Travels in 2008, and 2007

Boys and Girls

26 Aug 2008 - Happy Birthday yesterday to Trey!!
Albuquerque, NM

We're happily ensconced in our little RV park on the west side of town and enjoying life. The weather is quite nice, with a few occasional afternoon thunderstorms. The neighbors are quiet and well-behaved. The new towbar works smoothly, and shines besides.

The only news is that we flunked biology - a couple of weeks ago it suddenly came to our attention that "Pancho" should, in fact, be "Panchita." Oops. The best indicator of sex (other than expensive DNA tests) is the color of a birds cere - the little part above the beak and below the eyes.

All our other birds have been male. Here's a photo of Bubba with his nice blue-is-for-boys cere:

And here is Panchita, with her mottled-beige-is-for-girls cere:

 

So Panchita may be re-named "Emily" - we like that name. My brother Mike named his GPS "Wanda" (as in "I wanda where we are????") Ours is named "Emily" for her English accent. If one creature in the house has that name, they might as well all have it - my dad's tradition was "Sam" - all his dogs and horses were named Sam.

But the new car is still "Annie". Annie took us to Grants, NM today to pick up mail - we had planned to be heading that direction already, but changed our plans. We now have real license plates, Chris' pills refilled, a refund check from the insurance company, a collection of out-dated magazines, and THREE catalogs from Kohl's. I sent them a nasty-gram and asked to be removed from their mailing lists. We'll see if it works.

Thought for today:
The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.

More New Mexico

21 Aug 2008
Albuquerque, New Mexico

We're just meandering about, having fun and expending as little energy as possible. Lazy? Us???

All my photos are at the bottom in the slide show - if you want to see individual ones better, you'll need to click on the Picasa link at the top.

• We really enjoyed our stay in the Elks Lodge in Alamogordo.

• We visited the White Sands.  I got cold just driving through it - it looks too much like snow!

• We drove up to Cloudcroft and Ruidoso in the mountains east of town. Gorgeous country! And we stayed long enough to admire the huge casino and watch one race at Ruidoso Downs.

• We visited the pistachio nut place and indulged.

• We loved the thunderstorms and rain each evening - except when the cloud cover blocked the view of the full moon on the sand dunes.

• We had dinner at the Elks - yummy bbq beef - and had enough in our take out bag for two more meals. We didn't go swimming in their indoor pool, however.

Finally, we decided we had to move on - this time toward the north. We were going to stay at Socorro in a little park I found on my rvparkreviews.com, but not only couldn't we find it, we wouldn't have stayed in that neighborhood if we had! So we drove on to Magdalena. This is not one of the major metropolitan areas of New Mexico.

We had planned (plan B) to stay at the little campground 14 miles west of town, but there was another choice right there along side the highway - The Eagles Nest. Why not? It had electrics (30 amp) and water and was less than $20 for the night... Those are the good points. We laughed at the swimming pool - a concrete form in the ground, filled with a few inches of rain water; the basketball court - a 10'x10' concrete pad with waist high weeds surrounding it; the community bbq grill enclosed by bright blue used car tires... Okay, so it didn't quite rank as Resort quality, but it worked.

• We visited the Very Large Array while there - our whole purpose in traveling out Hwy 60. This was a magical spot. Incredibly huge satellite dishes - 27 of them! - which can spread out to 22 miles across when fully displayed. You'll have to look it up for its reason for being (google VLA).

We came back to Albuquerque to the nice lady in the nice campground that found us a hook up before and after the balloon festival last year - we'll spend a while here.

   

New Mexico

15 Aug 2008
Alamogordo, New Mexico

We finished up Annie in the welding shop in Amarillo - she now has tow-bar brackets on her front nose. It was painful watching them dismantle her.

Amarillo had a "Horse" display going on - similar to the Pigs in Seattle. Even Ronald McDonald got into it!

 

While we were waiting for Annie, we walked downtown to pick up the mail and have lunch. We found a terrific Mexican restaurant with a shrimp salad to die for - over a dozen large shrimp! Chris had menudo, which made him happy also. We knew we were in Texas when the "wine cabinet" was actually filled with beer.

From Amarillo we headed west to Tucumcari, following Route 66. I saw on the news that Paul McCartney and a friend were following the Route from Chicago to LA and probably went thru Amarillo while we were there - but he didn't stop to visit...

We stayed overnight at the Elks Lodge in Tucumcari - we're starting to take advantage of the cheap and convenient parking the various lodges have. It turns out $7.50 - $10 per night is lots nicer than $30 per night in a commercial lot.

Next stop was Alamogordo - in southeastern New Mexico near White Sands. We'll visit the Sands tomorrow night - it's a full moon! Today we wandered thru the Space Museum and saw an IMAX movie. The guy we arranged to install the brake wiring in Annie turned out to be a disaster, so we'll wait till later on that. After spending all day waiting for him to get the job done... Grrrr.

You know how I am about graveyards and cemeteries - here's a new one! Above is the grave of Ham, the first chimp in space.

Dalhart

9 Aug 2008
Amarillo, Texas

Well, we're still hanging out here... We got the wiring done on Annie on Friday; Monday the tow brackets will be installed, Tuesday - ? - on the road? Only if mail comes in on time.

Today we drove up to Dalhart - even further up the panhandle than Amarillo - to check it out and possibly go to the XIT Reunion and Rodeo celebration.

• We stopped at the Dalhart Elks Lodge, which had the 4H Craft show going on (I bought a really cute set of corn holders made of horseshoe nails) and to take photos for the Elks' web on RV parking.

• We had to stop at the XIT Museum. The 3 million acre XIT Ranch was formed in the 1880s as a way for Texas to pay for its new capitol building in Austin. It was waaay bigger than the King Ranch, which everyone has heard of.

"XIT history is a triangle of superlatives. The XIT range was the largest in the world under fence. Texas, the biggest state in the union, used the sale to pay for its red granite capitol, still the largest state capitol on the North American Continent. The Austin structure, after more than a century, still houses the Lone Star state government and as capitols go, is second in size only to the one at Washington, D.C. In one respect it is even bigger than the U.S. Capitol, its dome stands seven feet higher." [from the county website]

The museum was fun - lots of different kinds of 'stuff' - including stuffed animals, a U.S. map of postage stamps, a windmill, good written and illustrated history of the XIT Ranch in small vignettes, maps and stories, a series on how to make a good felt cowboy hat, a jail, some guns, a wagon, a snake skeleton, a huge bucket of old branding irons, a collection of spurs, saddles, and an old dentist's chair. See Picasa for the photos.

• Our final stop was the XIT Rodeo grounds. They have "the world's largest free barbecue" - they feed 10,000+ people! For free! So we had barbecue, beans, applesauce, and sauce. Good stuff! See the photos on Picasa. We decided we had seen a rodeo before and didn't need to hang around for it to start - we were at least an hour from home, so we just came back.

• Another fun part of the day was going through Hartley, Texas - named, no doubt, after cousin Bill Hartley. Or maybe not...

Thought for the day:
I live in my own little world....but it is OK......they all know me here...

Tourists Loose in Amarillo

5 Aug 2008
Amarillo, TX

Things we've done; places we've been: [We're not in Minnesota nor Iowa anymore, Pancho.]

• Texas, the Musical

Down in the bottom of Palo Duro Canyon, in a gorgeous setting, in an outdoor amphitheater that seats over 2,000, every summer for the past 43 years they've put on a musical "history" of the area. Great singing, dancing, horses, wagons, flags and fireworks.

• The Cadillac Ranch

Some local businessmen decided to "plant" a collection of old Queen Mary sized Cadillacs nose-down in a field. And then let anyone who wanted to spray paint them. And they have.

• The Legs

The same guys - on the other side of town - did these huge legs. There is an historical marker with a story of some early 'visage' at the same scene, but I'm not convinced it's true. The bulls in the field were clear down by the pond and did not bother us.

New Tow Baby

2 Aug 2008
Amarillo, TX

We did it! We came home with the new baby. And she's sooooo cute. She doesn't quite match Pugs, but her Borrego Beige Metallic almost matches the gold-ish swoops on the side. Lots closer than the silver. [Oooops. I forgot to identify her - she's a CR-V EX-L (that means "leather" - yum) AWD.]

I had to say good-bye to Toad - our good and faithful buddy for almost 8 years (he came from Lynchburg, Virginia, even):

�

We picked up the new baby at the dealers' lot: (with Michael, our very nice salesman)

The new, yet un-named baby is home:

Life is good.

And I've lost 5 pounds since Minnesota. Life is really good!

Thought for today:
One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young. ~ Will Rogers

Amarillo

1 Aug 2008
Amarillo, Texas

Welcome to Texas! We're home!!

It's so strange to be surrounded by matching license plates - we can't use the tourist excuse here when we make stupid traffic moves. Everyone thinks we belong.

We like Amarillo. Once we considered using it as a home base - buying a house and all that. To start with, the people are really nice! It's the right size - under 200,000 people; it's the right price range - 4 bd home under $150,000; it's clean and appealing - fairly new city hall, convention center, parks, shopping malls; it has minor league baseball, hockey and indoor football; it has a Vet's hospital and a major medical center of impressive proportions; it's centrally located - on I-40 with other major interstates not that far away and within 1,000 miles of almost anywhere in the States... And when a heat wave hits, it's dry heat.

But.... there are a few drawbacks. Tornados, ice storms, snow, wind, cold, wind, heat, tornados, wind, tornados, ice storms... just to name a few. In other words, the trees grow at a slant; if we bought a house it would have to have a storm cellar; and we'd have to buy a wardrobe of parkas and down filled ski pants.

Oh, well, it was a great idea.

Coming into town we saw some fun things:

... the not so quite straight water tower....

... the Texas-sized cross...

... someone's idea of a great fixer-upper motorhome...

We've not yet driven out to photograph and/or contribute to the Cadillac Ranch. Nor visited Palo Duro Canyon - 2nd only to the Grand Canyon. We'll also visit the American Quarter Horse Museum. We've already partaken - on a previous visit - of The Big Texas Steak Ranch but we didn't get to see someone polish off the "steak" like AJ and Irene did.

BTW, just as a side note, we're purchasing a new toad here also - as in I Go Where I'm Toad. We bit the bullet and sat down in the salesman's office and played the games. It should be delivered tomorrow. How fun. We'll have great memories of Amarillo. Some people just buy dinner and gas.

Thought for the day:

The mockingbird can change its tune 37 times in 7 minutes. Politicians regard this ability with awe.

�