City of Rocks

Next up, something new! City of Rocks State Park is in the southwest corner of New Mexico. It is very remote, about 35 miles to the nearest town of any size. Some really good star watching at night!

The cool rock formations are leftovers from the ash deposit of a massive volcanic eruption about 35 million years ago.

Due to the remoteness, I spent a full three weeks here without ever leaving. I had enough groceries and just settled in. Civilization seems so far away...

Here are a bunch of photos.

A rising "super moon"

Men are from Mars :)

The non-electric campsites here are *very* awesome!

Overlooking the "City" from a nearby hilltop. It is the brown rocks in front of the distant mountains.

A Prairie Rattlesnake! It was on the road while I was walking. Scared me a bit, though it was dead. It didn't appear to have been run over by a car. A ranger speculated that a hawk picked it up and dropped it and left it to die.

Blooming cacti were a treat!

Another Visit to Elephant Butte

I stopped for a nice 3-week stay at Elephant Butte State Park, just outside of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I spent some time at Elephant Butte last year and enjoyed it. It is a great park … large and open and sort of like a giant beach. Sand is everywhere! And it is pretty, with gently rolling hills, lots of green, a big lake and mountains in the distance.

Bottomless Lakes, Take 2

After Brantley Lake, my next stop was Bottomless Lakes State Park, outside of Roswell (where the Area 51 aliens are kept secret!). This is the first spot I have revisited in almost two years on the road. I like it here. Really interesting landscape, very remote and quiet. The stars at night are magical.

There are 8 or 9 lakes here. Formed from sinkholes. Deep and pretty.

My shadow petting Buddha's shadow :)

On a long walk with Buddha. Overlooking my campground. My van is one of the little white dots on the far side of the lake.

Back to New Mexico

As soon as March comes around, it is time to get out of Texas. The potential for strong thunderstorms and tornadoes starts to become a real issue. And the temperature starts heading up.

I took a couple of days to travel. First stop was an RV Park in Uvalde, Texas. Quite a strange area, at least for me. Very farm-centric, lots of farm workers with cowboy boots. Next was Fort Stockton, where I hooked into some free wifi at an RV Park and downloaded some important updates I needed for development. Having to pay for generally slow bandwidth is amusing and odd in today's world. It is better than dial-up, for sure, and is the only way I can make my life-on-the-road work. But when I get access to unlimited bandwidth, it feels like turning a firehose on. And I tend to leave it on and splash in the waters for a while.

The journey from Uvalde to Fort Stockton was amazing. I took Texas 90, which hugs the Mexican border. At one point I had to go through a border control checkpoint. There was a german shepherd sniffer dog and they ran him around my van to check for contraband. I don't know if it was Buddha or whatever, but the sniffer dog started dancing in circles. It made me laugh, but the two border agents, both of whom seemed to be ex-military types, refused to smile. The dog was having fun, though. I went past lots of ghost towns. It was really kind of eerie. I don't know anything about the area, but everyone left for some reason. I was running a little low on gas at one point and saw a sign for a public school and thought I was surely entering an active town. But, no, it was just dusty closed buildings, including an old motel which looked kinda cool, but the windows were all busted out. In addition to the ghost towns, I was almost the only car on the road, with the exception of an occasional border patrol car. I started to think I was in a dream.

Another day of driving and I found my way to Brantley Lake State Park, about 15 miles north of Carlsbad, New Mexico. It was a nice and quiet place to stay, but was a bit bland. There was a lake, of course, but not much else. And it was flat. Desert nothingness. And true to my experience of New Mexico, the winds were freaking intense!

Winter in Texas

Wow, I am behind on my blog entries. Trying to catch up feels strange. I usually write about where I've been just after I leave. Now it is a distant memory. But at least I'll get a few photos up and keep a continuous record of things.

I spent the winter (a little over 2 months of it) in southeast Texas, at Lake Corpus Christi State Park. Which is a bit of a misnomer as it is 45 miles northwest of Corpus Christi. Quite remote and very quiet. The nearest town was Mathis, about 5 miles away and bustling with a population of nearly 5000 people. It had one main food store, but they had a decent selection, so it worked well for me.

This is the farthest south I have been for the winter and it was almost too hot at times, reaching 90 on a few days (with enough humidity to make it feel uncomfortable). But mostly it was pleasant with sunny days and very little inclement weather. The park itself was quiet, with a lake (all parks I stay at have lakes it seems). There weren't any trails, but there was a lot of roadway to take long walks with Buddha.

The biggest negative were the "no see-ums", little teensy bugs that swarm by the thousands and bite. They were only annoying when I took walks on windless and hot days. If there was a breeze, they didn't bother me, but otherwise it was a nuisance. I don't tend to get bit my mosquitoes and dislike repellant, so I just dealt with it. My neck area was itchy for most of the winter...

Another weirdness was bees. For some reason, a bunch of them insisted on committing suicide by diving into my roof fan. I could never figure out where they came from or why they were attracted to my fan. I would hear a constant whirring sound as one of them got stuck in the fan blades, slowing it down in the process.

And I saw a big snake that lived in a hollowed out part of a tree not far from my site. I only saw it twice, but it was somewhere between fascinating and freaky. I don't think it was poisonous (no triangular head or obvious other signs), but it was large. And it made me worry about Buddha who is always sticking his nose into things.

A few photos...