3/4 DOOCs (Divine Order of Only Children), and all DOOC’s gatherings revolve around shopping – especially for food and beverages. Let’s get it on. It turns out BAWB had other

reasons for shopping. They’d just moved into the new-to-them house yesterday, so stocking up was in order. Also, he knew some of the shadowed streets were still snow covered, and he wanted to buy some time for the bright SW sun to melt it off. Hey, no problem, we are always game to investigate a “foreign” grocery and this one was pretty spectacular – lots of AZ & CA influence and therefore alien to us.

After stocking up on like a ton of ribs (buy 2, get 1 free), fresh veggies, and the necessary beverages, we went back to RVan and headed for 3 Crescent Drive, which is actually shown as 3 East Crescent Street on Google. It seems there are THREE Crescent-like streets: East Crescent Street, Crestway Drive, & a third one I can’t seem to call up now (trust me, there was a third one ;-) BAWB pointed out the problem when he said: “It's a bit confusing - even the fire dept. has trouble.”

What became our standard route to get to the house took us past the intersection of 18 th & Juniper . The house located on the NW side of this intersection had a fenced in yard containing 3 Pit Bulls. Now these were not your ordinary Pit Bulls – at least I hope they weren’t. These were F*&%ing Pit Bulls. I say this because nearly every time we passed the house, they were humping. This generated the standard response as we approached the intersection: “F*&%ing Pit Bulls.” We never did figure out if there were 2 males and 1 female or 2 females and 1 male, but they were certainly getting it on with such regularity that we fully expected to see ‘em in a sort of “pleasure chain” any time. In our collective opinion, the only thing worse than Pit Bulls was F*&%ing Pit Bulls. To use BAWB’s phrase: “Future jerky.”

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As you can see from the picture, the house they are sitting is set up beautifully for guest invasions. There are 2 driveways, one for the main house, and one for the “mother-in-law” residence – henceforth known as “our place”. Our place came with its own bed, full bath, kitchen, and dining area - a house within a house. I backed RVan into “our” drive and we unloaded nearly everything into our new digs. Good thing because it was going to get VERY COLD tonight – into the negative if not imaginary numbers. Janie & I took the opportunity to wash off some of the accumulated road grime from our persons, put on clean clothes, and join B’n’C upstairs for a very pleasant afternoon/evening of setting up computers, sharing programs, telling stories, and drinking very adult beverages. Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler.

================== End of Part 1 …. Start of Part 2 ===================

2/3/11 Thursday … Silver City NM …Good morning campers …BAWB recently purchased a Verizon MiFi device and he was learning how very convenient they can be. This morning, as I was fussing around with our network setup in “our house” I received an email from BAWB: “The drinking lamp is lighted......C'mon up!” Meaning, the coffee’s ready, get your arses up here. We did and commenced to engage in what became the “morning ritual”. BAWB has a Netbook, Char has a Notebook, and we have one of each as well. Thus, we all four had our own computer and that became the morning ritual: sitting at the table while we checked the news, shopped for stuff on line, looked up odd phrases and words, and generally did the technology-takes-over thing. Yes, we even sent emails to each other.

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This morning’s techno-session involved learning just how bad the weather was outside. Hey, you don’t have to actually go outside to check the weather; you can just read about it on your computer. Well, we discovered that it was really, really cold last night. These things happen out here in the high elevations with low humidity and clear night skies. It gets damned cold, but last night was exceptional. We discovered that gas mains had frozen in parts of Silver City. As a result, the university (more about that later) actually closed so the gas it would have used could be diverted to homes in the area.

We eventually mustered the courage to go out to RVan to check on things there. Whoa, it was a frosty 4 degrees in RVan and only 14 in the fridge. Needless to say, everything we’d left in the fridge for safe keeping was now frozen solid. Hell, it was even so cold that the coach battery was low and the CO2 sentry was issuing very feeble beeps of displeasure. Further checking on the weather conditions in the area revealed this was the coldest it had been for 300 years. Don’t know where that figure comes from, but it was certainly cold … just like we’d left it in WNY several days ago. BAWB checked the weather in Anchorage and learned it was a relatively toasty 34 degrees. We drove 3000 miles to be exposed to what we left and B’n’C drove 6000 miles to get worse. Did I hear someone say “global (globel) climate change”?

As you might expect, the local bird population doesn’t have the option of sitting inside and living vicariously through Internet connections. Although it was cold, the sun was out and the air temps were rising rapidly. There are no Common Crows in this part of the world, so the Chihuahuan Ravens have taken over their niche and seem to be thriving in the urbanized portions of the area. Although relatively rare, they are what we call “locally abundant”, as

are White-Winged Doves and Western Scrub Jays that festoon the backyard bushes. And we didn’t even have to go outside ;-)

Coffee long gone, techno-morning drawing to a close, it must be time for lunch. BAWB whipped up a tuna avocado dish that was ever so tasty – a harbinger of things to come for sure – like the rice noodle dish he concocted for dinner.

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We indulged ourselves with an office day. B’n’C needed to get settled in and P’n’J needed some down time to switch from RVan-living to regular house-living. I spent the afternoon trying to organize B’n’C’s FOUR Passport HDs full of stuff. I needed to separate music from video from installation files. You know, moving several TBs of files can be just a tad tedious. BAWB and I spent some time researching NAS boxes so he could consolidate all his stuff in one place. But foist, it all needs to be organized.

Char and I also needed to Monkey around a bit. She already had MediaMonkey installed and they’d purchased the Gold version, but I needed to change some of the operating files to make it show the tag info I’d entered. Hmmm, that was a bit more difficult than anticipated. I was used to doing it on networked computers where I could just cut and paste the necessary edited-files. For some reason, I wasn’t able to get Char’s computer on either Bob’s or our network setups - Vista. Thus, I had to copy the files to a thumb drive and do it the time-honored but tedious way. Whatever, it eventually got done. About the same time I’d finished consolidating the music files, so Char & I were able to start doing the Monkey thing pretty quick.

OMG, while I was organizing the Passport files, I discovered BAWB had added some 60k tracks from other sources. Oh my, our 75k and his 60k – that’s a lot of stuff. Sure, lots of them are duplicates, but still, even if there were only 30k unique files, that’d put me near to 100k tracks. Holy crap, will this ever end? Nope, guess not.

2/4/11 Friday … Silver City NM …24 degrees – A heat wave; another cloudless, sunny SW day – Yay!

We came up with a name for our “morning ritual”. It’s a takeoff on what we did this afternoon – and tend to do most of the time when we are traveling: Drivin’ Around Lookin’ At Stuff (DALAS). Only with the computer morning ritual we call it SALAC (Sittin’ Around Lookin’ At Computers). Ah, but the “noon balloon” did eventually lift off, and we took a very nice driving tour of Silver City and environs under a brilliantly clear SW sky. Hey, what’s that white thing up there in the big blue sky? Why it’s the Moon. The air is so clear out here that you can actually see the Moon even during the brightest daylight. Neat. Didn’t get a picture of the Moon, but did get several shots of local landmarks.

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B’n’C have visited Silver City in the past, and during one of their previous visits, they actually purchased a building lot. Hey, the market’s depressed, it was a great price, why not make an investment in the future? Our SC driving tour eventually ended up at B’n’C’s lot. It is officially known as Lot 12, Hereford Street, which is too new for Google to recognize – but soon it will be on the map I’m sure. Hey, wait, Janie just told me it’s off Branding Iron. On the map, I think Hereford takes off about where the red tack is located. Close enough anyway.

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Hey, it’s time for some lunch … how about trying one of the gazillion Mexican places? Okay, which one? Oh, there’s Georgio’s Kountry Kitchen; let’s do it. B’n’C had been here before, so we were introduced into the way of Mexican dining. As soon as you are given a menu, you have to ask, “Which is HOT, your red or green sauce?” It seems to vary from restaurant to restaurant, and you better know which it is before you order a burrito smothered in the wrong sauce. We ended up with Carnitas Burritos with red and green. Some places won’t actually do halfsies – the chefs won’t tolerate mixing ‘em – so we just order one of each type. There you go, more to experiment with and you can mix’n’match to your heart and pallet’s delight. This was our first experience with Carnitas … it wasn’t the last. And the chips … well, they are served hot and are nothing like the salt-drenched things we get back home. Yummy, delightful, and filling.

You know what? The Super Bowl is only a couple days away … maybe we need to get an HDTV … AND … you never have enough Passport HDs … let’s go to Wal-Mart and see what they have in the “necessary electronics” area. What's this? Until recent years, all BAWB said about the Super Bowl was, "it's some kind of sports event, right?" It seemed sports was one of the few things BAWB knew little about. But now that he’s experienced the grandeur of HD, he is actually becoming a fan … as in fanatic. Oh, look, there’s the Vizio 37” 1080p. That’s the one that just fits in that slot on the boat. But wait, the boat’s in AK and we are in NM. Oh, no problem, it’ll fit in the back of the Forester for the drive home … along with the new bike … and all the other stuff we “picked up” … and the stuff we brought down … and … maybe a hitchhiker or two.

Okay, I was impressed. This is the smallest HDTV I’ve seen with 1080 resolution. Hell, I could use it as a monitor. Oops, they don’t seem to have any on the shelf. Oh helpful service person, could you please check to see if you have any of these in the storeroom? Several minutes later … after having been exposed to a middle-aged woman decked out in Packer Green & Gold … we were informed that they didn’t have any but were expecting a truckload that had been delayed by the worst-in-300-years weather. Hey, how about the store model? Nope, can’t do that, store policy. Yeah, but we won’t tell, you could just pull it off the wall, put it in any old box, put our cash in your pocket … who’d know. At that point the salesperson pointed toward the ceiling where the remote cameras are located. Oh, that, damn Big Brother anyway.

Okay, what about that Passport? We went to the shelves where such things are displayed, found the empty slot, read the shelf label, and, true to our usual shopping experience, discovered the 1 Tb Passport was supposed to be right there … in the empty slot … because it was on special … gone … who buys all “our” stuff? Hey, maybe there will be more on the “special truck” coming in any day. We’ll be back tomorrow to check. Hey, let’s go buy some beer.

We got to the house in time for what BAWB calls “Kibbles & Bits”: nibble-y things gleaned from the fridge. Hey, we had a late, large lunch, so “Kibbles & Bits” were just perfect. Also, we were in a bit of a rush because … we were going to a basketball game. Let me fill in the back story.

Any (Halloran) Sheldon has a sister, Jenny. They grew up in Pittsford NY – a suburb of Rochester, although people from Pittsford don’t like to admit that in public. Jenny graduated from Geneseo a couple years after Amy, then went on to get a PhD in Psychology at Drew University in Madison, NJ. At the same time, Mark Coleman was a basketball coach at Drew. When he and Jenny met, Mark had just accepted a job in NM. They fell in love, and Jenny moved to NM to be with Mark – that cross-country trip is a story in itself. This is one of those small-world things that kept coming up on this trip. Mark is from Henrietta NY – another suburb of Rochester – and only a few miles from Pittsford. Of course, they didn’t know each other in NY; they had to go to NJ to meet and to NM to get married.

So where in NM is this university where Jenny & Mark work? Well, in Silver City of course. Yep, Western New Mexico University is right here on the western (fittingly) side of town. I’d known the basic story for years, but assumed they were in Socorro NM. I didn’t even know there was a college in Silver City. Well, there is and it’s called Western New Mexico State University. We’d been in contact with Jenny and she said there were a couple of basketball games this weekend and she’d leave our names at the ticket office so we could get in free. Hey, free is good. We wanted to reconnect with Jenny, and to watch a free basketball game is just icing on the cake. Oh, did I mention that Mark is black? Well, that’s even more icing on the story cake. They have a son, Kona, who celebrated his 4th birthday the day we arrived in Silver City. Icing on icing.

Here’s a YouTube interview with Mark: LINK. It’s pretty impressive.

We arrived at the basketball arena just as the teams were finishing their warm-ups. Jenny had told us she’d be sitting behind the home-team bench and that’s just where we found her, along with Kona and the assistant coach’s wife, Jessica. We had just enough time to greet each other before the game started. Oh what a game. It went into OT and the WNMU Mustangs finally prevailed over the Ft Lewis Skyhawks 93-88. Janie’s hands were all red from clapping; the rest of us were hoarse from cheering; it was just a grand time. Mark pulled all the right strings and made the right substitutions at all the appropriate times. It was masterful. We are HOOKED on ‘Tang B-Ball.

We were still a little jazzed when we got back to the house. We actually stayed up until midnight SATAS (Sittin’ Around Talkin’ About Stuff).

2/5/11 Saturday … Silver City NM …If you’ve read the email banter, you know that AJ (Romanelli) & Karen (Leifheit) had hoped to fly over for a visit – AJ belongs to a flying club – he would have landed in Silver City at the Whiskey Creek Airport – can it get any better than that? Well, it seems BAWB, being a former private-pilot himself, was pretty excited about the prospect. This AM he informed us of his dream about AJ Kokopelli. How weird is that? It turns out AJ had too many other engagements to make it while we were there, and the week after we left, there was this huge storm that prevented his flying – at least flying where he wanted to go. Next time.

I also had a little bit of a dream realized. Bob has 4 Passports: 2 @ 500 Gb, 2 @ 1 Tb. When you hook 2 of the same size into the same computer, the computer only sees 1 of the drives because they both have the same signature. This was making the transferring of files very difficult. That morning, I went to the WD Forum site and found a solution. All you have to do is go to Disk Manager, find the unrecognized device, and click the “Online” entry and it will pop us as a regular drive. It is ever so easy if you know how to do it.

Okay, one more day before the Super Bowl. We didn’t get that Vizio HDTV, so we better check the very small, indigenous LDTV to see if we can get FOX. Well, as it turns out, it only gets like 4 channels and only 1 of them was

any good at all … and that one just happened to be FOX. Okay, we have a fallback – but we could still use a nice HDTV.

We’d been in Silver City for 3 days and hadn’t spent any real time outside. Oh sure, we we do look out the windows a lot as we DALAS, but we hadn’t taken advantage of the great weather to personally interact with the terrain. Let’s take a hike. What hike? Where to? I was totally immersed in the file organization thing while the other 3 were planning an outing. I just gathered up my stuff and jumped in the car when told to do so. It sort of reminded me of my Army days. (Bog originally typed “my Amy days”, which isn’t too different from the Army – when Amy says JUMP, most of us JUMP!)

Silver City History dates back to the 1860s. It doesn’t have a Main Street now, but it once did. It seems they laid the town out so Main Street was pretty much a straight, downhill shot. The first heavy rain … well, here’s the story from Wikipedia:

“The town had originally been designed with the streets running north to south. The town was also built in the path of normal water runoff. Businesses sprang up and people learned to deal with the inconveniences of the summer rain. Silver City was built with high sidewalks in the downtown area to accommodate high flood waters. Meanwhile, uncontrolled grazing thinned down plant life on hills surrounding the town. During the night of July 21, 1895, a wall of water rushed through the downtown business district, leaving a trail of destruction. A ditch 55 feet (17 m) lower than the original street level was created in what was once known as Main Street. Businesses on Main Street began using their back doors on Bullard Street as main entrances and eventually, were permanently used as the new front entrances. To this day, the incorrect odd/even addressing conventions on the east side of Bullard Street are a reminder that the buildings were addressed on Main Street originally, not Bullard Street. Main Street now ends near the back of the Silver City Police Station, where the Big Ditch Park begins.”

So now there is this “Big Ditch” that runs the length of the city right where Main Street used to be. The San Vicente Trail follows along the stream from Gila Street all the way to the Golf Course south of town. That’s where we took our first outing.

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While we were walking along enjoying the totally marvelous day, we met up with a woman doing the same thing. We struck up a conversation and learned: her name is Valerie, she’s a mining engineer from Bisbee AZ, she’s in SC recovering from an illness, she’s very fed up with AZ – especially after the Gabby Giffords incident, she plans to move to SC permanently. Like so many other people we met in SC, she was extremely upfront with her political views. Nearly everyone is a liberal and doesn’t seem to care what your political position is; they tell you theirs forthrightly; a twist on the usual situation. Also true to the SC mode, Valerie had just happened on to a rental, the owners talked her down from $900 to $750/month … and … when she told them she didn’t have any furniture, they offered some for free. Really nice people down here … I think I like the one-for-all-all-for-one frontier spirit.

There really wasn’t much in the way of bird activity. We watched a bunch of Ravens harassing a couple Red Tails. Just watching them soar around in the crystal-clear blue sky was exhilarating. We saw Western Bluebirds off across the stream valley, a Yellow-Rumped Warbler, and got a really good view of a female Belted Kingfisher. When the trail became less obvious, we turned around and headed back. The original idea was to call BAWB to pick us up where he’d dropped us before he went shopping and schmoozing. Hell, it was such a great day we walked through town, across the “big roads”, and up to the house. That pretty much doubled our hike, but, hey, it was all good.

So what did we have to eat as a result of BAWB’s all-day shopping/schmoozing? Well, it turned out to be hot dogs (Hebrew National) and Bob-made slaw. Hey, we got a basketball game tonight; don’t have time for an elaborate dining experience. Not that there’s anything wrong with dogs’n’slaw. Bob’s slaw is wonderful and the Hebrew Nationals, well there’s a story there as well.

When we were in AK the first time, B’n’C wanted to serve fishy things. I sometimes have a problem with them, so BAWB cooked up a couple dogs for me. They were wonderful. When I asked about them, he said: “Costco”. It seemed everything was from Costco so I didn’t pursue it any further. The second time we were in AK, we actually went to Costco to get foodstuffs for the boat. It was lunch time, so we went to the counter and got ourselves the regular Costco Hot Dogs with all the fixin’s … and a drink … for something like $2 each. Great again. Wish we had a Costco around here.

In the meantime, Janie started getting Hebrew Nationals for me here at home. She gets the nonfat variety and I was amazed how much I like ‘em. Well, now we find out that BAWB’s hot dogs were also Hebrew National (albeit the big, non-non-fat variety) and they come from Costco. Well now, it seems we’d independently discovered the goodness that is Hebrew National. I have no idea why they are so good, but they suit me to a T. Now, how do I get me some of that slaw ;-)

Char & Janie decided they were too tired for a basketball game, so BAWB & I soldiered on alone. Tonight the ‘Tangs were tangling with Adams State, which just happened to be the alma mater of Don Wolfe, another of B’n’C’s long-time friends from Columbus OH. Okay, if you’ve been paying any attention whatsoever, you will notice that the ‘Tangs were playing 2 consecutive home games – back to back. That’s a little unusual, right? Well, no, it actually turns out to be normal for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. If you look at the ‘Tang’s schedule, you will see – other than the obvious perk of playing a couple pre-season games in Hawaii – the rest of their schedule includes schools from CO & NE, and only one in NM. Zooming out on a map shows SC is pretty much landlocked by a large patch of National Forest to the north. In short, it’s pretty difficult to get to SC, the southernmost school in the league. Thus, they schedule their games back to back with 2 at home and 2 away to consolidate travel. It makes for a rather hectic and stressful schedule but … it’s a way of life for players and coaches.

So how did the ‘Tangs do against Adams State? They won again: 85-76. It was another good and entertaining game. As it turns out, they have 2 more home games next week. Maybe we can bring them good luck next weekend as well.

2/6/11 Sunday … Silver City NM …Super Bowl SundayWe spent the morning SALACing as usual, but then it was off for some shopping. We were still interested in the HDTV and Bob had thrown in a new wrinkle: Walkie-Talkies for us when we are biking. Then there was the necessity of getting 2 prescriptions transferred to the local Walgreens, and Janie wanted to look for the Dr Scholl’s massaging heat cushion she learned about from the campground hostess on the Trace – who also told us about a little LED light for the Kindle. Hey, who knew you can’t see Kindles in the dark? No wonder their battery lasts so long. Oh yeah, there was a need to lay in some adult beverages for the game this evening. Oh, our work is just never done ;-)

Well, WalMart’s techno-truck still hadn’t arrived, but when we went to RadioShack to check out Walkie-Talkies, we discovered they had small HDTVs also. Well now, we even got one all the way to the checkout counter before BAWB decided it might just be too big for the slot on the boat. It’s just so hard to spend money sometimes. Janie found the seat thing-y, but it only cost $20. Guess our money will just have to keep burning in our pockets.

Hey, how about lunch? Let’s do Mexican again. Take out or eat in? Take out to go with the beer we’re going to score. Okay, here’s Don Juan’s Burrito Take Out place – To Go Only. Let’s do that. Let me try to describe Don Juan’s. It is a smallish, rectangular, cinderblock building brightly painted and displaying a very large OPEN sign. What’s not to like? There are no windows on the building, except an order window on one side and a pick up window on the other. Very efficient. We placed our order and drove around to the other side to wait for delivery. Hmmm, what’s that sun-faded advertisement pasted on the wall? Why it looks like pictures of wedding dresses. Wedding dresses? Yep, there they were. Were we supposed to pick one? Maybe you get a free wedding dress with each order. Wedding dresses … how incongruous – do they come with red or green sauce? We asked Donna Juana when she opened the little window and handed out our orders. She giggled and said they were just advertising … not the special of the day. Strange but entertaining.

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Okay, we are dealing with four 60+ minds weakened from age and alcohol and easily distracted from whatever business is at hand. So much to do, so little focus. We don’t seem to get distracted from eating and drinking; just everything else. Did you all see Up! the movie? Do you remember Dug the dog’s squirrel distraction? Well, that managed to work its way into our everyday conversation – SQUIRREL – how about some chips and dips – SQUIRREL – is there a football game today – SQUIRREL – look a Scrub Jay – SQUIRREL – hey, this is good beer – SQUIRREL – did you finish the laundry – SQUIRREL – man, I wish that techno-truck had come in – SQUIRREL – remember when we used to … –SQUIRREL – what’s this spot on my shirt– SQUIRREL – I was thinkin’ …

Okay, you get the picture – SQUIRREL – it was approaching Super Bowl time, so B’n’C loaded up the coffee table with munchies and we picked out our seats for the Big Game. We were mostly rooting for Green Bay, so it all turned out to be a good night. I was just happy it was a fairly interesting and dramatic game (Green Bay 31, Pittsburgh 28), even on a tiny, non-HDTV. AND … I’d used the time to load the entire library and get the Monkey’s database optimized on Char’s computer. Tomorrow we’ll start making playlists. We each have our priorities – SQUIRREL. The days are just packed.

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2/7/11 Monday … Silver City NM …SALAC all morning; Char & I doin’ the Monkey thing, and that went so well, we moved on to Beyond Compare. While we were doing that, Janie took BAWB on a tour of RVan. When the Noon Balloon finally lifted off, we ended up at Walgreen to see how the Rx transfer is going: it’ll be about 2 hours. Isn’t that what they said yesterday? While Janie waited, I found unwaxed unflavored dental floss, Janie’s favorite that is not available in any NY stores we’ve

searched. We bought their supply of six. Happy Birthday! Oddly enough, the last batch unwaxed unflavored floss we bought in southwestern Kansas.

Now that we’ve toured Silver City and its immediate environs, it’s time to go farther afield and see what’s in the surrounding countryside. Our first stop was the Santa Rita Mine (Link: History). Yep, the very copper mine I used to teach about in Economic Geology. It was amazing. Too bad all my knowledge is theoretical. Map BAWB kept looking at it and saying, “All that material was removed by diesel … just imagine how much diesel that took …” Not a good thing to think about I suppose.

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A little farther down NM-152, we found ourselves at San Lorenzo and the intersection with NM-35 where we picked up Acklin Hill Road. This little, one-way road travels along in intimate contact with the local bedrock. Oy, what a mess. These rocks have been involved in the Basin & Range formation, intruded, and just generally abused. Getting a close up look generated more questions than answers. Nonetheless, it was very interesting and educational.

Being a one-way road meant circling back around to San Lorenzo to pick up NM-35 for our trip north into the Gila NF. Hmmm, we need an outlet to rid ourselves of our no-longer-useful-to-us morning beverages. Oh look, there’s a place advertising Clean Restroom … Eats … Gas … Groceries … Gunsmith. Everything Uncle John needs and more. In we go.

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I had brought my Grandfather’s old double-barrel shotgun out for BAWB so he’d have a long gun to go with his pistol for those Old West reenactments they have in Silver City. The shotgun has some issues, so BAWB was interested in talking to the gunsmith who shared the building with the convenience store. While he checked that out, the rest of us sauntered up to the store. It was a late afternoon and very bright sun – certainly for people from the higher latitudes - so our irises were narrowed down when we opened the door revealing the dark, cavernous interior. As our eyes began to adjust to the darkness, we saw about 6 grizzled men standing in the interior gloom staring out at us. Whoa, what have we gotten ourselves into? Not much as it turns out. The guys were all standing in line to pay for their burrito lunches.

Shortly, BAWB joined us and said the gunsmith shop was CLOSED. It turns out the proprietor was actually one of the 6 men in the store. He settled in at one of the tables with his candy bar and proceeded to tell us his life story. He’s been in the gun business for 75 years, he’s nearly deaf (not surprising), he had only one arm (related to his trade?), and he spent 9 months in AK back in ’57. He and BAWB talked guns while the rest of us headed to the restroom. Yep, there was only one - uni-sex - which explains the singular “Clean Restroom” sign. Well, it was pretty clean, considering, but there weren’t any towels … one reason I carry a big ol’ bandana wherever I go. On the back of the restroom door was a sign: “Laundry Fluff & Dry.”

While waiting to use the restroom, I took an entertaining stroll around the grocery part of the establishment. There were 3 old-style, chest-high grocery shelves containing a very strange variety of products. Interestingly, there were no more than 2 of each product; most were single items. And what items they were. The shelf I dubbed “The Plumbing Section” contained 1 box each of Drano, ExLax, Douche, and KY Jelly … in that order. Now if that wasn’t enough, there was a “deli” section where you could get burritos, guacamole, and the like to eat in or to go. Of course BAWB took one look and said, “Hey, it’s lunch time, we need to continue our burrito sampling extravaganza – which is hot, red or green?” Suffice to say, we ended up with 1 of each to take to the table where the aged, one-armed, deaf gunsmith was finishing his candy bar. More conversation ensued … mostly about the Louisiana Hot Sauce on the table. He, of course, had spent some time in LA and had an opinion on the nature of hot sauces, burritos, and all things explosive. If nothing else happened today, the outing would have been a success. Ah, but several something else-s indeed happened.

Before leaving, BAWB decided we could use some road food, so he ordered guacamole to go. We got to watch the lady make it. She started by scooping guac from a plastic tub, added sliced tomato, onion, magic spices, and topped the whole thing off with a hearty squeeze from a bottle of Ranch Dressing. Yep, regular old Ranch Dressing from Wal-Mart. She stirred it all up, added some not-so-fresh tortilla chips and we were off. Outside, Janie noticed the cute little Flamingos festooned with yellow hats and shades. We just had to get a picture.

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Back in the car and on down NM-35 toward our destination: Gila NF. We had no more than started when BAWB pulled over to show us a destitute old trailer. He introduced it by saying: “From your description, this looks like your trailer in Lancaster.” OMG, it was. The very same Spartan I lived in from age 5 to 12. It looked like this: (LINK – search for #11). But the guy in this picture looks way too much like ME (LINK – 3rd Picture down). At first, I didn’t

recognize the one we were parked beside because the owner had painted the normal, Airstream-like Aluminum skin a desert brown rendering it more SW-like. Once I got past that, I recognized the characteristic round window in the door, the kitchen window, the bathroom window, the master bedroom window – I even got out to verify there was a back door on the other side. Then I focused on the front bay windows under which my bed was located. Our trailer was parked behind the concession stand in the very center of the drive-in theater my Uncle Buck owned. Mom & Dad ran the stand and for the 7 years we lived in that trailer, I’d go to bed under those big bay-windows and have people walk by, frequently pounding on the side of the trailer. Fortunately, my bedcovers had magic powers necessary to protect me from harm. Yeah right!

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Onward up NM-35 along the famous Mimbres River and into the Gila NF where NM-35 becomes the Trail Of The Mountain Spirits Scenic Highway – they got that right. It was a beautiful drive through forested mountains with very little civilization to detract from the scenic beauty. Janie & I had passed through this area on our honeymoon back in ’75. We actually camped at Lake Roberts and we were now scanning that very same shoreline when a Bald Eagle flew across our field of view. A bit farther down the road we saw a Mule Deer; a bit beyond that 3 Javelina crossed the road in front of us. What’s the difference between a Javelina and a Peccary? Well, just a few random letters it seems. We also saw some Western Bluebirds and lots of Ponderosa Pine – shave the bark to get a whiff of vanilla.

NM-35 ends where it intersects NM-15, which goes on up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. We had run out of time, and the Dwellings with all their splendor would have to wait for another time. We headed back toward Silver City on NM-15. This is much more of a mountain road, with lots of twisting and turning, sometimes reverting to a single lane, although paved. There were lots of vistas and an amazing amount of snow, which we should have expected at 7,500 feet. Way cool in all respects.

One of BAWB’s tricks is to try to coast from the last highpoint down to the stop sign just outside Pinos Altos – we would have made it if that 1 car hadn’t come up behind us – pull off or speed up were our options. In Pinos Altos, BAWB stopped at Buckhorn Saloon & Opera House Pinos Altos. Hunh, this looks familiar. Hey, we stopped in this very spot on our honeymoon. However, this time we actually went inside. What a place. We only had time for an adult beverage, but the food looked ever so tempting. Bob had been working on Ossobucco – on and off – for the last 3 days so we dare not get any eats here … later … we’ll be sure to do it later.

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The Buckhorn has had several incarnations, one of which was being a brothel. Thus, the interior is decorated in brothel-like elegance and includes an actual Charles Russell painting that turned out to be appropriate for such an establishment. The Russell painting is the famous Anticipation & Exasperation that you really need to look at - cavorting indeed! It really isn’t what you’d expect for a Charlie Russell painting. Check it out.

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We arrived home from our extremely varied, educational and exhilarating outing just in time for BAWB’s version of Ossobucco. Yummy. After dinner we engaged in something DOOCs always seem to do at one time or another: extended OSU remembrances. It’s all good, y’all, and the older we get, the better we used to be.

2/8/11 Tuesday … Silver City NM …The day dawned dry ‘thoug a bit on the windy side, but as usual, there was wall-to-wall sunshine - just another marvelous day in the SW. We spent the morning SALAC, and the Noon Balloon found us SALAS on a walking tour of downtown Silver City with a lot of pointing and gawking.

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We spent some time in the Bear Creek Herbs – oh, if you look at the link, you will also see the big gap where Main Street used to be and the stream flowing in the Big Ditch. It turns out the proprietress is from Upstate NY. Holy crap, there are a lot of connections around here. Janie purchased a bundle of Azteca tea. Next, the Hester House of Fudge, where we procured some fudge – it’s a trip, you just gotta have some fudge, and then the Food Coop for $10 worth of exotic chocolate bars. Chocolate is one of the basic food groups you know.

Whoa, look at the time, we gotta get to the Silver City Museum before it closes. We weren’t as much interested in the museum part as we were in the gift shop. There we met up with Melissa who, rightfully so, was anxious to get home. Nonetheless, she graciously put up with our shenanigans and inane banter. We’d looked at about everything and started a pile of potential purchases at the checkout counter. Every time it seemed like we were finished, Melissa asked, “Should I write you up now?” Oh, wait what about these little baskets? And, look, some postcards with pictures of Old Silver City. Again, when it appeared our shopping adrenaline had run its course, Melissa asked,

“Should I write you up?” Hey, aren’t these little pottery things interesting? Look, a stuffed Javelina; isn’t that cute; and it’s on sale. Oh, okay, I guess we are ready to cash in; go ahead and write us up.

By “write up” Melissa meant actually handwriting the items by name and stock number in excellent cursive. Then there was the tallying, which was complicated by B’n’C being members and getting a discount on non-sale items – that’s why Melissa had to wait until we were sure we were done. All in all, everyone had quite a good time – and we got some nice stuff to show for it: crescent moon & star earrings, postcards, small baskets made of Pine & Sotol needle, and lots of good information.

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Next it was back to Walgreen to check on that prescription transfer. What’s that? It’ll cost $50; we get it at home for $10. Why’s that? Several minutes later we learn my date of birth doesn’t match the insurance info. Well, it certainly matches back home. Okay, they’ll check it out. We’ll be back … again. The dental floss & seat cushion had not been restocked.

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It was time for dinner with Jenny, Mark & Kona. We had arranged to meet them at Jalisco’s Café so, just like in the movies, we found a parking place right in front and went in to start with the adult beverages and menu items … and red/green sauce evaluation. Well now, this place seems to be just what we needed. Jenny had called to tell us they were running a little late. No problem. We ordered up round of Carta Blanca and started quizzing the waitress about their sauces. “Want a sampler?” Sure. She brought out the regular chips & dip (excellent – a good sign) and FOUR additional sauces: red & green enchilada and red & green chili. Okay, beer, chips and a wide range of sauces – we were in heaven. We found the green sauces to be best, but the red chili was also excellent. Hmmm, wonder if we could get some of each on whatever we order. Nope. The chef will not mix red & green on the same plate. It has to do with the integrity of the presentation. Well, that’s a pretty good sign. But still … okay, she said she could bring us additional sauce on the side – the chef would allow that. Great. We have a plan. Now we only need to decide what we want to go with all these sauces …

Pretty soon, Mark, Jenny & Kona showed up. We hugged like old friends and started our usual animated conversation. Although we’d watched Mark coach 2 basketball games, we hadn’t actually met him yet, so he was the early focus of our attention. Well, in addition to being an excellent coach, he is just a wonderful person. And Kona is totally amazing. What a family. We vowed to take Jenny up on her invitation to join the after-game gathering at their house after this week’s home game. More on that later.

I can’t remember all the entrees we got, but I do recall that BAWB & I got the special chili with red sauce (and green on the side). Jenny and Char got something called Tortilla Soup, which was good but a bit salty. Janie got Crab Tostado and Kona got … hmmm, what was it he smeared on his face? I don’t recall, but I do remember his devouring the dessert – licking the bowl clean down to the finish. What a little man. We all MOOFed out and had just a wonderful time.

While we were having a festive time at our large table, several couples came and went around us. We are slow eaters apparently. Two of the couples turned out to be from AK. Of course, BAWB had to talk with them and learn about the friends and acquaintances they have in common. This place is really amazing – so many connections.

2/9/11 Wednesday … Silver City NM …SALAC and what has become the traditional call to Walgreen – they still don’t have the order complete … check back after three … again.

The Noon Balloon had to get an early liftoff today because we wanted to go to the Thrift Store before it closed at two. Char had picked up a very nice little bag for $1 and Janie was looking to do the same. Well, she did find a couple bags but they were anything but little. Fortunately, they folded up into a nice, compact form, but when you unfolded ‘em, they were grocery-bag size. Oddly, they were labeled with Gila Medical Center. Hey, $2 for two infinitely useful bags … which were filled up before the end of the day and several times since … good deal. BAWB became enthralled by a Silver City 6-bottle beverage-tote, so he bought it. Now all we have to do is find 6 bottles of something to put in it. Shouldn’t be hard – the hard part will be keeping them full.

It was an altogether beautiful day … just like all the others … so how about a little DALASing and house hunting in an area B’n’C hadn’t visited yet? We headed south of town to the Ridge Road development around the golf course. Hey, that’s where Jenny & Mark live; we can play a little game of guess which house is theirs. We drove all the streets and carefully checked out the For Sale domiciles while looking for a likely Coleman residence. Only a couple houses were of the right size/location for B’n’C’s needs. As for Mark & Jenny, we know Mark is an avid golfer, so we settled on a house that backed onto the golf course for them. Turns out we were wrong, but it was an entertaining distraction nonetheless.

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Hey, wonder where this Ridge Road goes? It seems to continue on beyond the houses and off into the desert. Let’s check it out. We drove on and on and on and found the experience entirely pleasant. We were barely out of the development when we found ourselves in open high-desert with only the ubiquitous barbed-wire fences to break up the seemingly infinite terrain that stretches all the way up to the foothills of the surrounding mountains. Splendid.

After a while, we started wondering just how far this road goes. A quick check of the GPS showed it goes to Whitewater and then onward all the way to Deming. You know what; this would be just a marvelous road for biking. Hmmm … Not today. It’s a bit too windy … and … we have to get back to that damned Walgreen drugstore … and … more importantly, we have to go to Albertson’s for provisions. Okay, let’s take the first decent road off to the west and pick up NM-90 to take us back to SC.

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So what did we see? Well, a lot of desert country with the expected Coyote, Quail, lots of Little Brown Jobbies (LBJs) we couldn’t ID, a couple road-kill rabbits … and when we got close to Tyrone, a bunch of mine tailings. Tyrone is a mining town – a copper mining town. The streets are all named after copper-bearing minerals, so we were amused to find ourselves at the corner of Bornite & Chrysocolla just past the corner of Pyrite & Chalcopyrite. There was snow lingering even in the bright sunshine and mild temperatures. Some enterprising resident had built a fairly elaborate snowperson, so we pulled into their drive and took some pictures. Really a nice piece of work here on Cuprite Street.

Back to Silver City … it’s time for a late lunch … well look there; right across the street is Don Fidencio’s … they specialize in soft taco carryout. We do a big U-turn on the busiest road in SC – no problem with the extremely low traffic volume – and zip into the place-your-order window. Four special Carnitas soft tacos with extra crispy ends, please.

Meanwhile, back at Walgreen’s … they now have my prescription correct, but Janie’s is at $50 for a normal $10 co-pay … another insurance problem … she just turned 60, she is not yet on Medicare, she gave you her date of birth about 50 times already … we’ll check back tomorrow … again.

Albertson’s has this really tasty multi-grain French bread, so tasty they are always sold out, so B’n’C just go to the bakery and ask, “Is there any chance you could bake us up a couple loaves of that bread?” Sure, it’ll be 20 minutes. This happened every time we went to Albertson’s, and we always walked out with at least 2 long, warm, aromatic loaves of bread that everyone drooled over … including us. At least part of a loaf never made it home … intact anyway. Don Bobby was going to make us some subs so he got the appropriate flat meats – and head cheese. So when dinner time rolled around, we were treated to Bob’s Subs all crispy brown with Rosemary Olive Oil drizzle. Yummy.

2/10/11 Thursday … Silver City NM …SALAC A-gin. I took the opportunity to compile email responses to SatAM On the Road submissions. We still needed to complete the prescription transfer, but we have learned that going there is not all fun, so Janie called and discovered the problem. Walgreen’s used ID #69 instead of #99. Okay, now that we know the problem and can fix it, how about a refund? Sure, just come in and … oh, no another visit to Walgreen’s. At this rate we’ll be back to Wegmans before this is cleared up.

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The Noon Balloon found us parked in front of a house with a painted wall. Walls are a SW tradition, so most of the houses have some kind of enclosing structure, usually adobe or adobe-like and just about eye-height. This provides a nice surface for decorating and this one house in the neighborhood has gone all out – with an Egyptian motif. Their entire surrounding wall is covered in a colorful Egyptian theme – they even painted the gas meter and line (far left in the picture). You can’t see the house very well, but it also has the Egyptian theme. Strange … beautiful but still strange.

Next it was Walgreen’s to get the refund thing done so we can get on with our day. Oh no, there was an even longer line than the previous several times. The help is friendly but not all that swift as you may have discerned from the comedy of errors. We’ve become particularly attached to one young male desk attendant. He has large – as in a couple inches – hollow rings inserted in his now very stretched earlobes. Yep, inserted IN, not hanging from. You know, like those Bushmen put in their ears and lips. Oh yeah, that’ll be ever so nice when he’s in the nursing home.

The long line gave Janie a chance to talk with her line companion, a young girl from Albany NY. She went to SUNY Binghamton for Environmental Sciences and will be finishing up her AmeriCorps service in Silver City this March. And then … well she’s not real sure, but we are sure this place is some sort of connection warp. We keep meeting

people with strange connections to other people and places. It’s almost like when you meet someone, you can pretty much assume there will be some sort of Kevin-Bacon-like connection and often less than seven degrees. Strange – again.

The main business today was meeting the realtor, Patrick Conlin (click Agents), so B’n’C could actually look inside a couple of houses. Patrick – what can I say - he was a trip. He’s fairly young; originally from Chicago then moved to the Pacific NW and finally, for unexplained reasons, to Silver City. He’s a very nice guy and has an excellent business plan. He’s the #1 realtor in the area – and there are many competitors - very impressive for someone so young. Patrick’s pretty much of a no dicker sort of guy and he will tell you up front if this is a good deal or not and offer appropriate suggestions for what you might like elsewhere – even with other realtors. Oh, did I mention that he’s gay? Probably not, but that fact makes his success all the more impressive. Admittedly, Silver City is not the conservative bastion we associate with the much of the SW. In fact, it is generally a flaming liberal sort of place. But still, a young and openly gay realtor is pushing the bubble. Hmmm, wonder if that’s related to his no dick(h)er philosophy? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

The first house was really cute. However, there were some issues. Many homes in the old part of town are, well, old. Thus, they don’t have central heating/cooling because this is the SW and you shouldn’t really need it. What the house did have was space heaters in each room and a sun room out back with vents to draw warm/cool air into the house. Being an old house, it has a large hallway connecting 4 rooms, 2 on each side. When I say large hallway, I mean LARGE. I remember it being about 10 feet wide with an equally high ceiling. I’ve been reading Bill Bryson’s “At Home” wherein he describes how the hallway originally was the main feature of the home – it was just one big room: the Hall. Hence, all the famous dwellings named Xxxx Hall. Eventually, individual rooms began to eat into the hall until, today, the hall, is a minor formality if it exists at all. Well, this house was more in the Grand Hall tradition with the adjoining rooms being the minor formality. BAWB got this curious look on his face and asked, “What would you do with all this hall space? I suggested making it into a ping-pong room or basketball court … or … more appropriately, a large walk-in closet because the other rooms were lacking in that department, or should I say, compartment.

The second house we looked at was a non-starter in my opinion. On either side were rentals and across the street … well, it was the Bright Funeral Home, behind which was a trailer park. Inside the house we found a nice, roomy dining room with a big picture window. That’s the good news. The bad news is the window looked onto the side yard of the rental next door … with its Foosball table, sundry Mountain Bikes, and Kayaks. Hmmm, looks like a college rental. I could just imagine some of the drunken parties with Foosball tournaments going on late at night … and worse yet, during an intimate dining experience. Scary.

Then we went over to see the place B’n’C had been renting before we came. They originally called it The Cave but it later became known as the Yellow Submarine because it was, well, yellow and a basement apartment with just one medium pizza-size window with a great view of … the driveway. The owner, Joe, is a very nice guy and the apartment was nice as well … especially the big HDTV. However, when you are in the sunny SW, you’d like to be able to actually see something other than yellow walls. Oh, the Yellow Submarine name comes from the fact that while they were living there, they found themselves humming, “We all live in a …” Just couldn’t seem to get it out of their heads. Alcohol helped, but didn’t completely cure the malady, although they applied liberal doses with utmost diligence.

When we got to the Yellow Submarine, we found Joe continuing work on it. He came out to greet us and practically crawled into the nice warm car with us. You see, the driveway and work area are on the north side of a long, E-W trending structure. Thus, the warming SW sun did not reach the driveway or Joe’s workshop. Consequently, there was still a considerable amount of hard-packed ice … and Joe was COLD. Inside the Cave was warm, so we had a nice visit with Joe before heading back to 3 Crescent for a quick, but elegant, dinner. Why the rush? Because we are going to a concert tonight: the Andy Stein & Conal Fowkes concert in the WNMU theater.

We know Andy Stein from his days/nights with Commander Cody and more recently, his participation in the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band, the house band on PHC. We park and were starting our short walk to the entrance when a small, white van pulled in behind us. We’d been talking about vans, especially camper-van things. We are going to be replacing RVan, and B’n’C are looking for something they can sleep in if necessary during their various long sojourns from AK to southern destinations. Soooo, BAWB walks over to the white van just as this little old lady who looked a lot like Jessica Tandy was getting out. She didn’t notice Bob, who easily could have made 2 of her, as he approached. I lagged behind hoping I could catch him after she sprayed him with Mace. Fat chance. Ah, but this is Silver City and everyone is extremely friendly – I forgot.

BAWB started quizzing her about the van while we both looked at the room inside – too small for us, but just about right for B’n’C. The lady, who was dressed to the nines in a long dress and white gloves – but not the least bit pretentious, started bubbling about how much she loves her Transit Connect Van and said she could (and will) have windows put in and it just wonderful to drive and more stuff like that. But then she said she actually bought it because it was “unique” or so she thought. A bit later she learned that there are fleets of similar vans scurrying

around the country delivering all sorts of stuff. The Jessica Tandy person was devastated to learn that her van wasn’t “unique” after all. But she still likes it. Silver City is such an interesting place.

Oh yeah, remember that connectivity thing? Randy Carr and Kathy Anderson are friends of B’n’C’s from AK and now live semi-permanently in Silver City and just happen to be main cogs in the Grant County Community Concert Association, the organization responsible for the concert series. Thus, they had sequestered seats down front for all of us and that’s where we found ourselves while the auditorium gradually filled up. Although located on campus, the audience consisted mostly of persons of our generation. We watched as one woman took her seat while holding her little lap-dog. After we’d made snide comments with our neighbors, Kathy told us it was actually a working dog – something to do with detecting seizures.

I sat next to Kathy who, like me, suffers from a weak immune system. However, Kathy has the somewhat odd idea that mothballs can ward off the evil diseases we are prey to. Thus, she has a vague “aroma” that B’n’C had warned us about. It took me several minutes to figure out the odor, which was enhanced by the woman in front of us fanning her over-perfumed self. So there I sat with the faint odor of mothballs on one side and sweet-smelling perfume on the other. Gimme another stick of Dentyne.

Andy Stein & Conal Fowkes were marvelous. Andy came in wearing an old light-weight sweater, faded jeans, and sneakers. He then told us that his keys – and clothes – were locked in his car out in the parking lot and “people” were working on a remedy. In the meantime, the show must go on. If you read Andy Stein’s bio, you will see that he is extremely versatile but tends to favor older jazz pieces. He’s a wealth of musicology and dispensed a short history for just about every piece they played.

Conal Fowkes was born in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at the time). Although I can’t find a suitable bio for him, the concert notes list an amazing variety of experiences – from straight up jazz to theatrical scores. He was a suitable partner for the laidback Andy who provided most of the commentary. During intermission, we scored the 2 – yep, only 2 – Andy CDs and got them autographed after the concert. While we were fingering the CDs, the nice lady at the table noticed that there were 3 of us considering buying the CDs so she offered, “You can just tape ‘em and play ‘em in your car like we do.” Tape ‘em? That’s so 70s. We will be ripping ‘em and putting ‘em in our EXTENSIVE digital music library. Tape ‘em … ha. We didn’t actually say all that but … well, you get the idea. Hmmm, where are those signed CDs now? Dunno ;-) Oh, yeah, we gifted them to Randy.

After the concert, we noticed 3 guys hunched over a car in the parking lot. Andy’s? Probably. Randy & Kathy had directed us to an after-concert gathering in … get this … The Church Of What’s Happening Now. Yep, that’s what it used to be called. That’s particularly funny for those of us who remember Flip Wilson’s routine about The Church Of What’s Happening Now. This particular church was now being used for community gatherings like this one. Little old ladies were filtering in with plates of finger food, cookies, dips, and spreads. There was an elegantly dressed lady serving as a greeter, and when we walked in, we became the center of attention because we were aliens. It turns out she’s from NYC and was once a model – and she wasn’t the least bit hesitant to tell everyone about it. The person who is actually in charge of this affair is known as Count Lorand de Bickish and he has the appropriate accent to go with the very foreign title. He was all decked out in a very dapper suit with a blazing red vest. His wife, Joan, confided, “He’s a chick magnet.” Yeah, and he’s also in his middle seventies at least. Joan was doing some serious flirting with BAWB, her own bad self. Very interesting couple to say the least.

As I’ve said, Silver City people are very friendly, so if they don’t know you, they make it a point to come up and introduce themselves. That’s how we met Gary Emerson & his partner Sally. Most of these people are 70s vintage and liberated so there was a lot of the “and partner” going around. For example, Kathy and Randy are married but she still retains her maiden name. Anyway, Gary is a former NASA astronomer who retired to the outskirts of Silver City where he installed his own telescope to take advantage of the clear NM atmosphere. Gary asked where we were from, and I gave my usual cautious response: “Western NY”. Then he asked for more details, so I said, “A little town south of Rochester and west of Buffalo.” To which he said, “There’s a college there, right?” Hell, yes, our college. When I gave the Geneseo name he responded, “Did you happen to run across a David Meisel?” Hell yes, we both come from the Ohio State School Of Shouting (don’t try Googling that) and he occupied an office across the hall from me in Geneseo. Yeah, I know Dave. Gary said he’s known and worked with Dave for 40 years. Small world out here in NM. Oh, by the way Kathy Anderson of Randy & Kathy is from Cincinnati before moving to AK and taking a job where she worked with Char. The world gets smaller and smaller.

Shortly after the encounter with Gary, a distinguished gentleman came over and introduced himself as Peter Falley. Hey, I recognize you; you’re the guy that introduced Andy and Conal, right? Yep, Peter is the president of the Grant County Community Concert Association that sponsored the concert. Well, it turns out Peter formerly was the Provost at Farley Dickinson in NJ. He actually met Jenny & Mark when they were at Drew and before they were Mr & Mrs Coleman. The world is shrinking … shrinking … shrinking …

2/11/11 Friday … Silver City NM …

Today, we altered our routine; at least some of us did. I continued to compile On The Road email messages, but BAWB took Janie out to show off his new Gary Fisher Cobia 29er bike. Janie’s old bike has never fit her properly, so she was interested in seeing how BAWB’s large-framed 29er would work. Hey, one pedal and she was coasting uphill. That’s a great start. After a little instructing, she took off for a solo ride around the neighborhood. When she returned, she had a big smile on her face when and uttered one definitive word: “Wow”. The bike seems to fit her much better. She & I are built differently … Really. We’re essentially the same height, but she has much longer legs and a shorter torso. However, we have the same size bikes; Medium or 17.5”. BAWB’s is a 19” frame and that extra 1.5” seems to make a big difference. Okay, looks like we will be getting new bikes. We’d been talking about it, but now it is pretty much a done deal. [In fact, as I type this we are waiting for them to arrive at the store – anytime this week they say. And … as I’m proofreading this, I can tell you that we now have two Cobias sitting in the garage – with 100 miles on ‘em already. Janie’s is a 2011 Cobia and I got a 2010 version. We love ‘em.]

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Take a hike! That’s exactly what we did after test-riding BAWB’s bike. Silver City is blessed with a large open space called Boston Hill nestled against the SW corner of the town. It is laced with trails for hiking and biking. Biking is what BAWB did while we hiked – in fact, we summitted “Mount Boston” - all 6,380 feet of it. Whew! Janie, Char & I had just a marvelous hike on the intertwining trials and eventually ended up at the place we were supposed to meet BAWB. Yay! The Boston Hill area exists as a public-use space because it is a reclaimed mining area. I’ll bet you think it was a Cu mine. Wrong. It was a Mn mine. As you will recall, there are a great many Mn minerals. I’m not sure which mineral(s) were the targets in the Boston Hill area, but the place is riddled with shallow exploration pits that don’t seem to have had much yield. Their loss; our gain. The small, open pits force the trails to wind around and provide additional miles of grand views over the surrounding terrain, all within sight of Silver City.

On the way home from our outing, we picked up some carryout from La Familia – definitely not the best Mex we’ve had, although the special green chili sauce only made on Friday was definitely special. Ah, the end of a very productive outdoor-day. We were tired but refreshed.

Somewhere along the line, the neighbor, Pete, called. He said he was going to the basketball game tomorrow night, he knows the coach’s wife, and he can have her put us on the free entry list. Hey, we know Jenny AND Mark AND we are already on the list. The point is connectivity again. Pete knew Jenny & Mark but didn’t know we knew them or HOW we knew them. Hell, we knew Jenny before Mark or Pete knew Jenny – at jenny-see-oh! This Silver City connectivity is totally mind blowing.

2/12/11 Saturday … Silver City NM …Back to the usual SALAC morning and then the Noon Balloon lifted off for the Chocolate Fantasia Event. Silver City has a regular schedule of events and this is one of the highlights. You purchase a ticket and then go from store to store where you get a sample of chocolate. Hell, we don’t need no ticket; we’ll just go shopping and if we see some chocolate we want, we’ll buy it. Janie & Char took off on their own while BAWB & I sauntered around doing somewhat more masculine activities – mostly just walking and looking at the streets full of people.

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The girls found themselves in the Clementine Mercantile where Char admired some laminated bird and plant ID guides. When she took ‘em to the checkout counter, the lady said, “Oh, those aren’t for sale … but you can have ‘em if you want.” Hmmm, not for sale, but you can take ‘em for free … this place just keeps getting better and better. Then we all met up and headed to the far end of town to partake in the going-out-of-business sale at the Mexican Emporium. I can see why this place might be going out of business. The store is located at the end of the main drag, actually a little beyond the end. It’s quiet but not a very good location. Also, the owner is fairly old and seeking – needing, actually – to retire – for the second time. Thus, the store, his house and a building lot next door are all for sale. Any takers?

The Mexican Emporium was interesting. The owner & his wife used to take regular trips to Mexico to purchase items for the store, but they can’t do that now – it’s too dangerous. However, what they have in stock is quite nice. We ended up spending a lot of time – and some money – there. Mostly B’n’C bought some Mexican tiles to cover the splash panel behind the sink on their boat. Janie also bought some tiles because they were just so cute.

Next we went back to the main part of town and ended up in the Blue Moon Gallery where the artist Molly Ramolla was selling her wares. Hey, look, a bunch of really neat switch plates. They’re on sale; let’s get some. So we did. And then we came back to buy all the rest. We now have more switch plates than switches. So be it; we can rotate ;-)

We also went to the Antique Mall where Janie bought some earrings and an Indian Worry Doll for Brian Sheldon. He seems to worry a lot. Char got a really nice silk scarf for $11. All in all, they did really well. And Char can take the scarf back when she’s done with it because all the items in the shop are on consignment. Now that’s recycling.

BAWB found a Bank of America checkbook in the street outside one of the shops. It had a name and address on the checks – shouldn’t be hard to return, right? We looked the name up in the phonebook. No luck. Eventually, we got back to the car and BAWB entered the address in his Garmin … whoa, that’s kinda far away. Don’t have time to do a round trip. How about just dropping it off at the local BofA? Oops, it’s after hours … now what? Look, a night deposit box. BAWB dropped it in the box and our good deed was done. Lots of karma we’re hoping.

Shopping over, it’s time to look at more houses for sale. We headed over to the Indian Hills development. B’n’C hadn’t looked at this area for a while and it was more the type of thing Janie & I might be interested in. What we saw most was Mule Deer - sizeable herds every few blocks. The development is fairly new and butts up against the pediment slope of some foothills, which probably explains the deer population. The city is encroaching on their territory … but humans are offering tasty plantings, so what the heck … let’s eat.

Speaking of eating, that was next on our agenda. B’n’C had tried Billy’s BBQ & Wood Fired Pizza and found the BBQ to be really good. Ah, but we were up for wood-fired pizza, so we vowed not to get caught up in the BBQ offerings … stick with pizza … and maybe an appetizer … and certainly some beer … but no BBQ. Not this time …

Okay, it was dinner time on a Saturday in one of the most popular eateries in the city. We had to wait for a table. Ah, but the wait was very entertaining. The hostess, Kayla, was an attractive, thin, stylish (in a modish way) young lady. Let’s see if I can describe her. Thin, yep, she was thin but more from hyperactivity than anything else. She was not short but also not tall. She was dressed in a black & white tunic over black tights with matching B&W striped hair. She was friendly and humorous and bright: entertaining for the eyes and spirit.

A woman (actually the person who sold Janie the earrings earlier) came in behind us and went up to Kayla so she could be put on the waiting list. Kayla had previously complained about losing her pen, so I offered her mine but took it back when she was done. The woman pulled a pen from her purse and beat me to the second offer of help. Kayla started to write with it then pulled up short, took a long, quizzical look at it and said, “I think this is eye-liner.” It just kept getting better and better.

When Kayla seated us, she put a playing card on a little clip to indicate you want service. BAWB knew the routine, so he’d already picked a 4 of diamonds for us. Kayla gave us an 8 of diamonds, but BAWB insisted on using his. We are four and we are diamonds … in the rough maybe, but diamonds nonetheless. We took our seats, displayed our card, and Audrie came over to take our orders. Audrie was also young, a little more stout than Kayla, but still attractive in a cute sort of way … very nice … and pretty naïve as it turns out. We ordered calamari, Shiner Bock (a mistake) and 90 Shilling (the clear winner) to entertain us while we pondered the kind of pizza to get. See, no BBQ; not this time.

While we were doing all that, we noticed Kayla zipping around us. She was not only seating incoming patrons, she was also bussing tables, cleaning tables, arranging tables … just about everything but serving. When she came near our table, we took the opportunity to ask her about her work ethic. Oh yeah, this is what I do. I started at 12 noon and I go until closing around 9 pm. Oy, to be young and energetic again. We all decided we’d hire this girl in a minute.

Audrie was no slouch either. We had more time to get to know her and her story was very interesting. She’s all of twenty and has 2 kids: Micalah Renee & Orlando Jr. She said they were 9 months and 3 months – we didn’t ask how that might be possible; we hoped we had heard wrong. We were suitably dumbfounded by the fact she had TWO young children. I made the mistake of asking about Orlando Sr – he’s not in the picture anymore. We didn’t persue that either. We did persue the education thing and she plans to do that – as soon as she can – which probably means never, unfortunately.

Janie likes to buy interesting post cards and have everyone sign ‘em. This time it was an old photo of Geronimo and three of his lieutenants. Obviously Char was to be Char-onimo, and the rest of us had to pick our representative. The card was going to Mikey’n’Mare, so we got kind of creative. We even got Audrie to sign it. Did I say she was naive? We told her to sign it, “Still thinking about you.” And she did as instructed. About that time, Kayla zipped by so we had her sign it too.

The long wall of the restaurant was painted to look like an old opera house. Not just any opera house mind you, but the Elixir D’Amore … pretty neat, hunh? Well, after a couple brews, it was time to hit the head. I was directed over behind the bar where I found two uni-sex rooms. Hmmm, if they are uni-sex and two of ‘em … I decided to let it go and picked one. Hey, it had a shower. Cool … but I don’t need a shower right now. A little later, the girls needed to rest and they just happened to use the other uni-sex room. Wow, there are 2 free-standing, full-length mirrors – just in case you have to adjust something I suppose. Strange … but effective.

Time to cash in and get to the WNMU basketball game – we missed last night, so we just have to go tonight. Kayla and Audrie are examples of people I’d love to leave $1,000 tips. I expect it could have a significant impact on their

lives, especially in Audrie’s case. Ah, but I’m not quite ready to dispose of my money just yet, so we only left a respectable percentage – but still fairly hefty. We also left each of them a note. Audrie: raise good kids. Kayla: slow down; life is a marathon not a sprint. Of course we hugged ‘em both on the way out.

Tonight’s WNMU’s opponent was Mesa State from CO. We met with Jenny behind the home bench and got ourselves invited to their house for the after-game gathering. We also learned that last night Mark had had a conversation with one of the refs. Jenny asked him about it later and he said, “We were arranging to get a beer in El Paso.” So that’s what they talk about … and so animatedly. Mesa was a fairly aggressive team and there were some hard fouls. One of them involved Mesa committing a hard foul on a WNMU breakaway. Then the Mesa player tossed the ball at the WNMU player’s head. That, as you might expect, resulted in the fouled player charging the offender. All of this happened right in front of the WNMU’s bench and one of their best players, who’d been on the bench with 4 fouls, jumped up and ran out on the floor. Big mistake. He got a technical, which was his fifth foul. He was gone and WNMU never recovered. They lost by 2. This was a bad day for our teams. Ohio State and Syracuse both lost by 4 and now WNMU. Guess we’re going to need some beer to recover.

Off to Mark & Jenny’s place out by the golf course. It wasn’t anywhere near where we thought it might be. Mark actually has to drive to the links. They have just about the perfect house for entertaining. It is a single floor structure with one large room with two bedrooms attached at each end. The large room contains the kitchen on one end and a very large, open living area on the other. The two areas are separated by a counter/bar that serves the entertaining purpose very well, and they do a lot of entertaining. I asked Jenny if they’d designed the house – nope, it just came this way. Cool.

We had a couple beers and talked to the assembled persons. Mark agreed if his player hadn’t overreacted, they’d probably have won the game. There will be some “lessons” from that. I spent a lot of time talking to Jessica, the assistant coach’s wife, and the young, female trainer (can’t recall her name). Both are lifetime Silver City residents so I was asking them about being happy here, the weather, the insects, stuff like that. You see, I’m really interested in this location as a possible residence somewhere down the road. Everything came out positive. The trainer has only left the area to do grad work in Montana of all places and then came right back home. Okay, that’s all good. It was late, we are old(ish), and it was time to get home. But what a full day we had.

Postscript … FIRE …3/8/11 There was a grass fire in the development where Jenn, Mark, Kona & their 3 dogs live. Fifteen homes were lost; the Coleman residence was spared. So how close was it? We heard their yard is ashes but everything else is okay. Mark, Jenny & Kona were not at home at the time of the fire, but the dogs were. The area was cordoned off while the fire personnel got things under control, so there were some anxious times before Mark & Jenny could go in to check on their dogs and house. Whew! That was a close call. Strong winds and dry, winter stubble are one of the hazards of living in this environment.

2/13/11 Sunday … Silver City NM …We spent our normal computer morning jabbering away … mostly involved in researching 29er bikes by Gary Fisher, Trek, and REI Novara. BAWB found an REI store in a suburb of Nashville – just a few miles from the end of the Trace – and learned that they have the Novara 29er in various flavors and sizes. The Novara Matador was BAWB’s second choice, so we made plans to spend some time at the REI store in Nashville on the way home. The bug has bit and we’ve come down with the sweaty palms of anticipation.

The time for parting is fast approaching. We’ve planned an afternoon/evening BBQ at Kathy & Randy’s tomorrow, so all the cleaning, packing, and restocking RVan must occur today. I cleaned RVan while Janie cleaned R-Clothes & R-Room. Then we loaded all (well, most of) our crap. It was a beautiful, spring-like day and very difficult to focus on the tasks at hand. Nonetheless, we got ‘er done and soon enough it was time to head to Albertson’s & The Beer Store to stock up on “necessities”.

Oh wow, look at that. They got lots of New Belgium Fat Tire 12-packs (we picked up three), New Belgium 1554 Black Ale (only a six, unfortunately), Deschutes Obsidian Stout (another six), O’Dell Cutthroat Porter (another six), Santa Fe State Prison Porter (six more) … how much beer can we take? Never enough, unfortunately.

All this loading and shopping on such a warm-ish day left us in a bit of a sweat. Ah, but down here in the SW, it’s a dry sweat. While at Albertson’s, we noticed an interesting sign on their shopping carts: B.O.B. As you might expect, BAWB thought it was all about him – it’s an only child thing. Further investigation revealed B.O.B. stands for Bottom Of Basket. It’s intended to remind you of the goodies you might have put on the bottom of the cart … like 3 Fat Tire 12-packs. BAWB also stocked up on ingredients for tomorrow’s BBQ – Cowboy Beans – Yay!

Back at the house, everything put away, RVan loaded and ready to go … don’t suppose we should sample some of those brews … oh yeah, good stuff, one great beer leads to another, very impressive – really wish we could take more home. Hey, what’s for dinner? Remember those cheese fondue gatherings we used to have in Mirror Lake Hollow back in the 70s? Let’s do that … great … what, no fondue forks … hey, no problem, we can make do. We

need something green to go with it. How about some asparagus? Oh my, that looks and tastes lovely. What’s the secret? Well, it’s an old home economics teacher’s trick: boil with a pinch of sugar & salt then chill. Gotta remember that. It was all excellent, but, as usual, the best part was scraping crusted cheese-y leavings off the bowl. That was BAWB & Janie’s reward.

You know, the good old days really were good.

2/14/11 Monday … Silver City NM …A little SALAC and then a lot of getting ready for the BBQ. All the loose ends were tied up; the kitchen and the principals cleaned up; food and beverages loaded in the Forester; we were off for a grand day at Randy & Kathy’s. Although they live in town, their place is across an occasionally flooded stream and up a gravel road to the very edge of the high desert. It turns out to be not only a grand location for people but also a great location for birds. We saw Cassin’s Finch, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, Greater Roadrunner, Scrub Jay, Yellow-Rump Warbler, and an Oregon Junco. Whew – and that’s just what we were able to ID.

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BAWB & Randy busied themselves with the big meat while Kathy furnished snacks and finished up the inside stuff. Us? Well, we just hung out and enjoyed the setting, birds, beverages and home-made dips. Soon enough it was time to go inside and set up for the feast. Then we dug in. Yummy good stuff … and then there was dessert – gooey, chocolate brownies. We found ourselves talking about living in Silver City when Randy took a long look at me and asked, “What do you bring to the table?” Hmmm, not much. Certainly not stained-glass and jewelry or one-man dramatic reenactments, or woodworking, or all the other things Randy & Kathy do. Nope, we don’t have those talents. We just sort of ride B’n’C’s coattails. You know, the go-fer sort of person. Yep, that’s about it I suppose. We don’t even cook, but we are friendly ;-)

Randy & Kathy’s very nice and comfy patio is made that way by an enclosing six-foot mesh fence. You see, Mule Deer are larger (500 lbs for a trophy-sized buck) than our Eastern White-Tailed deer, and more aggressive. Before installing the fencing, Randy would have to be careful when going outside in the dark. Even now he takes a flashlight and checks the area before wandering around outside. Also, just like our lovely, four-footed friends at home, the Mule Deer are very inquisitive and destructive. If you plant something, they will check it out and usually destroy it in the process of discovering that they don’t like it. The fence seems to have things under control for Randy’n’Kathy.

We spent some time talking about where we were planned to go on our way home. Randy & Kathy have done a lot of traveling in NM, so they offered insightful suggestions. The discussion even included maps, so you know it was significant. Before we knew it, we’d been there nearly 8 hours … time for old farts to go home. Kathy insisted on giving us a bunch of leftovers “for the trip” and we loaded up just about as much as we brought. I was reminded of the arid environment when I noted the box of kitchen matches Randy had left out by the grill. If you left a box of matches out in the evening dew back home, you’d be buying new matches. Not here, essentially no dew, therefore no water-logged matches the next day.

We were back at 3 Crescent with just enough time for a nightcrap (that’s what we took to calling our late-evening imbibing) before turning in for the night. Our last night in Silver City … sob.

================== End of Part 2 …. Start of Part 3 ===================

2/15/11 Tuesday … Silver City NM to Bosque Birdwatcher RV Park, San Antonio NM …We were up at our usual adult time, had our morning beverages, and got ready for The Parting. We were rolling down the road around ten after heartfelt hugs and well wishes. One would be hard pressed to find more gracious hosts than B’n’C. They house us, feed us and act as tour guides. We are surely unworthy of such hospitality, but we gladly accept it when offered. Silly as it seems, we were heading off down the road on our own, responsible for taking care of ourselves once again. Ah, but we weren’t going far … just to Silver City Beverage to fill up any remaining cubbyholes with more New Belgian 1554, State Pen Porter & Cutthroat Porter … we hoped to get a few more 6-packs but they were out … maybe we’ll score more down the road.

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We were heading for Bosque del Apache, not too far down the road, so we settled in for a leisurely drive on NM-152 through the Gila NF, crossing from the Mimbres Valley to the Rio Grande Valley. NM-152 is a great little road. Fortunately, the snow and ice had melted off, except for some lingering in shadowed edges. The road narrows as it climbs to Emory Pass elev.8228. East and west of Emory were narrow gorges, frequent pullouts, several NF campsites, lots of Ponderosa Pine, but very little traffic. Beautifully scenic and peaceful. Scenireaceful?

Emory Pass Video

We crossed over the new Percha Creek Bridge as we entered the Rio Grande Valley. There is a pullout where you can walk down to the old Percha Creek Bridge built on the 1927 Black Range Highway. Both bridges span Percha Creek canyon and we heard a Canyon Wren (play the song) off in the distance – most appropriate for the setting. Looking up, we were greeted by a ridge of Sotols glinting in the sun.

After descending into the Rio Grande Valley, we found ourselves at Caballo and Caballo Lake SP. We were tempted to stop and check out the birds, but Bosque beckoned us onward. Ah, but what about Elephant Butte and Elephant Butte SP… they got birds too. Caballo Lake, Elephant Butte Reservoir, and Bosque del Apache represent rare water and attract wildlife in the otherwise arid Rio Grande Valley. All were very tempting, but Bosque is a world-class refuge. We want to get there with enough time to secure accommodations and drive the tour road before dark. Onward. We’ll have to do the others next time … and there will be a next time ;-)

We pulled into the Bosque Visitor Center around 2:30 and had a very informative exchange with the volunteer lady behind the counter. We were interested in getting a campsite before returning to do the auto tour so we asked her for suggestions. She said there were 2 nice places just down the road. One is a private just outside the refuge boundary; the other is the village park in San Antonio. She said the village park looks nice, but she’s never seen anyone there, even though it is free. Further conversation revealed that she’s from the UP of Michigan and volunteers at Seney NWR in the summer. Wow, we go there frequently. Seney in the summer and Bosque in the winter – they’re both cushy jobs, but someone has to do them.

Okay, we were off to get a campsite. The plan was to check the private place first, and if not suitable, go to the village site. Bam, just like the lady said; you cross the refuge boundary and you’re at Bosque Birdwatcher RV Park. Hey, this is just fine. Not a lot of people and only $20.

Bosque del Apache NWR Bosque del Apache Images

The manager guy is about our age – closer to Janie then me – and a real live wire. “What about paying?” “Go have a good time; we’ll take care of that later.” “Been here 20 years and have only had one check bounce.” “Of course not, you only accept cash.” “What site?” “Just pick one and leave something to mark it.” We put up the ‘occupied’ sign Janie made for just these occasions and headed back to the refuge. It was around 4 when we pulled into a turnout across from several thousand Snow Geese mixed with several hundred Sandhill Cranes. Oy! We drove around the 15 mile loop and encountered a couple from Albuquerque (he was originally from CT; she had worked at an NP in CA). Q’s: “Is that a telescope?” “What’s the patch for?” “Can I look through it?” “How much does a thing like that cost?” A’s: “Yep.” “To cover one eye so we don’t have to squint.” “Sure.” “Too much … but not if you use it.”He was busy taking photographs – good shot of the Harrier kiting around us. That’s when I learned to push the ISO setting of my camera to get stop-action shots. All in all, quite a rewarding exchange.

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We came across them again down the road. We were talking when he said, “What’s that splashing over there?” Janie put the binos on the disturbed water and discovered about six Mule Deer wading across the pool. Their splashing ripples were backlit by the setting sun – both the guy and I started snapping shots. I’m sure his were better … but mine are suitable for prompting memories.

We came across another couple - more my age - from Washington State. I got out and said, “Ho-hum, pretty trite …” She laughed in agreement. It was really awesome with the setting sun illuminating the clouds all framed by the fringing mountains. He was engrossed in taking pictures of the sunset and eventually got up on top of his car to avoid the foreground clutter.

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We were also playing leapfrog with a stretch pickup that eventually passed us on the way back to the RV place. Guess what? They’d parked their Airstream right next to our site. We pulled in as they were unloading, and when I was about to plug into the hookup, they started playing rather loud rock music. Just as I was about to discuss moving with Janie, the manager guy drove up and, in a hushed voice, said, “We don’t normally have this type of thing here. If you want to move, you can. How about #8 or #9, they are isolated and quiet.” That’s exactly what we did. As I was plugging into #8, he drove up and apologized again. It was an awkward situation made much better by a cool manager guy.

What we saw: Northern Pintail Cinnamon Teal Green-Winged Teal Bufflehead

American Coot Pied-Billed Grebe Northern Shoveler Northern Harrier Red-Tailed Hawk (several) Canada Goose

2/16/11 Wednesday … Bosque Birdwatcher RV Park, San Antonio NM …25/45 at 6 AM – awakened by Sandhill Cranes calling overhead (play the call). We followed the Crane’s lead and headed directly for a nice pullout in the refuge for morning beverages. Ah, here’s one now – right on NM-1 that runs through the refuge. There were Snow Geese (thousands) and Sandhills (hundreds). They spend the day feeding in the surrounding fields and then come to the safer confines of the water for night. It was early and they were just starting to lift off in long skeins heading for the feeding grounds where refuge personnel had knocked down corn for them.

After our morning beverages with the geese and cranes, we headed into the heart of the refuge to find a nice spot for viewing and breakfast. Ah, the Farm Loop … we pulled into a spot in full view of 2 Bald Eagles perched in a dead tree in the middle of a pool. We were set for a safari day. The plan was to spend the morning slowly driving the 15-mile tour road, go to the visitor center for some shopping, have lunch, then return to the tour road for an evening safari. Let’s do it.

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Hey, look, there’s a Wilson’s Snipe; cranes feeding and croaking all around; a Kestrel perched beside a Bald Eagle; Mule Deer bounding back across the same pool where we saw them last evening; Red-Shafted Flicker over there; what’s that on the dike? Oh, it’s some sort of hawk. Maybe it has its breakfast. We put the scope on it, but it still looked pretty generic: smallish, gray, with a pretty face - for a hawk. Apparently, the bird was just waking up. We could see the nictitating membrane open and close over the eyes and then a big, hearty yawn. After watching it for a while – hawks on the ground are fairly unusual – I walked slowly toward it with the intention of flushing it so we could get a positive ID. The damned thing didn’t want to flush. Ah, but eventually it did … and it turned out to be a male Northern Harrier. They are ground nesters so sitting on the ground isn’t all that unusual. Like other birds of prey, the males are significantly smaller than the female. The female Harriers are brown; the males are gray. This was a gray male … and very cute. Thanks for letting us watch.

We stopped at a pullout equipped with a port-a-john … time to release some of the no-longer-needed morning beverage. Well would you look at that. Many of these newer port-a-johns have hand sanitizer dispensers built in. This one was no exception. However, I’d never seen this particular manufacturer. It was emblazoned with the sign: “Performance products for performance needs.” Hmmm, maybe it was a condom dispenser …

Now relieved, we could get back to the birds. The pullout overlooks an open field that they were plowing a few furrows a day. The freshly-turned earth attracted Ravens, Crows and Cranes. A scan of the ground showed it littered with recently molted feathers. Most of the Cranes were in groups or at least couples. Some were even tentatively beginning to do their mating dance. One lonely Crane stood out. It was walking around in the open field and called with each step. We developed the fantasy that it had lost its mate and was frantically calling for it. Sadly, it was probably true.

Farther down the road, we came across not one, not two, but THREE Bald Eagles in the same tree. This was near the Phil Norton Blind where we found a most impressive, old Cottonwood tree, but not much else. There were lots of White-Crowned Sparrows jumping around in the brush alongside the road. Then we saw a Bald Eagle, Red-Tail, and Harrier in one bino view. And if that weren’t enough, there was an Osprey sitting in a tree on the other side of the pool. Oy, what a display of birds.

Ah, but there were more than birds of prey … there was also their prey: Black-butted Gadwall, Cinnamon Teal, bald-headed Wigeon, Grebes, Coots, and even a Roadrunner … but it wasn’t in the water … and a Painted Turtle that was.

Okay, time for lunch. We headed up to the visitor center where we had a nice lunch in the very inviting parking area. Now it was time to shop. We’d learned about Jabebo earrings that were supposedly handmade locally. It turns out they are handmade, but in Bellefontaine PA – and they are made from cereal-box cardboard and hand painted so each one is totally unique in one way or another. Hey, handmade is handmade, right? Janie bought the Sandhill Cranes. We had a nice conversation with some of the staff and then took the short nature trail where we confirmed our Sotol identification and learned about Banana Yucca along with some other things. Alas, we didn’t see the Aplomado Falcon that frequents the parking lot of the visitor center, except when we were there =( (Aplomado Falcon Blog).

Time to get back to the actual refuge – we did the same tour route, only backwards. The warm afternoon sun was driving a pretty stiff SW wind. I had RVan in idle, chugging along at an adrenaline-suppressing 5 mph. When we turned the corner, we found ourselves with a tail wind, being pushed along at 6 or 7 mph. Wheeee… So where did the wind take us?

Our slow safari took us past a glowing Pheasant and eventually to a snag holding six Neotropic Cormorants. If you look at the range map, you will see that they aren’t normally found in the US. This is a life bird for us, and it was important to verify our tentative ID. We had been seeing and expected to see Double-Crested cormorants, but these looked different – smaller with a distinctive pattern around the beak. Two other vehicles pulled up while we were studying the birds. The first couple was less knowledgeable than us, but they had an iPad with a bird identification app. Yep, they agree. Then a second couple came up; the lady was a major birder and she confirmed the ID right off: Neotropic for sure. Yay … not that they are such a beautiful bird, but they are rare.

It was now officially evening and the Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes were coming in for their safer, watery night roost. Long skeins glided in and splashed down. The Geese seemed to be the most fastidious about bathing. After a long day out in the dusty fields, they busied themselves washing up in the water. We were on their west side and the setting sun was behind them. Thus, when they splashed in the water, large plums of spray exploded around them. It was very dramatic with the backlighting – but, unfortunately, very difficult to photograph – but I tried nonetheless.

Okay, it was officially twilight and time to get back to the campsite … whoa, what’s that over there … Elk. They have Elk here? Yep, guess so. There were about 20 of ‘em grazing in the field … a couple had on tracking collars. We learned later that they are the remnants of an old herd now actively being studied in hopes of them not becoming an extinct herd. Cool … now for an adult beverage.

It turns out we were too focused on our adult beverages and writing up what we’d seen during the day. We’d been expecting and hoping to see Gambel’s Quail the whole time we were in NM. We had seen some scurry across the road in front of us near Silver City, but not long or close enough for observation. When we complained about that to a fellow camper the next morning, we were told that several quail had been running around the campground all evening … and we missed ‘em. Damn.

2/17/11 Thursday … Bosque Birdwatcher RV Park, San Antonio NM to Valley Of Fires BLM RA, Carrizozo NM …44/56 at 6 AM. Back to the refuge for morning beverages (Marsh Pool) and breakfast (Flight Deck) where we got to watch Cinnamon Teal, Northern Pintail, Red-Tailed, Bald Eagle, Mule Deer wading back across pool … again. The wind was stiff for morning and there were actual clouds (strata Cirrus). Later we learned this wind was a portent of blowing to follow. It was difficult to watch waterfowl because they were either dipping their heads under the water (dabbling) or diving for food, fueling up for the continuation of the spring migration. You go guys, wish we could follow you north. Onward …

We pulled into a parking area for breakfast and met up with a couple from CO (she was from NYC originally). They were in a VW camper – very nice but no toilet – and just finishing their breakfast while sitting in folding chairs situated outside their large sliding cargo door. “Hey, that’s what we came here to do.” We looked in their van and they looked in ours. We talked a long time about things … wildlife, politics, campers. All of the people we met in and around Bosque were extremely open and friendly, family like – almost to a fault. We’d pull up to look at some birds and end up talking to others there … and not looking at what we’d come to see – the birds. Good experiences, but in a frustrating sort of way.

Our VW friends left, we had breakfast, and it was time for us to bid goodbye to Bosque and head to the next destination: The Valley of Fires just outside Carrizozo NM. We were off around 10:30 and had a pleasant 100 mile jaunt out of the Rio Grande Valley, over the eastern mountain ridge, across the Tularosa Basin to the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains to the east. We turned into the BMP camping area, claimed our site (#10), and headed for the showers. Did I say it was windy? Well, it was. So windy in fact that our hair was blown dry into a frightful-looking mess by the time we got back to RVan.

Okay, now we are clean with clean clothes, how about a little walk down to the visitor center to see what they have to offer. What they had was very little merchandise (Janie bought some postcards) but a lot of friendly banter from the hosts. They are from nearby Roswell – yeah, THAT Roswell – but looked more like they were from West-by-God-Virginia or some such backwoods locality. She was big and he was bigger. They would never make it in RVan – not even one of ‘em. Their “digs” consisted of the tractor part of a tractor-trailer rig pulling the biggest, expandable fifth-wheeler I’d ever seen … and an electric car … and an ATV. She drove the car to town; he used the ATV to tool around doing things campground hosts do. Nice people, very friendly, but they need to do more walking.

Back at RVan, it was time for lunch. Hmmm, what do we have? Oh, some leftover slaw and a few Cowboy Beans. Ah, beans & cabbage … there will be a good time in the old bed tonight.

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There’s a 3/4 mile nature trail that goes out through 2000-year-old olivine-basalt flows. It is paved with protective railings – don’t want to fall on the sharp Aa or even the ropey Pahoehoe - and lots of signs identifying various features and plants. It was so nice we did it twice … once into the wind and once with the wind.

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We were back at RVan a little after four where we engaged ourselves with picture editing, typing up notes, sending emails, and waiting for … Sunset … and … Moonrise … it’s full tonight. We weren’t disappointed by either celestial object.

2/18/11 Friday … Valley Of Fires BLM RA, Carrizozo NM …37/48 at 6 AM. Last night we had a spectacular Sunset/Moonrise … this morning we were primed for Moonset/Sunrise.

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We had our morning beverages and then took the trail up to the Tularosa Basin Overlook where we got some great views of the surrounding terrain. Back to RVan for granola & grooming (trimmed nails and mustache – necessary evils). While doing these things under the protective canopy covering the picnic table, I was serenaded by a Canyon Wren out in the lava flows. How very appropriate. There was a Mockingbird flitting around the campground too intent on feeding itself to fill the environment with its myriad sounds.

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Then we were off to … do whatever the hell we wanted. First, we needed gas, so we headed to Carrizozo. Ah, what a nice little town all aglow in the morning sun. The town’s theme is burros, so there are several life-sized plaster burros painted up by local artists (of which there seem to be too many for such a small village). The brightly colored buildings were beautiful in the bright sunlight. The elevation is 5,286 according to the town sign (out here they post the elevation rather than the population) and the surrounding mountains top 10,000 feet. We eventually got to a little over 7,000’ today as we drove around the taller spires under which Nogal and Alto nestle. We were on the eastern side of the Sacramento Mountains with the Tularosa Basin to the west. There’s an Apache-owned ski area nearby and the real estate reflects it: lots of very pretentious homes and way too many people driving way too fast and talking way too much on their phones. We took the next available road out to the east. Ah, Ft Stanton … much more to our liking.

We followed small-ish roads through the high plateau festooned with golden grasses and dotted with Juniper and Cholla. Eventually, we came to an abrupt turn in the road caused by the Ft Stanton Memorial Cemetery: row after row of small, white crosses all behind an impressive stone wall with a big, wrought-iron gate. Humbling.

Next thing we knew, we were in Lincoln NM. Like The Valley of Fires, we’d been through this area on our return from the 1998 trip with Mom when we took her to Phoenix to visit Dad’s brother, John. We were amazed to pass through obvious lava flows and equally impressed with the historic nature of Lincoln. Ah, but back then we didn’t have time check it out properly. Lincoln is an historic town – village, really. It is famous for being the place where Billy The Kid was captured and subsequently escaped. Ah, but there’s a lot more history than that: Lincoln Historic District. There are actually TWO museums in town; one on each end. This is impressive when you consider the size of the town – it’s not even incorporated. We parked in the southern Lincoln County Historical Museum and walked back up US 380 (the only street in town) to the northern Lincoln County Historical Museum, reading the many historical signs as we went. The main drag was very quiet for a US highway; the town was also sedate, and most of the little shops and such were closed. I guess it isn’t The Season just yet.

We learned that there was more to the Billy The Kid - Pat Garrett story than we thought. There were two general store operators who got into what amounted to a range war. The whole ruckus is called The Lincoln County War, described as:

… a 19th century range war between two factions in America's western frontier. The "war" was notable for the large number of semi-mythical figures from 19th century America, including legendary outlaw Billy the Kid, County Sheriffs William J. Brady and Pat Garrett, cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and businessman Alexander McSween, and general store owner L.G. Murphy.

The conflict pitted two factions against each other, over the control of dry goods trade in the county. One faction was allied with the Lincoln County Sheriff, William J. Brady, and supported by the Jessie Evans Gang. The other faction organized their own posse of armed men, known as the Lincoln County Regulators.

The "war" was marked by back-and-forth revenge killings. In revenge for this and other killings, Sheriff Brady was killed by the Regulators. Further killings continued unabated for several months, climaxing in the Battle of Lincoln, a four day gunfight and siege. It would finally be brought to an end when Pat Garrett was named County Sheriff in 1880. Garrett would hunt down the remaining Regulators, including Billy the Kid, killed by Garrett in July, 1881.

All of that was noted on the various historic signs posted outside the appropriate homes and businesses. But that was history; we were now about to experience some real-time entertainment.

We stopped to read a sign on the Curry Saloon. As we were walking away, we heard a faint scuffle of feet and a tiny voice saying, “We’re open.” After the second “We’re open” we turned and discovered the source of the tiny voice: a little girl running up behind us. For the want of anything else to say, I asked her how long they’d be open; she paused a moment to reflect and then said, “Til midnight.” I followed my initial inane question with another and asked when she goes to bed, to which she responded, “Seven thirty.” I responded with, “Hey, that’s when we go to bed … maybe we’ll stop at your store on our way back.” How cute … but it gets even better.

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We had no intention of going in the store but guilt got the better of us. Janie was the first to succumb and I followed after taking pictures of the outside. When I opened the oversized, obviously old screen-door and unlatched one of the two narrow doors behind, I found Janie talking cheerfully to what looked like a twelve-year-old girl leaning against an old wood-burning stove. I entered the conversation and discovered the twelve-year-old was actually 28 and the mother of three, the oldest being the little girl who had hailed us. The store was OLD; the floor all well-worn wood that undulated up and down and creaked with every step. There was a set of shelves with canned and packaged goods and on top were smaller items like a bunch of shot glasses (one featuring Maryland) and a collection of decorated thimbles.

The main feature, however, was a ten-foot long marble countertop with two soda-jerk-like dispensers. The counter featured a coffee pot and microwave. The cooler at the end of the counter had a hand-written list of coffee and microwaveable, presumably edible, items. You could get a Starbuck’s cappuccino mocha for $2.25 – don’t know how that works exactly. There was a large (nearly floor to ceiling and as long as the bar) wooden-framed mirror covering the wall behind the counter. The proprietress wants to strip it and see what kind of wood is underneath. Good luck.

The mother of three turns out to be Patricia; the three are Courbyn (boy, 3), Elizabeth (who turned 6 yesterday), and Athena Selene (7). They were just precious and amazingly well behaved. They have school from 7:30-4:30 Monday thru Thursday – the long school days mean they have Fridays off. This being Friday, they were home with mom.

We learned the family moved from Myrtle Beach SC to Lincoln NM back in September, bought this old store, and hope to turn it into something profitable. Good luck with that too. The tourist traffic will have to pick up significantly for the place to work out. Patricia, the mom, was born in MS and HATES snow. The ten inches they got a couple weeks ago was just AWFUL. After several minutes, she managed to pry herself away from the pot-bellied stove. Poor child is freezing in what we considered fairly balmy weather.

After learning about the family history, it was time to see about purchasing something. Janie picked out one of the four or five bandanas hanging on an old potato-chip rack tacked to the wall. Then she sauntered over to the “jewelry counter”, an old glass-fronted display case with the top shelf full of necklaces and such and the bottom shelves full of increasingly larger knives and assorted weaponry. After the mother forcefully told the kids to “not touch the knives”, they started pulling out necklaces for Janie to peruse.

A bit later Patricia joined them and started telling the history of some of the items. One, she made when she was a kid. Another, much more fancy, she and her mother made more recently. Athena let it slip that some of them were bought at the Dollar Store in nearby Capitan. Courbyn offered one that was his least favorite and Janie said she’d buy it so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. That’s exactly what she did – it cost $2. Janie bought two more necklaces, including the one Patricia made as a child. Janie doesn’t wear necklaces but, well, you know … the spirit of the moment.

By this time, a middle-aged woman had come in to get some coffee and started being a grandmother to the kids. Courbyn was trying to wash his hands in the utility-size sink behind the soda counter. The “grandmother” just sauntered behind the counter and helped him clean himself up. In the meantime, I was talking to Patricia and offered that all the attention was getting the kids kind of wound up and she was going to have a busy afternoon, to which she rolled her eyes in agreement.

I suggested to Janie that we should be leaving, so she took her loot over to what passed for a checkout counter and Patricia totaled it up: one $2 bandana, two $2 necklaces, and she didn’t charge for the necklace she’d made as a child. Janie paid up and then gave her an extra $2 for each child. We left, but drove by on the way out to take some pictures. The six extra bucks didn’t seem to be nearly adequate. This is one of those cases where we’d like to drop a

couple thousand … to help these very nice people out a bit. Some day … when we are more certain we won’t need the extra loot.

We then headed back to Capitan. On the way, we stopped at the Smokey Bear Overlook to read up on the history and have some lunch. The gap between Capitan Mountain and the next one to the west is where the badly burnt bear cub who later became Smokey was found. The entire village of Capitan is devoted to that fact. The focal point of that devotion is the Smokey Bear Museum, which we had to check out. We spent some time looking at all the exhibits. Did you know there was a Smokey Bear hot-air balloon? Okay, did you know it met its demise when it was impaled on a radio tower? Janie watched the ten-minute video and I asked the attendant guy about camping in the Lincoln NF. It turns out that there are no NF campsites that are easy to reach (five miles of gravel road doesn’t work for us), so we headed back to the Valley of Fires for the night. But foist, we walked through the very well-maintained and extremely informative nature trail that adjoins the museum. Now we know the names of the plants we’ve been seeing for the last three weeks and we saw the final resting place of Smokey Bear (never, ever Smokey “the” Bear, we were told). You don’t call old friends Phil the Boger or Bawb the Wilkinson, do you?

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We braved the gusty wind to take a trail the campground host had told us about. Got back to RVan at exactly five … beer time. The sunset and moonrise were not nearly as nice as last night, so I just sat there typing these notes between sips of Deschutes Obsidian Stout … yummy … and quite appropriate given our location.

2/19/11 Saturday … Valley Of Fires BLM RA, Carrizozo NM to Bottomless Lake SP, Roswell NM …38/44 at 6:30 AM. This may be the last “civilized” campground we’ll be in for a while, so after morning beverages, we took advantage of the dump station and the showers for our Golden Age Pass price of $5. These are essentially new bathhouses; very nice and very clean. The only problem is the floors tend to be slippery when wet, but other than that, A-OK.

Yesterday it was gas; today it’s groceries we need. Off to the only grocery in Carrizozo, smallish but very nice. It is clean and well stocked for its size – lots of Tex-Mex stuff we’ve never seen before ... and pistachios and apples – two of the main cash-crops in the area. We bought some of each and they are gooooood. As we checked out, the friendly checkout guy seemed ever so familiar. About halfway through the inevitable discussion of “where you folks from?”, it occurred to me why this guy seemed so familiar. He looked and acted like Fred Mingrino, who runs the Main Street part of Sundance Books in Geneseo. Yep, this could be Fred’s long-lost brother – right down to the hair. It was “Fred” who corrected us about Smokey “the” Bear. He said it’s Smokey Bear not Smokey “the” Bear and he said it like I would correct someone who said “LAND-caster” instead of “LANK-ster”, “Columbus” instead of “Klumz” or “Ohio” instead of “Ahia”. Quite the experience.

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We started retracing the Carrizozo to Capitan route we took yesterday, but picked up NM-246 in Capitan rather than continue on US-380. Now I gotta say US-380 isn’t bad for being a US highway, but NM-246 was one of our dream roads. It loops out and around the Capitan Mountains and eventually ends up in Roswell, like US-380, but the 75 mile length of NM-246 displayed all the features we seek in back roads: essentially no traffic (a total of 14 vehicles; only two from behind), no billboards, almost no power lines, no indication of human presence other than widely separated elaborate ranch signs and barbed wire, and wonderful scenery. Just a fabulous road – with a stiff tailwind. I put it in cruise at 35 (s)miles per hour and we trundled along getting nearly 18 mpg. Seventy-five miles of golden grassland with Juniper, Pinion Pine, Cholla, Beargrass, Soaptree Yucca, and the occasional Ponderosa Pine in the washes coming down from the fringing mountains. This is NM’s version of the Trace. Sigh … I want to go back.

As we were leaving Billy The Kid (certainly not Billy Kid like Smokey Bear) country, I had a thought. Just about everything in the area is somehow related to the Kid or the Bear. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a sign advertising: “Billy The Kid farted here.” Yeah, it’s that pervasive.

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Our destination was Bitter Lake NWR southeast of Roswell. We wouldn’t be going to Roswell otherwise; in fact, we never did make it to Roswell proper thanks to Janie’s deft navigation (or is it daft – whatever). We arrived at Bitter Lake NWR in the early afternoon, stopped at the VC, talked with the ranger, watched an amazing video about Dragonfiles (even better than the Nature documentary we saw recently), visited the gift shop to buy … you guessed it: post cards. Janie sends them to relatives and friends AND uses left over ones to make posters for each of our trips. This poster will be more of a mural.

Then we drove the 8-mile tour-road. This is no Bosque del Apache, but it will do. The refuge owes its existence to the Pecos River Valley. The road was quite far from the water, so you really can’t see much without good binoculars

and a telescope. We have both, so we saw lots of things – just not as densely packed as at Bosque. Some of the new things we saw were:

Redhead Duck, Ruddy Duck, Great & Snowy Egret, White Pelican, and White-Faced Ibis

We also saw several Harriers kiting around … and … three, count ‘em, three large hawks (Harriers & Red-Tails) perched atop Snow Goose carcasses, flinging white feathers to the wind.

There were several rafts of Snow Geese and a few Sandhill Cranes … always a welcome sighting

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Okay, now where are we going to stay? The ranger suggested Bottomless Lake SP just SW of Roswell, and that’s where we found ourselves right around beer time. We had a nice conversation with the volunteer at the check-in office. He was older and well weathered. His clothes were clean and neat but faded and well-worn. He actually walked outside with us to point out the road we needed to take and describe the best site for us and our rig: “Just go down this road to the tent sites, pass the first site on your right, go a piece and you’ll find D-4 on the left. Nice secluded site with plenty of room for your little rig. Ten bucks. Oh, there’s warm, not hot water, but the bathhouse isn’t heated. The -19 degrees we had a couple weeks ago did in our furnace. Have a good night.” Nice, friendly guy like all the others we’ve come across on this adventure.

We were treated to a nice sunset and the soothing sound of Sandhill Cranes croaking down by the Pecos. Very pleasant … and certainly secluded.

2/20/11 Sunday … Bottomless Lake SP, Roswell NM to Muleshoe NWR, Muleshoe (Needmore) TX …48/58; 6 AM. Before heading down the road, we toured of Bottomless Lake SP (map); lots of sink holes formed by solution of Limestone and Gypsum along the eastern banks of the Pecos River. The SP has an impressive adobe-pavilion with observation tower adjacent to a larger sink-hole lake with a roped-off swimming area – swimming in this climate must be a rare luxury. The place is called bottomless because cowboys driving cattle up from TX along the Pecos on the Goodnight-Loving Trail tried to determine the lake depth by attaching a stone weight to several lariats tied together. However, subsurface currents swept their lariats to the side, so they never found the actual bottom … yep, bottomless was the conclusion. In this case, the absence of evidence really was the evidence of absence. We drove up over the rim, out to US-380 and onward to Tatum.

On the way to Tatum we came across a Golden Eagle sitting on top of a utility pole next to the highway. How many US highways can you just stop and take a long look at a bird without causing a traffic incident? Not really a problem out here. Just outside Tatum we saw a small herd of Pronghorn in a barren field of all places. We’d passed miles of wonderfully grassy fields and they picked this bare area to stand. Whatever, we got a good view – at 45 MPH.

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In Tatum, we stopped in the parking lot of the Burger Barn to take a picture of the iron “Welcome To Tatum” sign hanging out over the road. Hey, we are just across the road from the source of all the iron signs we remembered from passing through Tatum back in 1998: Westcraft Metal Art by Tex Welch. I took a bunch of pictures of Tex’s shop and yard then we headed to the Stripe gas station to tank up on $3.19 gas.

We headed north out of Tatum on NM-206. We’d been on the edge of the Llano Estacado all morning. At one point we passed the Mescalero Sands at the base of the Mescalero Escarpment – the actual beginning of the Estacado in this area. According to our readings, Coronado was exploring along the Pecos and discovered the Estacado (well, the Native Americans already knew about it, but that doesn’t seem to count). The actual meaning of his phrase “Llano Estacado” is sort of confused in translation. It is believed he intended it to be Palisaded Plain or Stockaded Plain – but not the Staked Plain as it is frequently called (by me among others). The Palisade and Stockade parts refer to the fringing ridges. The whole area is underlain by the Ogallala, a loosely-cemented sandstone shed from the ancestral Rockies. The Ogallala dips eastward and conducts water to the dry high plains. Over the years, evaporation from the surface has formed a mineralized caprock that protects and confines the Ogallala aquifer. Where the caprock is breached, the sand is exposed to the prevailing SW winds and forms dunes. Hence, the Mescalero Sands at the base of the Mescalero Escarpment, one of the palisades/stockades bounding the Llano Estacado.

Okay, now the geology lesson is over and our travel log continues. We headed north out of Tatum right through the Estacado with Portales as our destination. We ultimately planned a tour of Grulla NWR on the SW side of Portales. Ah, but we need accommodations for the night, so first checked out Oasis SP. Did I mention the wind? It was blowing out of the WSW at a steady 30 MPH. At one point we had the wind to our backs. When I killed the cruise control, we actually went faster.

It was a little after noon and the Oasis campsites were open to the wind. Too early to stop and sit in the wind, so we headed down to check out Grulla. The Estacado is, well, rather featureless (the mountain removal project is beyond complete), so there is nothing to impede the prevailing and persistent winds which blow loose plants across the road. Thus, we repeatedly encountered “Tumbleweed Crossings” as we motored along. I found myself stopping or at least slowing down as they tumbled across in front of us. We actually only ran over one the whole day. Yay!

We were scanning the roadsides for Pronghorn and Prairie Dogs, but what we mostly saw was cow pies. I’m reading a book by Bill Bryson called At Home. He explains that the early settlers of the treeless west were forced to use cow pies (domestic and Buffalo) for fuel. Being influenced by Victorian primness, they referred to them as “surface coal”. Ha!

As we drove toward Grulla, we saw a large cloud of dust along our eastern horizon. I was watching the dust cloud as Janie informed me of our distance to Grulla. Hmmm, they both got closer at the same time. Once we arrived, we discovered why. Grulla, like most wildlife refuges in this part of the world, is located around a body of water; in this case, Salt Lake - NM version. The dust we saw was the residue from the dried-up lake bed. Hell, we were basically in a dust storm and there was no hope of seeing any wildlife whatsoever. Recalculate.

Our tentative destination for tomorrow morning was Muleshoe NWR just south of Needmore TX, which itself is just south of Muleshoe TX. I kinda like the “Needmore Texas” thing, even though some people contend there is altogether too much Texas. Muleshoe is TX’s oldest refuge, so it sounded pretty interesting. Along the way there we passed through peanut country and dairy country and cotton country. In the latter, the roadsides were littered with bits of cotton clinging to weed stubble. I had to keep reminding me the white stuff was not snow, but cotton. Eastern mentality.

As we approached Muleshoe we noticed yet another dust cloud on our horizon. Yep, Muleshoe was experiencing the same desiccation phenomenon. However, there were significant differences between Muleshoe and Grulla. Muleshoe is much bigger … and … Muleshoe had camping … and … it’s free … and … it’s upwind of the dust cloud. The camping thing was a great relief because the next campground is quite a ways down the road. We set up a bit early which is good because we lost an hour when we crossed the border into TX. We hope the weather forecasts are correct and the wind dies down to a more manageable 15 MPH tomorrow. Then maybe the dust will settle and we can see what Muleshoe has to offer.

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That evening, the wind died, the dust settled, and we got to see a beautiful Muleshoe sunset, followed by a serenade of Coyote yipping and howling accompanied by the croaking of Sandhill Cranes off in the distance. Ah, nature …

2/21/11 Monday … Muleshoe NWR, Muleshoe (Needmore) TX to Arrowhead Lake SP, Wichita Falls TX …33/48 ungodly early. We were up before dawn … hell, we were in bed at dark, so all’s well. After the morning beverage thing we pondered what to do next. Hmmm, there’s got a Prairie Dog town over by a spring-fed lake. All the other lakes are evaporite dust; maybe the spring-fed one is wet … and full of birds … and we might get Prairie Dogs as a bonus. Let’s head over there MAP. We camped just beyond Headquarters on the far western refuge boundary (N of White Lake, W of Goose Lake). The Prairie Dog town and spring-fed lake are on the NE side, near Paul’s Lake. On our way out we checked other “lakes” and found them to be … dry as desert bones and a possible source of yesterday’s dust clouds.

It was too early for what turns out to be late-rising Prairie Dogs so we checked out Paul’s Lake. The shallow end was dry with what looked like birds hunkered down on the evaporite – or maybe they were stumps – no, wait that one is preening – stumps don’t do that – still too far away to ID, however. The part with water seemed barren. Okay what about the dogs? Ah, they are starting to stir. The ones on the east side of the road seemed to be earlier risers. They stood on their mounds, facing the sun, and we watched them stretch, yawn, and preen after a good night’s rest. They are just the cutest things.

We are most definitely on the way home, but still have Miles And Miles Of Texas to travel. Knowing full well that “there’s nothing west of Dallas” is not only wrong but backwards – there’s nothing EAST of Dallas … nothing that is of much interest to us. Thus, we decided to take our time and tour the back roads that knit together dusty little towns.

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This part of TX is musically significant and the cradle of a lot of music we love (ref: C/W singers on p.29 of TX guidebook): Bob Wills, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, LouAnn Rhimes, among others including …

Louise Massey:

Louise Massey Mabie (1902-1983) The Original Rhinestone CowgirlOne of the first female radio stars in the 1930s, Louise's career spanned from 1918-1950. Her recordings in English andSpanish sold millions of copies. Heading the Roswell-based group, Louise Massey and the Westerners, she became known for spectacular costumes and a ladylike demeanor, garnering the title “the Original Rhinestone Cowgirl”. She was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1982.

There must be something in the water … or lack thereof.

So here we were cruising back roads big enough to be paved but small enough to have little or no traffic – doing a cool 45 mph with a tailwind. Although the roads were small, the speed limit was LARGE: 80 mph. Holy crap, I’m perfectly happy with half that. But then these wide open spaces allow such exuberance. Here’s a litany of the places we passed through:

Bulo (absolutely no Internet info for Bulo … go figure)Littlefield (Waylon Jennings Boulevard)Spade (breakfast in cotton gin parking lot)PetersburgFlock of Sandhill Cranes circling overhead trying to go N against the strong NW wind (two groups ~ 50)King Cotton + Wind Turbines = Wind Cotton FarmsConeCame off the Caprock-Llano Estaqcado (“staked” with Yucca bloom stalks and/or Walking-Stick Cholla – Coronado)and entered Canyonlands where east-flowing streams have breached the caprock and downcut into the soft sediment underneathMt BlancoMcAdooAftonSeeing full-grown trees again, but still a lot of Mesquite, Juniper, Yucca, fewer ChollaDumontDriving on Texas Ranch Roads which are quickly becoming Texas Farm RoadsLoggerhead Shrike, Kestrels, Red TailsNo gas stations since Littlefield – good thing we filled up before we started this trekBenjamin (only town known to be named after someone who was killed by lightning – or so they say)Gas at one of two stations: one fairly modern; the other one Bob’s Grocery/Gas/RV Camping - old and run down; not appealing. Roadside Rest just outside Benjamin for lunch and a nice view of the Wichita River badlands. The wind was not as brisk as yesterday but bringing a chill from the NW – nice in the sun but uncomfortable in the shadeTook a side road down into the bad lands toward Gillard and turned back when it started to become farmlandVeraSeymourDundeeHolliday

We decided to check out the Holliday village campground. As we drove through, we noticed that the town was going from affluent in the western ‘burbs to … RR tracks … to decidedly run down … to more RR tracks … to nearly derelict. And there it was, smack dab in the middle of rundown houses with loads of crap in what passed for front, back and side yards ... all mini landfills. The actual campsites were nice and looked unused ... for good reason it appears. Nope, don’t think I want to spend the night surrounded by … well, whatever low-life was living in those houses. Other options?

Oh look, just down this side road is Arrowhead State Park. Hey, look, they got actual, working oil wells right here in the campground … and a couple platforms out in the lake (MAP). This must be Texas, right? We got a shower, dinner, but no dancing – just a little reading and some much appreciated sleep punctuated by the rhythmic squeak of a pump-jack.

2/22/11 Tuesday … Arrowhead Lake SP, Wichita Falls TX to Lake O’the Pines COE, Jefferson TX …29/42 6:30 AM. Some of the reading we did last night included the attractions at Arrowhead State Park. Well, now, they also have a Prairie Dog town. Let’s go over there for our morning beverages and watch the cute little doggies rise and shine.

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If you have a gander at the park MAP, you will see the Prairie Dog town is located on a peninsula completely surrounded by park roads. These dogs get a lot of attention … and food … from the summer crowds. Thus, they are not the “cute little doggies” mentioned above; they are decidedly on the chubby and lethargic side. Nonetheless, they eventually came out and entertained us. High above them, a Red-Wing Hawk was entertaining the idea of Fat Prairie Dogs as the breakfast of champions – Red-Tail champions that is.

We were also entertained by Mockingbirds, White-Crowned Sparrows, and Ruby-Crowned Kinglets all catching the warmth of the morning rays in the bushes beside us. Ah but it’s time to get on down the road … home beckons. Being an adult does have its drawbacks. Soon we found ourselves in Nocona TX where Roadrunner Liquor advertised

beer & wine. We had a couple reasons to stop’n’shop. We’d just finished off our Chateau Cartone wine, and this may be our last chance to get some of the western beer we’ve learned to love. Zip-Zap we were in and greeted by a very effeminate young Asian boy/girl who was also extremely friendly and helpful … but didn’t ask, “Massage, GI?”

What s/he did ask was what we were looking for. By that time I’d spotted the Fat Tire display, so I asked about the porters & stouts. Nope, only the Fat Tire. Okay, I’ll go out and see how much room we have and be right back. In the meantime, Janie asked about disposing of our empties. Ah, TX doesn’t have a bottle return so you just throw ‘em in the dumpster outside. Great. We ended up getting all the Fat Tire they had and a Black Box CabSav. We’re good for another week ;-)

Sometimes the stars are aligned just right and you start seeing lots of signs that catch your attention and tickle your funny bone. Well, that happened to us right after leaving the liquor store. No, we were not sampling our purchases; we were just reading signs. The first one was: “Fresh Produce Since 1958”. Now that just doesn’t sound right, right? Just a bit down the road in Gainesville TX we saw a sign that caught our mid-morning attention: “Ranch House Catfish Louie’s: All U Can Eat Feed Trough Buffett with Ribs”. Once you get past the All U Can Eat part, I guess you then have to dig into some less-than-U can-eat ribs. The “Feed Trough” idea seems to be appropriate … and maybe a wheelchair to get you to your vehicle. Yep, we are in Big Meat country for sure.

Enough of this civilization stuff, let’s go to a wildlife refuge. Janie found some on or near our proposed route, so we detoured to check out Hagerman NWR. Aside from the unappealing name, this is a pretty nice place. The really good news: excellent biking possibilities and lots of birds to see; bad news: we don’t have bikes or time. The other bad news: the place is an active oil field with lots of drill rigs and signs proclaiming how big oil and refuges can coexist. We just drove through, scoped out some birds, made mental notes about future use, and headed on down the road. We were almost due north of Dallas; the fun part of Texas driving was over; time to get serious and make a run for the Natchez Trace to seek refuge in greater solitude.

We stopped at a Pilot station in Sulphur Springs TX for our day’s ration of gas. When I started pumping, the price was $2.99, by the time I’d finished, they’d changed the sign to $3.09. Oh joy, unrest in the Middle East. This was our last back roading for a while. The speed limits were a little lower in the more densely populated part of TX but still – if it’s paved you can do 70 mpg … same as the IOF … but access roads parallel to Interstates are 55 mph. These people are just plain crazy. We used the back roads when available and access roads otherwise, but eventually we were forced to get on I-20.

Interstates make for faster traveling so we were covering a lot more terrain faster. Yesterday we were seeing Yucca, Mesquite, Juniper. Today there were Daffodils and Dogwood in bloom, and Cypress trees. We passed on a couple state parks because it was too early to stop. We pinned our hopes on Daingerfield SP just outside Daingerfield TX. It was getting late, we were ready to pack it in for the day, and the odd spelling seemed curiously attractive. As we drove toward the park, the country got more rural and pleasantly forested – a big change. Things were looking good – until we pulled into the entrance road around 4:30. The road was blocked with a big sign: Closed For Renovation. What? Sure enough, we confirmed the closing once we checked the Internet site. Note to selves: gotta get better at this Internet thing. Big letdown on two counts. Now we have to find another place and get to it before ADULT BEVERAGE TIME.

Back in Daingerfield, we noted a sign for a private campground so we headed in that direction. Hmmm, doesn’t look all that inviting; let’s pull into this church parking lot and do more research. While Janie looked stuff up, I checked out the building across the street. OMG, it’s the Bluegrass Pickin’ Place in Lone Star TX … home of the Outcast Bluegrass Band. It was a long, ill-kept place with about six huge exhaust fans along the side wall. Actually, it looked a lot like one of those commercial chicken-growing buildings. Ah, but I expect the place really gets cookin’ on a hot Texas night and they need all the exhaust fans they can get. I took a picture just for Brian – our favorite Bluegrass picker.

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Well look-a-here, there’s a Corps of Engineers place just down the way. It’s called Lake O’the Pines and being a COE place, I get to camp for half price. Let’s do it. Well, it turns out the campsites are on the other side of the Lake O’the Pines so we had to drive through what my father used to call KY and WV to get there. It was depressingly trashy. What is it with these fisher-people? The roadside was nearly covered with bits and pieces of paper, plastic, and other assorted trash. Depressing but unfortunately too common. Hell, we pulled in behind a pickup at a stop sign and got to watch as the passenger casually tossed out a couple beer cans. This is when I wish I had a gun and the legal authority to use it – just to put those guys out of our misery. Onward.

We finally got to the campground and found a friendly volunteer lady at the entrance – waaaaay too friendly. Just register us so we can get set up for the night … I got beer to drink. No, she had to tell us all about how much she likes working here and how great the place is … and then tell us how happy she is that she has the next three days off. Hey, I thought you liked it … never mind … take our money – all of $11 – and get on with it. She did give us a

really nice campsite with a panoramic view of the lake … and the many birds. For our $11 we also get full hookup and a hot shower. Yay! Age has its privileges.

2/23/11 Wednesday … Lake O’the Pines COE, Jefferson TX to Rocky Springs Campground, Natchez Trace MS …56/61, 6:30 AM. We had our morning beverages OUTSIDE this AM. It was a beautiful morning all around. We were gloriously entertained by birds flitting around on the lake. There were:

Ring-Billed Duck Coot Forster’s Tern Black Vulture (in tree next to campsite) Crows Great Blue Heron (gracefully gliding in just over the water) Double-Crested Cormorant Goldeneye (displaying) Lesser Scaup White Pelican Common Loon Mockingbird (hopping around on and under our picnic table)

There were several other campers, but the sites were still pretty private – for an eastern-style campground. Most of the other RVs were HUGE – big enough to comfortably fit one or more RVans inside. The owners seem to have undertaken fishing as a more or less permanent occupation. To each his/her own. We enjoyed the birds that found solace in the COE water impoundment. Very pleasant morning, but alas, we must onward go.

Certainly the morning experience was better than the ugly trash we saw along the roadway after leaving the campground. How can people live like this? What does it say about our mentality when we can just toss trash out into a public arena, especially one as otherwise naturally beautiful as this? We seem to be appallingly unaware of the consequence beyond our immediate being. Humans … damn their eyes (ores).

We stayed on smallish roads until we got to the Shreveport bypass, then we bit the bullet and got on I-20 and made tracks for the Trace. I gritted my teeth, cranked ‘er up to 60 and joined in the parade. We were making pretty good time, so Janie started looking for some diversions. She found ‘em just north of Monroe LA: D’Arbonne NWR & Black Bayou NWR. And you know what? There are a couple other, very large wildlife areas N & SE of Monroe. We must be in the wetlands … oh, yeah, the Mississippi Valley with all its Bayous … great habitat.

Since it was closest, we headed to D’Arbonne NWR first. When we got to the headquarters, we learned that D’Arbonne NWR is mostly dedicated to hunting and fishing. Black Bayou NWR is the more touristy refuge. We interrupted the information center staff’s lunch long enough to ask how to get from here to there expeditiously. Expeditiously speaking, you can’t; there’s the Ouachita River and several Bayous & Lakes in between. You can either go back to Monroe and up the other side or continue north from here to Sterlington and then down to Black Bayou NWR. BUT … be sure to watch the speed limits. The area is heavily patrolled … especially where the bridge crosses the river. Okay, will do. Thanks.

Sure enough, we saw our first patrol car parked at the west end of the Sterlington bridge … another at the east end … and several more along the road to Black Bayou NWR and, later, back down to Monroe. Good thing we are law-abiding, eh? So what did we see at Black Bayou NWR? Not much. It was certainly pleasant with a nice boardwalk and even a photographer’s blind. But there really wasn’t much to see – like it was out of season or something. We did see lots of Bald Cypress with their knobby knees sticking out of the water … and a couple Wood Ducks, but that’s about it. It was a nice day, so we had a little lunch and then headed back to (ugh) I-20.

OMG, the Engine Light came on just as we started to leave Black Bayou. Okay, not a real problem you tell yourself. It’s just an aberration that will go away. No biggie. But in the back of your mind you know you have to have it checked out eventually. Janie read the manual while I drove down I-20 trying to ignore the red light on the instrument panel. She reads: could be a loose gas cap or maybe some bad gas – see a mechanic if it doesn’t go away after several restarts. Hmmm, gas cap is tight. Bad gas – certainly a possibility. Okay, let’s give it a day and see what happens.

We arrived in Vicksburg MS, crossed the mighty Mississippi, and took MS-27 SE toward the Trace. Oh what a relief to pull into the Trace. It felt like home. No annoying traffic, no trash, no massive trucks driving way too fast – just delightful tranquility. Why can’t the rest of the world be like this? We headed south down the Trace toward Port Gibson and Rocky Springs CG at MP 54. Our plan was to repeat our outbound leg of the trip and do all three Trace CGs with a leisurely drive between. I throttled back to 35 and never had a vehicle come up behind me. We noted that the grass was much greener (they’ll be mowing soon), but otherwise the Trace looks very much the same: quiet and beautiful – a little humid, certainly compared to where we’d been. The sun came out just as My Prayer came up in the playlist. Perfect.

Nope, no longer dry. We took a shower this morning before leaving Lake O’the Pines and as usual, we laid our towels out on the bed in full view of the sun shining in the back window … hours later, they were still damp. Hey, this is like summer in PA. Yep, we are headed home. It was 80 at 5 PM in Rocky Springs. We set up the camp chairs and sat outside RVan with the doors, windows, and vents all open. It was a relaxing evening with our Fat Tire brews and the birds flitting around in the tall trees around us. Just before heading inside for the night, we were serenaded by a Barred Owl hooting off in the distance – we heard it off and on all night – just like when we were here, what was it, a month ago?

2/24/11 Thursday … Rocky Springs, Natchez Trace MS to Jeff Busby CG, Natchez Trace MS …67/72, 75% humidity, 6:00 AM. Hey, it’s 72 degrees … let’s do the symmetrical thing and have morning beverages outside listening to the Dawn Chorus, which included: Pileated, Flicker, Red-Headed Woodpecker, White-Throated Sparrow, Cardinal, Titmouse, Nuthatch, Creeper, and Turkey Vulture (not part of the chorus, but still fun to watch ‘em silently soaring around). We had just left the campground when we saw a Red-Tail fly up out of a gully along the road with a 2-foot-long snake in its talons. Mmmmm, breakfast.

The Engine Light was still on – damn. Okay, we are just a few miles from Jackson MS – certainly there will be a Dodge place there. Janie looked ‘em up on the Internet and found a Dodge dealer just off I-55 north of the city and only a couple miles off the Trace. Call ‘em up. Okay, it’s mid-morning and they say they can have a look at it with about an hour turn-around time – depending on what might be wrong. We’ll be right there.

The Dodge place is called Joe Usry Auto Group. Joe used to be in the car business, got out and did some respectable work for a while, and then jumped back into the fray. Thus, the dealership is less than a year old and sandwiched between Porsche and Volvo dealerships on a rapidly-growing strip of box stores. We only had to wait a short time before the mechanic took RVan into the shop. A few minutes later, the mechanic had reset the warning light and tested it repeatedly but couldn’t reproduce the issue. He asked if we let it idle in park a lot. Yeah, we do that because I assume it uses less gas than starting up the engine after we stop to look at a bird or something. He said when this model is idling in park, it doesn’t allow some pump to do its thing, so maybe there was a bit of grit or something that triggered the warning light. Whatever, almost exactly one hour and $102 later we were back on the road with no warning light showing and feeling a lot better about the whole situation. I’d rather have spent the money on beer but …

Out of the hub-bub and back on the Trace – waaaaay better than any of those IOFs and congested business expressways around Jackson. We were cruising along at 35-40 mph and letting the scenery slowly pass by – very relaxing, no stress, no worries – now that the engine light is off. We stopped at Ross Barnett Reservoir just north of Jackson to check out the birds and have a late breakfast. We didn’t get to see a lot, some Pied-Billed Grebes and a pair of Horned Grebes … and a group of Black Vultures working on a carcass over by the Trace road. While we ate and enjoyed the birds, a guy in a Jeep drove up to eat his sandwich in the pleasant surroundings. He noted we were from NY and asked if we were going N or S. North, we said and he then told us to be sure to stop at the Tupelo-Bald Cypress Slough just a few miles up the road. There may be ‘Gators out on a day like this. Okay, we’ll check it out. We’d stopped there on the way down, but it was a lot cooler then. Maybe this time …

We stopped at Tupelo-Bald Cypress Slough, took the little nature walk, and sure enough, right over there on the opposite bank of the slough was a 7 foot Alligator (or El Lagarto, as one of the interpretative signs announced) just laid out, basking in the warm, spring sunshine. Cool. Oh, wait, what’s that down there on the log … on our side? A nice, big Indigo Snake watching us watch the Alligator. Double cool.

It wasn’t long before we were in Kosciusko MS. We were developing a taste for BBQ again, and this might just be our best place to score some. Let’s see, the nice lady at the visitor center was very helpful; let’s stop and ask her. Oops, the personnel had changed. This time there was a very nice, older lady who informed us that she “didn’t eat out much”. So we headed to Wal-Mart for supplies. On the way, we noticed a couple restaurants – we can check ‘em out on the way back to the Trace. In Wal-Mart, we asked the greeter, another older lady, who suggested the Mexican place. Hmmm, just back from NM; do we really want to go to a Mexican place … in MS? Don’t think so. Hey, we can ask one of the checkout people; they look like they eat a lot of BBQ … and everything else. The only problem with that was they were all black, and while they are sure to know a lot about BBQ it could either be home grown or way on the other side of town. Wait, there’s a white lady in front of us … she said she & her husband go to Old Trace, the other restaurant we saw … finally a recommendation, although a weak one because she didn’t look like she ate much BBQ or anything else.

We pulled into the completely empty Old Trace Grill – it was a little after two, so we assumed they were between ‘rushes’. Asked the very bored-looking, middle-aged woman about the BBQ; she suggested we read the menu. Sorry, don’t let us customers interrupt the cooking show on TV or the Weight Watchers book you are reading. We’ll have a half rack of ribs with trimmings – double the trimmings – and a pound of pulled pork to go.

When the order came up, I asked a question that had been simmering in my mind since we were in Kosciusko in 1998. We recalled staying in a motel and walking to a pizza place where we met up with the proprietor, a young,

glib, up-and-coming sort of businessman who told us he’d just come back from a trip to Hawaii. Hmmm, how does such a young guy operating a pizza shack afford to vacation in Hawaii? His name was very memorable – must have been because we both remember it: Lolly Dude. All these years, I’ve wondered if he just made up the name for his pizza place – could there really be a Lolly Dude?

So as Janie was paying for the BBQ, I asked the lady if she’d ever heard of Lolly Dude. She sort of froze, looked at me with a blank look and said, “Yes, I have” in the sort of way that makes you want to ask but fear what you might learn. I related the 1998 story and asked if the Pizza Hut might have been where Lolly’s place was. She said, “No that’s next to the Day’s Inn just down the road” Okay, so what happened to Lolly? I offered, “Was he run out of town?” She said, “Sort of”, and somewhat reluctantly, told the story. Lolly was arrested in Texas a few years ago for drug trafficking. He’d been using the pizza place as a distribution center.” Apparently the whole thing was an embarrassment for Kosciusko and that’s why she was a little reluctant to talk about it. We found it quite the hoot. Now we understand his puffed-up behavior and how he could afford a trip to Hawaii. Small world … even smaller where Lolly now resides.

So how was the Q? Well, we’ve had better but … this was certainly pretty good. The down side was the side servings – they were way too small. How can a man survive on just a couple tablespoons of beans? Dunno. On the upside, the meat was very smoky … about the smokiest we’ve ever had. Hmmm, can you just eat smoke? Whatever, I found myself thinking longingly about smoky porter. Sigh …

By the time we got to the Jeff Busby CG, we were reading about severe thunderstorms coming to the area tonight. More research revealed a massive front passing through with a 30 degree drop in temperature and all the associated weather disruptions. Okay, let’s go up to the lookout – highest point on the Trace to have a look-see. The wind was already picking up and the temps were falling noticeably … it must be coming. Let’s see, high winds, lightning and us camping at the high point on the Trace. Let’s be sure to get a sheltered spot, but not under any frail-looking trees. We picked a spot beside an aged Red Cedar and settled in for the night. We were lucky; most of the severe weather went around us and no big cells hit our area. We were only pelted by the occasional Sweetgum seed pod – bonk, bonk, bonk and treated to distant flashes of lightning.

2/25/11 Friday … Jeff Busby CG, Natchez Trace MS to Meriwether Lewis CG, Natchez Trace TN …57/67, 6:30 AM. It was still very overcast and much cooler with a pesky N breeze. We passed several fresh blow-downs that had been cleared from the road late last night or very early this morning. We’d seen evidence of previous blow-downs for some time. It must be a result of shallow rooted trees in frequently-saturated soil. It is obvious we were lucky last night.

Aside from the blow-downs, we’ve also noticed almost no waving from approaching vehicles since we left West TX. As we get farther east, people ignore your presence, and if you speak to them, they are not nearly as friendly as westerners. It must be related to greater population density and lack of dependence on each other – not the frontier mentality we’d enjoyed.

Today’s destination is Meriwether Lewis, the last campground on the Trace 200 miles up the road. As it turned out, it took us 6 hours to do the first 100 miles. Why? Well, we were just lollygagging along, stopping at all the pullouts, walking the nature trails, and stopping at visitor centers. We’re going to have to pick it up a bit if we are to make the campground in time for adult beverages. Not to fear, the last 100 miles or so were pretty much devoid of distractions, so we made a little better time while still enjoying the peaceful solitude of the Trace. Oh, there was one little issue that popped up.

When I turned on the right turn-signal before pulling into a pullout for lunch, it started doing that rapid clicking that signifies a bad bulb. Sure enough, the right-rear turn/break light was out. I took the cover off, removed the bulb and hoped to get it replaced tomorrow in the southern fringes of Nashville. We also spent time researching new RVans on the Internet. As we sit in site #30 at Meriwether Lewis CG, it is 45 degrees with a busy north breeze. Fortunately, we are securely enclosed in RVan where it is a very comfortable 67 … that will certainly change as the night progresses. We also notice it gets dark much earlier as we go north.

2/26/11 Saturday … Meriwether Lewis CG, Natchez Trace TN to Cedars of Lebanon SP, Lebanon TN …30/44, 5:30 AM. We got to the end of the Trace in short order. It was a bitter-sweet experience. We were anxious to complete the adventure expeditiously and safely, but, on the other hand, it was painfully obvious the trip was rapidly drawing to a close … and we were not the least bit ready to go home. Ah, but we must do the responsible adult thing. There were several items on our agenda once we left the Trace:

1. Get gas2. Get a bulb for the taillight 3. Go to REI to look at bikes4. Meet up with Joe & Berniece5. Settle on a place to spend the night (we needed showers and a dump station)

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We accomplished the first 3 tasks with remarkable efficiency. First, gas at Kroger for a mere $3.19 – the only lower price we saw was $3.15 sometime between #4 and #5. Shortly after filling up, we found an auto parts store. I took the bad bulb inside, and when the clerk asked if he could help me, held up the bulb and said, “I need a new one of these.” He came out with a package of 2. Sure, you need 1, so you have to buy 2 – it’s the American way. I installed the bulb hoping to solve the problem – it did. So there you go, I managed to fix something. Sure it was only a taillight, but still …

We arrived at the REI store a little after ten. That’s when our efficient morning came to a screeching halt. It was a beautiful Saturday and lots of people were out … and shopping at REI … and looking at new bikes … and needing their old bikes fixed. We had to wait a while before a salesperson was available, but that gave us time to root around in the bike rack. Eventually, we managed to get the attention of Brian, the tall sales-guy. We explained about Janie’s fitting problem and our experience with Bob’s large-frame bike. He looked at her with an expression of disbelief – no way she needs a large frame. Way. That’s exactly how we got the too-small-frame the last time. Janie’s been riding an uncomfortable bike for the last ten years and we intend to remedy that shortcoming NOW.

Okay, Brian dug out a large frame 29er (29” wheels as opposed to the 26” we now have) and asked Janie if she wanted to test ride it. Sure. Okay, to do that I’ll need a driver’s license from one of you for security and you’ll have to wear a helmet – we have loaners. Fine, here you go. She was off. When she returned, she said it felt better than her old bike but she still felt like the seat needs to go back more. Another salesperson, Paul, came out and we started a committee meeting about the fit issue. Let’s try an XL frame. Oops, we don’t have one in the Matador 29er – try this other model and see how it goes.

While Janie was out trying the XL bike, I had an opportunity to bond with Paul. I started with, “You look and talk like Andre Agassi.” He really did. Then we got talking about where we are from and what we’ve been doing. Paul: “Oh, I know about Geneseo; I’m from Buffalo.” It was another of those improbable small-world situations that have been cropping up the whole trip. Paul grew up in the Buffalo area, married and moved to Charlestown SC where he lived for 10 years, and just last year moved to Nashville. Now the similarity with Andre Agassi got even more interesting because Paul’s married to a German woman. Interesting.

The upshot is Janie tested 3 bikes, liked the XL frame the best but none of them gave her the WOW she felt when she first got on Bob’s bike. We know that WOW probably had something to do with being in NM in a festive atmosphere and not having been on a bike for a while. But still … you really want to feel at least a little wow if not a full-blown WOW. Now, if we were actually to decide on one of these bikes, how would we go about executing the purchase? You don’t have one in stock and we couldn’t take it home with us if you did. Could we have it delivered to our home or what? Okay, we had to go talk to the sales-manager person. Nope, we don’t ship to private addresses ... they don’t trust the owner to put it together and set it up properly – or safely. Nope, you’d have to pick it up at an REI store nearest your home. Hmmm, where would that be? Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh! Not a real viable solution.

Okay, it’s getting late and we still need to complete tasks 4 & 5. We’d been in contact with Joe off and on all morning. They were going to a flea market while we did what we had to do, so now it was time to figure out how and where we were going to get together. We could meet them someplace for lunch/dinner, we could get carryout and bring it to their house, or we could get carryout and meet them at the campground. It was early afternoon; sort of in between lunch and dinner and we were several extensive suburbs of Nashville away from Joe. We needed a campground so we could dump our tanks. All of this led to the conclusion that we could pick up some food and they could meet us at the campground.

Paul told me about a really good BBQ place “just across the road”. Okay, we’ll get Q from Judge Bean’s BBQ and meet Joe & Berniece at the campground just down the road from their house. Let’s do it.

We were at Judge Bean’s BBQ a little after one. This is a happening place. The parking lot was packed, as was the interior. If you look at the web site, you’ll see that it has a western theme, which it pulls off very well. It is totally rustic, comfortable … and friendly. This is a place I’d be happy to frequent … if the food is even just decent. We were greeted by a youngish waitress who seemed very familiar for some reason. She was a dishwater blonde, vivacious, friendly, and extremely busy. However, she took time to talk to us and suggest some possibilities for our order.

While we were mulling over the menu, it occurred to me why she seemed familiar. You ever watch that TV show called Big Bang Theory? Well, the waitress looked and acted just like Penny from the show – who happens to be a waitress also. While we were looking at the menu and pondering what to get, a guy at the counter next to us offered up, “The brisket is excellent – and the thing they call Texas Sushi is really a Jalapeno Popper; very good as well.” Okay, “Penny” was back and the four of us worked out an order. We opted to try the Texas Sushi while we waited for the order to be filled.

Texas Sushi:Texas Sushi (Judge's answer to California Rolls and crunchy shrimp)Jalapeno stuffed with sausage and cheese & wrapped in brisket. "Grab that ass it's Trent Willmon's Special. The hottest thing on the menu."

Now doesn’t that sound appealing?

As for the entrées, we considered The Stampede: The Stampede "This SOB can fill any Texas appetite"2 1/2 lb. brisket, 2 1/2 lb. sausage, 22 wings, 5 tamales, 8 diablos, 1 rack of ribs, 2 pt BBQ beans, 2 pt cole Slaw, 10 lovely buns & a partridge in a pear tree! Bubba Howell could eat it all, but it's made for 10

However, we opted for something a little “lighter”:1 lb Brisket, 1/2 rack of ribs, 1 pt coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans, extra sauce … lots of extra sauce.

You all should have a gander at the Judge’s menu … maybe you’ll find something you like ;-)

Okay, we were loaded up and ready to roll. Hmmm, roll exactly where? We were in the southern suburbs in a part called Brentwood and we wanted to be at the Cedars of Lebanon State Park, which is pretty much due west (MAP). It all seemed so simple in theory. However, if you look at the MAP, you will see a big ol’ reservoir between the Brentwood and the SP – with no bridges. That means we have to navigate a series of little streets and roads to get around the impediment. Did I say it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon … in the suburbs … of a major city … with lots of people out enjoying the spring-like weather? It was all that … and more.

Eventually, Janie got us to the campground. It was around 3 and decidedly cooler – way too cool for a picnic at our campsite picnic table. We called Joe and suggested we meet them at their house. Done. We sampled the Judge’s offerings … and Joe’s beers … at the same kitchen table we’d shared their dinner a month or so ago. After dinner, we forced them to look at unedited pictures of our trip and pretty much dominated the conversation … just normal stuff for us I guess ;-)

After an all-to-brief-but-very-enjoyable evening with Joe, Berniece, and son Chris, we headed back to the campground for a shower – didn’t have time before – and were in bed by ten. Oh, what a day we’ve had.

2/27/11 Sunday … Cedars of Lebanon SP, Lebanon TN to Paradox Ranch, Marysville OH …53/62, 5 central – 6 Eastern. We had morning beverages in the campground and drove over to the dump station to do the thing we needed a campground for in the first place. That done, we were on the road by 7:30 (Eastern) working our way up toward I-65 to Louisville and I-71 to OH. Again, the adult thing to do – IOFs, yuck – who are these adults anyway? We’d got our belly full of IOFs: Nashville-Louisville-Cincinnati. Janie got us on OH-38 before we got to Columbus - a welcome relief.

OH-38 was very pleasant, but we noticed the lingering snow kept getting deeper and deeper as we proceeded though Midway OH, London OH, and Plumwood OH. Then it was just a short jaunt past Scotts big plant (ha!) just southeast of Marysville OH and on to Myers Road. We arrived at Gunter & Terri’s around 4:30. Whew! Time for an adult beverage for sure.

After unwinding for a bit, we headed out for the Mexican restaurant in Marysville for dinner – and more adult beverages. This was a very good Mexican place, even after being in NM and sampling such fare there. We opted to try some things we’d learned about in NM: Carne seca & Carnitas. Both were different than the NM variety but very good in their own right. We were back at the Paradox Ranch around 7:30 … just in time to subject our gracious hosts to a slide show. Terri connected our notebook to her big plasma HDTV … oh my, this is nice. We spent the rest of the evening telling stories and reminiscing about things before finally turning in a little after ten. Very respectable for people our age.

A major weather front passed through the area overnight. It was quite the event.

2/28/11 Monday … Paradox Ranch, Marysville OH to Naweedna …We got up about 6:30. Gunter is an early riser and, under normal circumstances, he’d be sitting in his office writing as the sun rises slowly in the east. However, today we were in the room behind his office, so he busied himself walking the grounds checking for damage. Nothing significant found, he returned to report all’s well.

We experienced what I call “Punctuated Sleep”. The front had passed through with associated T-storms, strong winds, and heavy rain that is expected to turn to snow later today. At one point during the night, the tornado siren actually went off. Terri got up to check the weather … nothing mentioned about a tornado … so she didn’t bother to herd us all into the basement for safety. Just a little before dawn, I heard a roaring off in the nearby woods. It got louder and louder and when it reached the house, the whole thing shuddered with something less than delight. That blast announced the beginning of a very windy day. I was not looking forward to driving in this weather. Again, we had to do the adult thing and get on with the task at hand. Onward.

Terri & Gunter treated us to a delightful breakfast of morning beverages, toasted bagels, and the delightful honey-nut cream cheese. A little after 8, we pulled RVan out and headed east toward I-71 and points north. We were greeted by leaden sky and misty rain propelled by a very strong and persistent NW wind. We were heading NE, so it was a quartering confrontation – our mileage will not be good.

Around Mansfield OH, we encountered thick fog, then pelting ice and, eventually, snow. Nearly all the streams were in flood stage due to last night’s heavy rains … and earlier snow melt. Speaking of snow, the farther north we went, the more snow cover we encountered … not a good sign for our driveway back home. Onward.

We picked up I-271 and took it over to I-90. Now we were heading more easterly, so the stiff wind was at our backs pushing us toward Naweedna. But now we were seeing more and more snow … and it was starting to add to the relic snow pack left by the last storm. We gassed up in Erie PA where the price was about the same as in OH but certainly less than NY – lucky us; we have the second highest gas prices in the county just a little behind CA.

All those gas taxes we pay are supposed to be directed toward keeping the roads repaired. Well, the east end of I-86 (former NY-17) needs some help. The road surface was so broken that the trucks even avoided this section. We had the road nearly to ourselves and we needed all the extra space to slalom around broken pavement. Yikes! This continued through the Alleghany area where they find it necessary to post “Scenic Area” signs every few miles. Like we couldn’t tell it was scenic on our own … how much does each of those signs cost? Too much, eh?

It was becoming increasingly clear that we were going to have a snow-filled driveway when we got home. Thus, I was pretty anxious to get there as early as possible so I’d have time to plow the drive and unload RVan’s freezables before total darkness set in. But look, there’s the Cuba Cheese Factory. Let’s make this one stop and pick up some cheese and a few jars of their Cherry Butter. A quick stop, pee, purchase, back on the road. We took the NY-36 exit and headed to Dansville where we intended to pick up I-390 north. Oops, in my haste, I managed to take the wrong turn and got on I-390 SOUTH. We had to go 5 miles before we could turn around and go NORTH. Sure, we passed several of those “Emergency U-Turn” places, but, you know me, I just couldn’t knowingly break the law. Besides, if we were caught, it would add much more time to our transit … and more to our trip cost. Okay, what’s an additional ten miles when you’ve come thousands? It’s all relative, right?

We got off I-390, headed up East Groveland Road, and down Crossett. When we first moved to Naweedna, we sold a ten-acre lot to the Rasmussens. They built a house which now sits empty after the salt mine bought ‘em out with the intention of using it for one of their executives. I checked out the driveway as we passed the now empty house. Damn, heavy snow – that will be what our drive looks like. I now knew I was going to have to plow before we could get RVan off the road.

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I’d formulated a series of plans depending on the conditions we found. This particular situation called for Plan #6B: Plow both drives; leave RVan in Mom’s because it is shorter and less inclined; use the AWD Forester to transfer stuff from RVan to the house. I pulled RVan off the road as far as possible, turned on the emergency blinkers, got out, put on my snowboard pants and boots (we knew we would need those sooner or later), and trudged up the drive to get the tractor. The snow was deep – maybe six inches – but very, very wet. Actually, more like six inches of slush than snow. RVan gets stuck in wet grass, so compacted slush is just not going to be conducive to getting it up the drive, let alone up the garage ramp and into its parking stall. Damn worst case scenario. Well, not the worst. That would be getting RVan stuck part way our drive. Not only would we not be able to get RVan in the garage, we couldn’t get the car out. Take it slow; one step at a time.

When I started plowing the drives, I was surprised to see that in most cases I was able to remove the heavy slush right down to the gravel. Hmmm, that presents some possibilities. With the slow and methodical thought in mind, I decided to test RVan in Mom’s drive. I pulled it in with no problem at all. At least we were now off the road. I then tried to back it out. Hey, that works really well. What if I pull it over onto the edge of the plowed area … still okay. Hmmm, dare I try it in our drive? If I get stuck halfway up, we will be blocked in for who knows how long. Not even the AWD of the Forester could deal with the liquefied mud on either side of the drive. What to do?

After a consultation with Janie and a few more tests, I decided to give it a shot. I backed out of Mom’s drive and headed up our. Absolutely no problem … until I got to the ramp that leads into the garage. I didn’t expect to be able to get RVan into the garage in the first place. I just wanted to get it up far enough to be able to get the car out. As you may know, there is an 18’ rise from Crossett Road to the top of our drive. The house sits a little above that elevation and the ramp into the garage is on the north end. That means, in winter, the ramp doesn’t get direct sun and is the last to melt. Nope, didn’t expect to be able to negotiate the ramp this evening; just wanted to get RVan out of the way of the car. Fortunately, we accomplished that mission okay.

It was supposed to get pretty cold tonight (17 degrees), so we had to get the freezable stuff inside. Janie had already carried much of it to the house while I was plowing. We finally finished the rest around 7. Then it was time

to check out the house for obvious damage, take a shower, and relax with an adult beverage before having a little something to eat.

The house was in amazingly good shape. I’d had some nightmare scenarios play out in my mind during our five week absence. The birdfeeder ash out back, the closest tree to the house, is split down to the ground. On windy days, we sit on the porch and watch the gap open and close appallingly. I’ve never been overly concerned by this because most of our strong winds come from the NW and the split tree is protected by the house … if it were to fall, it would likely fall away from the house. I’d been watching the weather back home while we were gone, and noticed to my horror that the more significant weather systems had come up from the SE. That means strong winds would be blowing the split ash TOWARD the house. OMG, if it fell on the porch, it would certainly break a window or two. The heat is on to keep the plumbing from freezing, so our heaters would be trying to get the outside temperature up to 50, the water pipes would freeze, then thaw during an intervening warm spell, our well would be pumped dry, probably dealing a death blow to our 20+ year-old pump. What a mess. Welcome home.

Wait, there are more nightmare scenarios I dreamed up while we were gone. We have passive heaters that depend on a “brain” that tells them to store enough heat for a 30 degree temperature drop. They also have a fine-tune setting that allows me to adjust for winter vs. spring/fall conditions. I’d set the tuning to spring/fall so they would keep the house at 50 rather than the usual 65. This was the first extended winter trip we’d taken in something like 20 years, so I had doubts about my theory of setting the controls for 50. Would it be enough to handle the super cold weather Geneseo is experiencing? AND … if there was a really bad storm – like I’d read there was – what if the electric went out … for a long time … and there was NO HEAT at all? See the end of the above scenario for the disastrous results.

So you can see I was sort of prepared for a mess when we finally got home. To my infinite surprise, everything was just as we’d left it – even the inside temperature in the house. You see I’d done the fine-tune setting for 50 degrees but neglected to change the thermostats, which were set on 65. The end result is … well … a cozy house to come home to but a bit larger electric bill than I had hoped. Ah, but I’d rather pay for the higher electric bill than for all the other situations my devious mind conjured up. What makes me do that? I’m just like my mother who, every time she went on a trip, was sure she’d return to a pile of ashes. It must be in the genes. Apparently, The Power of Negative Thinking is a successful strategy, because never once have those nightmares come true.

Once my feelings of doom were assuaged, I found myself looking around the house wondering how are we going to move all this stuff to Silver City? And when? And why did we come home at all? And what beer should I have?