9/9

 This is going to be mostly pictures, because I don’t do a lot.  This is from the windshield, the first afternoon that I was here.  I am staying in a small fenced in area with open range all about me.  That is a strange thing about NM.  It is your responsibility to keep the cows out, no keep them in like MO.

The pictures which follow represent the drive I take up the mountain every morning to check the campground.  I won’t try to identify the peaks because I don’t remember them.  It is cloudy and rainy today so my evening drive pictures will have to wait.

The kiosk with the stop sign contains the envelopes that people are supposed to put their payment money in.  They are then supposed to put a stub from the envelope on their dashboard and the money in the silver pipe safe.  Most of the people do.  If I find someone who hasn’t by their car I can remind them, but I can’t make them pay.  Our rule is to have no confrontations.

The picture before the ground squirrel on the picnic table is a typical campsite.  Many of them have a level tent site below the parking area.  There is no water or electricity in the camping area.

The last picture is a view from the parking lot of the reserve-able picnic area.  If the air is clean you can see White Sands National Monument from here.

Back to the campsite, one of the things I do is to write down the license number of the car in the campsite and check the sticker even though it does no good unless someone is there.  I try to keep a journal of all that goes on incase there is some sort of disagreement later.  I suppose Travis has been forced into something like that also.

Here are some pictures from my last trip of the day.  It is quite dark because it looks like a fairly significant thunderstorm is on it’s way.

The last picture is of the headquarters and residential area of White Sands Missile Range.  The wind is blowing quite hard and I am rocking back and forth.  Today I saw three roadrunners, they are so funny, then look stupid and their feathers always seem to be messy.  I also saw a copper colored snake, about 1 inch in diameter and perhaps 4 feet long.  Then, tonight, just as I was leaving a campground, what appeared to be a grey fox ran across the parking lot in front of me.  That is the fun part of this job.

The range land that surrounds the campground is open range so you have to watch for cows.  They are not afraid of cars but will move off the road when they get ready to.

Here is a sunrise.  It is not as spectacular as most because it has been hazy

This is at sunset as I drove up the mountain to close.

This was kind of a surprise.  Judy saw this snake or perhaps a second which she thinks was a female further out from beneath the trash can.  I kept tipping the can with a push broom and eventually no one was left underneath. We usually try to relocate them instead of killing them if at all possible.  These just disappeared so I keep a watchful eye as I wander around near this place. This is a diamond back rattle snake.

Our RV in the covered site that is provided for us.

This is the route that I take 3 to 6 times a day.  It is about 8.3 miles and goes from about 4500 feet to around 6000 feet in elevation.  Travis can probably look at the map and tell without trying.

I just found this bug crawling around beneath the RV.  I don’t know what it is but it is really ugly. This is about the size he really was.

This was taken on my last trip up to the campground.  I thought it was interesting because I could see rain falling on the Sacramento Mountains.

We finished loading ARVEY this morning and were on the road by 9:00 am.  We drove as far as Mountainair, NM.  This is the location of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.  The Monument is a must see if one is in this part of NM. There are two motels here, both older, but appear well kept.  We stayed at and RV park associated with on of the motels.  I looked up the park in rvparkreviews.com and found the following sentence.

The park is convenient to the highway and close to the railroad. Surprisingly, there was little noise from the frequent trains because the track is seamless.

The trains were frequent and there was no clickety-clack from the rails but each train had at least three locomotives pulling them which produced quite a lot of noise.  As a consequence, I did not get much sleep.

We drove from Mountainair to Las Vegas and stayed at the KOA.  We took highway three from highway 60 to interstate 40.  It was a very narrow little road.  We probably averaged 40 MPH on the drive.  It did not matter since it was only a short drive anyhow.  We managed to rest well at Las Vegas and the hamburgers that they cooked at their outdoor patio were very good.

We drove from Las Vegas to Cedar Rail campground, the campground we stayed at last year.  This time we got a site that we were able to pull in so we have a view of the mountains from the front windows.

The temperature is nice except in the afternoon when the sun shines on the west side of the ARVEY.  But the nights get down to near 60 and the forecast shows night time lows in the 40’s later this week.  How wonderful that is after 99 to 103 degree days at home.

Today we drove to Cimmaron and saw a large herd of buffalo beside highway 64 just before Cimmaron.  They are part of the livestock and wildlife on Ted Turner’s Vermejo Park Ranch, said to be the largest contiguous landholding in New Mexico.  We the drove to Rayado and Miami to Springer and back to the ARVEY.  Cimmaron is interesting because of it’s association with Lucien Maxwell of the Maxwell Land Grant.  At one time, it was the largest land grant in the US.  We visited the Aztec Mill which was originally built by Maxwell.  It is not operational, but is a museum displaying much of the mill machinery as well as memorabilia of the area.  It is a three story stone building with a basement in which the undershot mill wheel was located.  The tractor below is a gas powered Fordson.

The Saint James Hotel is also in Cimmaron.  We had lunch there.  The food was average but the decor is fabulous.  It is on the national register and is being refurbished.  There is a more modern section currently open for guests.

Rayado is part of the Philmont Boy Scout ranch.  It is an amazing complex.  We visited the Seton Library and Museum and Kit Carson’s Home.  Maxwell also had a home here, but it is being used as a training center for the complex and we could not go inside.  The Kit Carson museum is very typical of the trade centers of the fur trapping area and does not seem to have any interpretive information associated with it.

The rest of the ride is through open prairie which predominates the northeastern part of New Mexico.

We attempted to drive on the county roads which on the map paralleled the interstate, but came to a gate which said private property.  The gate was open, and the road might have continued or it might have just ended at someone’s house.  We turned around.

  Matilda enjoys the view from the windshield.  She is on the perch we got for her when she was a kitten.

I always wonder what they are looking at so intensely because when I look I cannot see anything.

I took these pictures on one of morning walks.  I thought they were interesting because you could see the rain falling.  The mountains are called the Spanish Peaks and are 20 or 30 miles away.

These are pictures of Folsom Falls.  I had forgotten my camera so I had to take them with my telephone.  Since I moved to Southern New Mexico, water has begun to festinate me.

These are some elk along the road (555) that we usually take.  We also say a bear who turned around so all I could take a picture of was his butt.  There was also a beautiful bull elk, but it had gotten to dark to take a good picture without a better camera and a tripod.

The buffalo below are located on Ted Turner’s Vermejo Park Ranch.

The Vermejo Park Ranch is a 590,823-acre (2,391 km²) ^[1] ranch owned by Ted Turner in northeast New Mexico that is said to be the largest privately owned, contiguous tract of land in the United States.^[2]

The ranch is the biggest component of Turner's ranch empire of 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km²) that as of 2007 makes him the biggest private landowner in the United States.^[3]

The ranch's most visible component is its guest ranch and hunting. It is stocked with elk, mule deer, pronghorn, bison, black bear, mountain lions, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and Merriam's Turkey (a subspecies of the Wild Turkey).

Some sections are used for extracting propane natural gas from its immense hydrocarbon reserves. The ranch was extensively mined for coals in the early 1900s with mine names of Brilliant, Koehler and York Canyon. The ranch is said to have a 300-year reserve of bituminous coal, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and unknown quantities of oil.^[4]

A small portion is used for the Rich Cabins camp for the adjoining Philmont Scout Ranch.

It was part of the Lucien Maxwell land grant. (From Wikipedia)

Ted Turners Reality Holdings:

I think Judy has been on Ladder Ranch.

These next pictures were taken on a drive through the Cimarron Canyon State Park.

 This road was supposed to take up to wildlife area, but in reality it is a ranch facility of the Philmont Scout Ranch.  It was an incredibly bumpy, washboard road that ended in a large complex of buldings.  Of course, if you never take the road less traveled, you miss a lot of neat things.

This is a mill which is located in Cleveland, NM, north of Mora (which is on a map)  It is unique because it is a roller mill instead of using two flat mill stones to grind the flour.  We had intended to stay for a demonstration on Labor day week end but were not able to stretch our schedule that long.  Hopefully,, next year.

Today is Friday, the 3rd, the MH is in the yard and we have begun loading. We brought it home yesterday after having the chassis lubed.  I have most of my clothes loaded. I have about two more trips to go.  The cat box and satellite dish are in the pickup and Judy has put some stuff in the freezer.  It is going to be touch and go if it all fits in there.  Our goal is to empty the refrigerator so we can shut it off.  I was going to rearrange the MH storage, but have decided now that I will just put stuff in the back of the Blazer and worry about it later.  It is such a dilemma, you put stuff in you think you need, but don’t and leave stuff out you think you don’t need, but do.

We have to unload the cold section of the refrigerator, that will be 6 or 7 trips.  The canned and boxed food will be another 6 or 7 trips and then there are Judy’s clothes, the towels, bed linens and covers, pillows, etc., etc,.  Now is when we began to wonder why we agreed to go.

It is windy today and tomorrow which will make loading even more of a chore.

Saturday, the 4th, and we have the refrigerator and freezer filled and the inside refrigerator turned off.  The canned goods and other stuff like that are in the MH and about half needs to be put away.  We need to put in towels and bedding, the rest of Judy’s stuff, the cats stuff, computers and we will be finished.  I have gone from mild anxiety to full-blown panic, but as always, it will all come together and we will be on the road by 9:00 tomorrow, our usual time.  The cats are exited, Matilda has investigated the inside of the trailer, posed in the front window and acts like she is ready to go.  Perhaps she is looking forward to the times she escapes and two grown people crawl around other peoples campsites trying to lure her out from beneath their trailers.  It has got to be exciting for her.  Right now it is break time, 2:30 p.m.  We will begin again after an early supper,  most food in the the MH, so there are limited snacks available.

Tomorrow, I and the cats will be in the MH and Judy will follow in the pickup.  The adventure will begin.  We will overnight in Vaughn, NM and then drive on to the refuge to settle in and fill out paperwork.  My tractor class begins 9:00 AM Tuesday and finishes sometime Wednesday.  I can’t say I am looking forward to it, if my previous government safety courses are any indication.

It is Sunday morning at 7:41 AM.  We have made great inroads in loading the trailer.  Another hour or two and we can hit the road.  I am not sure when I will get to send the next episode.  It may have to wait until I can find free wifi in Raton.  I will  be glad to get started

It is 5:30 AM, Monday, April 6th.  The water hose froze in the night.  We used an electric heater and the propane furnace and kept comfortable in the night.  It is strange to stay in Vaughn, none of the campgrounds seem to have anyone around and are dependent on the honesty of people to pay for their sites.  Our site at “Danny’s Campground” was 20$.  This is a strange place.  There doesn’t seem to anybody around.  You just put your money in an iron pipe with a locking door.

 

 

 

 

We have 164 miles to go.  Since we are up so early we should get their around noon or slightly after.  There is only one restaurant in town.  It is not very good, it is a diner.  Just a we finished a hoard of teen-agers came in, so we were glad to leave.  The cats were amazingly good in the night until about 3 when another cat came around and got Matilda excited.  She tried to tell us about it, but neither of us was awake enough to care.

We stopped for breakfast at about 10:30, miles south of the refuge.  It was the best sausage eggs and hash browns I have had for a long time.  When we got to the refuge, we filled out some paperwork and then set the trailer up.   We have reasonable views and the connections seem to work fine.  I haven’t started on my nemesis, the satellite dish yet.  We slept better this night, it is so quiet here, no traffic noise, no airplanes, trains or cars.

I am writing this at 6:11 PM Wednesday, the 8th.  Yesterday, I and another tractor trainee picked up trash while we waited for the instructor whom we expected at 9:00.  He arrived around 11:00 expecting to do the class today.  Since we all were ready we took the classroom section of the operators course.  Judy worked with Chris, one of the employees from the Las Vegas Refuge.  Aaron, who will be our manager had to attend a meeting in Alb.  We all passed the classroom part of the test.  Judy and I went for a drive around sundown and saw enumerable deer and a lot of water fowl and shore birds.  It is very dry here and the roads are very dusty.

 This morning, we took the driving, hands on, part of the test.  The tractors certainly have changed since I was on the farm in the 50’s.  Power steering, almost automatic transmissions, air conditioning and all the power that you would need.  The seats have a suspension system to mitigate the rough terrain.  We all passed the drivers part also.  This is the tractor that we used.  We made several passes with disk in a field which will be planted later, while the instructor, the refuge maintenance man and other students watched.  I think they really need volunteer tractor operators.  Actually, the real learning will happen when I am actually out in the field doing real work.

Today is the first real windy day we have had.  It is supposed to be very windy tonight also.  The MH shudders when the wind blows, but is actually very solid. 

Thursday, April 9th, the wind is blowing from the NNW with gusts at least 40 MPH.  Judy and I drove some of the refuge roads, by lake 13, the smaller of the filled refuge lakes, then through a prairie dog town of about 30 acres. There are roughly 150 acres of prairie dog towns on the refuge. The wind is so strong most of them stayed in their burrows and refused to come out to pose for pictures.  The refuge, if I remember correctly is about 3300 acres.  Next week Judy and I can use a Fish and Wildlife vehicle (USFW) to explore the refuge.  I am getting anxious to get to work.  Our regular jobs will start next Tuesday.  We are free to do as we wish until then, but the forecast is for continued wind.  Typically it should not be as windy this late in the spring, but the spring winds started late this year. “This is very unusual weather.”

Friday, April 10th and the wind is still blowing, from the south, but with slightly less intensity.  We drove to Raton today to shop (Judy) and get a haircut (Bruce).  I did manage to get the satellite dish set so most of the channels work with the exception of the local channels.  This is going to be as good as it gets until the weather gets better.  I am sure it will only take a minor shift in the direction of the dish, but I am afraid I will loose what I have gained.  Judy saw 7 deer jump over two fences near the visitor’s center this morning.  They were crossing the road. It is amazing the power and coordination that the animals have.

Here it is Saturday the 11th, we awoke to very fine snow, it didn’t really stick to anything except the rugs outside and the cars.  Katherine used the litter box just as we were getting up and caused an emergency rally to clean up and open the vents.  Rabbits are running everywhere.  It must be that time of year.  The males stand looking at each other and then jump straight up in the air.  It is really fun to watch.  Whoever put in the sewage drain has it about 18 inches above the ground.  I had to empty the gray water and finally just let it run on the ground.  It won’t hurt anything, but is not a good practice.  I think there is more rain coming our way as it is getting darker.  Maybe we should just go back to bed and wait for spring.  It makes you wonder how the trappers and mountain men survived.  I read last night were the first Postmistress of a town in Wyoming spent the winter in a tent because she could not get here dugout, sod house built in time.

It has melted now.   It is very gloomy day.  We were up early for some stupid reason, around 4:30 and the morning has been dragging on.  This marks the end of the first week. Well, the snow we had early was just a preliminary powdering,  as the day went on, we had more snow, rain and sleet.  Actually it was quite pretty, for a while, there were big wet fluffy flakes falling, reminding me of the snows which occurred so often when I was living in Deerfield, IL.

Today is Easter.  We went to have breakfast at a truck stop and also to give the cats a ride.  That is always fun.  They yowled almost all the way there, but were quite good on the way home.  The server was wearing little blue bunny ears.  It is windy again.  The wind is from the north so it is striking the front of the MH.  There isn’t nearly as much noise or shuddering.  When we woke up this morning, it was quite foggy.  As the fog cleared, there was a large herd of deer not far from us.

April 13

Today we had to drive to the refuge at Las Vegas, NM.  It is a larger refuge and is about an hour and a half away.  The drive down was very pleasant.  We stopped at the rest area near Las Vegas, NM and watched a mocking bird sing and fly straight up into the air periodically.  I imagine it was his mating dance.  They are such fun birds to listen to and watch.  We toured the refuge as a visitor would after receiving the standard visitor welcome.  We saw a lot of water fowl and some raptors, but other than guessing that one was a red-tailed hawk, we could not identify anything.  It was however an extremely pleasant day.  We then went to Wendy’s for a fish sandwich and on to Walmart to pick up some supplies.  We were very tired by this time and the store was crowded so we did not really get everything we needed.  We left Maxwell about 8:00 AM and got back about 4:30 PM.  It was a tiring day since we got up around 4:30 AM.  We saw many pronghorns (antelope) on the trip, but they are becoming commonplace now.  We took the Jeep Liberty that belongs to the refuge for a drive, we were waiting until we got some FWS clothing so we looked official before using it, and saw a lot of waterfowl on our refuge along with a number of mule deer.  It was a pleasant drive as the sun was setting.

April 14

This was a very eventful day.  I spent most of the day riding the tractor.  When I came in at noon, I noticed the sole was coming off my old hiking boots I had been wearing as work shoes.  The Refuge Manager, Aaron, agreed to pay up to $120 for a new pair with steel toes as is required.  At 3:00, Judy and I drove to Raton to get the shoes, replace our coffee pot which had cracked, and wash the mud off the Blazer.  When I got to the store there was a youngish girl and a very old man who helped me get the boots.  Each pair had two price tags, one which was the manufacture’s suggested retail and one beneath it which was his price.  He told me he tried it abouat 4 years ago and it had sold a lot of boots and he just kept up the practice.  I picked out a pair of boots, which were above the price the refuge could pay, so the old man, a world war II veteran, was to speak to Aaron and get the credit card number, etc.  Aaron told him he didn’t know me.  I was put on the phone, explained the situation to Aaron and gave the phone back to the man.  He copied down the credit card number and the expiration date with no little difficulty.  He then tried to use the credit card terminal and failed so he called his wife to do it.  She looked at the machine and asked him if he had tried to use it.  He said, “No.”  She then called their technical support.  When someone answered, her first question was “Are you in Bombay?”  Whoever was on to phone said “No.”  She then asked the person where he was.  He was in the Dominican Republic.  She asked about the time difference, and then with his help fixed the machine.  All in all it took about an hour to process the whole transaction.

During this time,  Judy bought 4 rug sample stores from the guy in Radio Shack who was selling them for the carpet store next door.  He wasn’t sure if the store was going to reopen because the owners just disappeared.

Next we washed the car.  I drove through the initial undercarriage spray too slowly and only cleaned the front three quarters of the bottom of the car.  Then the car wash went through the rest of its cycles so the Blazer was reasonably clean.  I drove out too quickly because the timer did not work for the dryers so I didn’t get the entire car dry.

Our next stop was Kmart where we purchased a new coffee pot and some bread. Then we went to the Best Western Motel and had supper. When we got back to the MH we discovered our new coffee pot did not work!  After a suitable period of grumbling we decided to borrow the one from the visitor’s center.

April 15.

Back on the tractor this morning.  I learned how to hook up and use the rotary mower to cut the weed down on several acres of land near where I worked yesterday.  Then I unhooked, re-hooked up the disk and disked the land I had mowed.  I was done around 12:30 and found myself stranded out in the field.  I first called Aaron, who didn’t answer.  I then called Judy who was in Raton getting batteries for a different tractor and exchanging the coffee pot.  I then called the maintenance man, Justin who found Aaron just driving in.  Aaron came out to the field to pick me up.  It is still very windy most days, today it was blowing so hard the visitor center door with its hydraulic closer was opening spontaneously.  I suggested it was spirits which we couldn’t see, but no one seemed to take me seriously.  I then cut off the sewer pipe to the proper height and installed the fitting that Judy had picked up in Raton and installed the new batteries in the tractor.  I then hung around the office with nothing to do until around three when Judy and I went back to the MH.

April 18

On Thursday I learned how to hook up and use the plow used to create the irrigation ditches in the field.  I then went to one of the fields that I had worked previously and dug the furrows.  I was done around 11:00.  After lunch Justin (the paid maintenance man) and I worked on a newer planter that was in the shed, learning how to set it up to plant some variety of peas for the migratory birds.  We had a terrible time getting it out of the building as it was too wide to just drive out.  It took half a dozen attempts to maneuver around to get it out.  It was a lot like trying to move a table to a room where it is too wide for the door.  We finished around 4:00 and then quit a little early.  Irrigation has begun on several fields now.  Eight inch pipe is connected in a giant T to an underground pipe system and is run perpendicular to the furrows cut in the field.  The water then runs down the furrows to the far end of the field.  It is my understanding that periodically we have to don high rubber boots and walk the rows to make sure the water is running properly.  That sounds like work.

Friday I wend to Raton and got some RG-6 cable for the satellite dish and finally got it working so we can record and watch different channels.  I found out I cannot get the local channels using direct tv like we did with Dish.  But, we do have a DVR.  You can’t seem to win.  I think that I can get most of the channels we are missing from Alb. (can’t spell it because I am non-native) and perhaps will do better when we go digital.  We drove to one of the irrigation supply lakes.  Since they are providing water to the user’s now, the lake level is falling.  It will probably rise when the snow melt begins in the mountains.

Today, I will post this using the wifi at the welcome center in Raton. I hope.  Judy has to get a hair cut.  I have to get to a free wifi site and down load all the updates also.  It may take a second trip.

This is the end of our second week.  It has been very eventful, but for the most part we have enjoyed it except for the almost continual winds.

Continued later.