Still Trying to Catch Up with Our Travels!

Monday morning we left Brantley Lake State Park, New Mexico, and headed southeast toward Ft. Davis, Texas. As we crossed the state line from New Mexico into Texas we entered the Central Time Zone.

We decided to stay at Davis Mountains State Park near Ft. Davis. It was the first Texas State Park where we've stayed. Unlike most states, Texas charges an entrance fee for each person every day you stay at the park in addition to the camping fee. By purchasing the state park pass, we saved $32 for our 4 day stay! The park pass was $60. We intend to stay in more Texas state parks during the year.

Our camp site was at the base of one of the mountains.

We hiked the trail up the mountain to find a geocache and also take another picture of our site.

We drove the skyline drive and had an excellent view of Ft. Davis (town) and the surrounding area.
We could even see Indian Lodge which is at the far end of the park.
We enjoyed the views of desert and mountains.
Our first order of business while staying at Davis Mountains was to find a place to wash clothes. We found a laundromat in Ft. Davis. As our clothes washed and dried, we walked around town. There were interesting shops with local goodies, but nothing we really wanted.

Next on our agenda was a visit to Ft. Davis National Historic Area. It reminded us of the fort in San Angelo, Texas and also of Fort Robinson in Nebraska.
The officers' quarters have been reconstructed and several have furnishings from the period they were in use.
The hospital under construction, but several rooms have been refurbished and medical equipment is on display.

Another day we visited McDonald Observatory. The observatory has several large telescopes on its property and an interesting visitors' center.
This is the telescope housed in the above building. Our tour guide operated the telescope and the roof opening so we could see how it moved.

From this telescope's building we went to the Hobby Eberly Telescope.

This is a different type of telescope than any I have seen. The entire inside of the building is the telescope! There are 91 mirrors which catch the light from the night sky! This picture is of the mirrors. The poles that look bent are actually the reflection in the mirrors of the top of the building!
Another day while we were at Davis Mountains we drove the loop from Ft. Davis to Alpine to Marfa and back to Davis Mountains.

Alpine is home to Sul Ross State University and the Museum of the Big Bend. We enjoyed visiting the museum since our next camping stop would be Big Bend National Park.

From Alpine we traveled west to Marfa. There was a navy training air field there in World War II. It was also the backdrop for the movie 'Giant' with Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean.

Today it is famous for the Marfa Lights--unexplained lights seen at night across the desert. They were first seen in the 1880s.

This site was built to view the lights.

This is the plaque Bob was reading about the lights.
Of course, we found the geocaches hidden around the loop drive!
After four nights at Davis Mountains SP we packed up and headed for Big Bend!

Presidents' Day Weekend

Saturday morning we took the kids geocaching and found some great sculptures along the main street in Artesia, New Mexico. Of course several of them had virtual geocaches. We have been through Artesia twice, but never went through downtown. What a surprise to see life size sculptures celebrating the town's history every few blocks!
Bobby and Cathy joined us at Brantley Lake State Park Saturday evening. Sunday we planned to visit Carlsbad Caverns before we separated and went our own way.

Once at Carlsbad we decided to walk into the caverns through the natural entrance.

It was a long way down, but it gave Christopher and DeAnna a good sense of us going underground.

As we walked further into the caverns, it got darker and darker. Our eyes adjusted to the light as we entered the main caverns. Christopher thought this looked like a giant finger!
The whale's mouth is an interesting formation.
We stayed in the caverns looking at the sights until well past lunchtime. Everyone remembered the ranger's advice to use quiet voices while underground.

To get back to the surface, we rode the elevator. The attendant turned off the lights so we rode part of the way in total darkness!

At the top, we ate lunch and said our goodbyes. Bobby and family returned to El Paso and we returned to Brantley Lake.

Monday morning we packed up and traveled to Davis Mountains State Park near Ft. Davis, Texas.

Still Refreshing Our Memories!

From Caballo Lake State Park we traveled a scenic highway through Lincoln, New Mexico to get to Bottomless Lakes State Park near Roswell. A red semi passed us on our journey!

We stopped along the way to get more geocaches. Maybe you have noticed our numbers are increasing. One stop was the rest area dedicated to Billy the Kid and others of his time.
We all walked around and stretched before traveling to Roswell.
We had a good time at Bottomless Lakes State Park. We even went back to Roswell to eat in the UFO that is McDonald's. We forgot to take the camera! Oh, well, we had a good time anyway!

We stayed at Bottomless Lakes a few days before heading to Brantley Lake State Park north of the town of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Our site overlooked the lake.

Christopher and DeAnna enjoyed the Living Desert Zoo in Carlsbad. We went to story hour, then explored the zoo. There were some great artifacts for them to put examine.
DeAnna tried the cow horns.
Christopher liked the deer antler.
The animals at the Living Desert Zoo are ones that have been injured and cannot live in the wild. We saw bears, bison, elk, javelina, prairie dogs, tortoises, mountain lions, Mexican wolves, and a porcupine. In the aviary we got a picture of an injured roadrunner.
We had a wonderful time and were looking forward to going to the caverns when Bobby and Cathy arrived on Saturday.

Of course the campground had not one, but two playgrounds which we visited often. The blue slides were perfect for races!
More about Artesia and Carlsbad in the next post!

Time to Refresh Our Memories!

We left Tucson February 4 and headed toward New Mexico. We stopped at this rest area in Arizona to find a geocache.Our first thought was to stop in Deming at the SKP park, but it was still early when we arrived so we kept driving--destination Leasburg Dam State Park north of Las Cruces.

It was a nice drive, but we were disappointed to find no vacancies at the campground when we arrived! The host was as surprised as we were. He said it never filled!

On to our next option--head for Caballo Lake State Park and hope there were empty sites. It was dark when we arrived, but we easily found a site. The next morning we explored the campground and found that we preferred the riverside campground better than lakeside so we packed our things and move to riverside. Once we were settled we went geocaching. We found several and then returned to the rv. We plotted our next sightseeing trip and Bob downloaded the caches we could find as we traveled to Chloride, a ghost town northwest of Truth or Consequences.

If you look carefully, you can see part of our car parked behind the trees at the bottom of the hill. We climbed Red Hill to get a geocache.

We found all the caches and enjoyed touring Chloride. The town has a few inhabitants who own/take care of the historical buildings. The Edmund family purchase the buildings in the 1970s. The general store was boarded and abandoned with all its merchandise in the 1920s. Bats and rats took their toll, but after much cleaning, the store is a step back in time! All the items in the store are the originals from the old mining town. I never knew strawberry jam came in cans!
Bob wouldn't like to use this lawnmower on our yard! It is the implement hanging in the middle of this picture. Here is the original 'ditto' maker for teachers. It contains stamps for sight words with a few picture stamps. Bobby and Cathy were bringing the kids to spend a week with us and riverside had a great playground. Bobby and Cathy went to Santa Fe for a weekend retreat. Our first order of business with the kids was to hike the campground.

Then it was time to geocache. We went to the lakeside are at Caballo Lake to find our first cache.

We had a full day which we completed on the playground near our camp site.


Bobby and Cathy stopped by on Sunday on the return trip. We planned to meet them the following weekend at Carlsbad Caverns. Christopher and DeAnna stayed with us for the week.
We left Caballo Lake State Park in New Mexico and headed for Bottomless Lakes State Park where Bob and I camped last year.

February 4-20--Fun and More!

We spent most of this time in New Mexico with the grandkids. We were having too much fun to update the blog. Once we said goodbye to them and headed to Davis Mountains State Park in Texas, we had very slow internet which often dropped our signal.
We are now on our way to Big Bend National Park. We will be there for the next week. We know there is no cell phone or internet coverage in the park so look for an update in about a week.
Still on the road and having a great time!

On the Road Again! January 22-February 3, 2009

On January 22 we arrived at Bobby and Cathy's in El Paso, Texas. When we arrived we were without the passenger side mirror and we had a big rock chip in the passenger side windshield. We lost the mirror east of Kerrville, TX. Once we arrived, Bob started searching the yellow pages to find a mirror. He even went to the local junkyards trying to find one. He was finally successful during his search of the internet. He ordered a mirror and it arrived before we left for Tucson. We also had someone come to the rv to fix the windshield.

January 23 we went to Bobby's promotion. He is now CW-2. You can call him Chief!
We enjoyed our time in El Paso. We did some geocaching with Christopher and DeAnna. Joyce went to the dentist with Cathy who had not one, but two root canals done in one day---ouch! We left El Paso and headed for Tucson January 30.

We thought about stopping, but decided to drive straight through--300+ miles. We arrived at Davis Monthan AFB around 6 pm and made a quick trip to the commissary to get milk and bread. We parked in overflow with the intention of staying there the entire time. Tucson has great sun for our solar panels and we had a full water tank and empty holding tanks since we emptied before we got to El Paso.

We purchased another Tucson Passport which has many deals on sightseeing in the area. We used the passport to visit Colossal Cave Mountain Park which is east of Tucson. We found several geocaches as we drove to the park. Here is how one was cammoed.

It was a beautiful, sunny day to visit the park. This year Tucson was warmer than last. We didn't need long sleeves or jackets while we were there.

We took advantage of the fountain in the middle of the old hacienda for a photo opportunity.

Another day we traveled south to Green Valley to visit the Titan II Missile Museum. We walked down to the control room.
We were able to view the missile from above and below.

While we were in Green Valley we did some more geocaching and found some great parks. Our favorite was a walking path called Safari Trail that had bronze animals with their descriptions all along the trail.
February 3rd we met our friends from militarycampgrounds.us who we met last year in Quartzite, Arizona. We had a good time talking with them and exchanging stories from the past year. Larry, Connie, Rod, and Ardith are going to work camp this summer in Sierra National Forest in California. They keep trying to talk us into working with them. We keep saying no, but we have said maybe to traveling to Alaska with them in a few years.

February 4 was a travel day.

Here's the Scoop

Well, we made it home in October. It was good to be home and see Jennifer, Andy and of course Dakota--as well as neighbors and friends.

We had a lot to do at home to get ready for the big increase in our electric bill in January. We started by cleaning the attic--there is nothing in it now and the trash men had full trucks for several weeks. We found toys Christopher and DeAnna would enjoy so those were cleaned and put in the house. Someone came and sealed the ducts in the attic so we wouldn't lose any heat or cool air. Then we had someone blow new insulation in the attic as our insulation was 30 years old.

We painted the ceiling in the living room--it wasn't damaged, just water stained from Tropical Storm Fay. While the furniture was out so we could paint the ceiling we decided to paint the walls, too. As I worked in house, Bob emptied the garage, putting everything in the rv garage. Then he painted the floor with an epoxy paint. He hung the shelves on the wall and returned some things to the garage--it looks great!

We did a little yard work, just enough to get us by until we return home at the end of March.

Bob's parents and Bobby, Cathy, Christopher, and DeAnna arrived the Saturday before Christmas. This was the first year I had really decorated the house for Christmas in quite a while. Bob's parents stayed 2 nights. We took the others to Disney--Ft. Wilderness for Dec. 22-24. We arrived home Christmas day to see what Santa left for everyone. Jennifer and Andy cooked our Christmas breakfast---hmmmm is this the start of a new tradition? We had a great time visiting everyone.

During our time at home we started planning our next trip. We contacted our friends in Ft. Walton Beach to let them know we would be on the road the middle of January. They invited us to stop by. We put them on our itinerary.

We have a sketchy itinerary for January and the first week of February, but after that who knows what we'll do!

Here is what we're up to:

We left home early in the evening January 15 and spent the night in the Chiefland, Florida Wal-Mart. It was our first stay at a Wal-mart and it won't be our last. It was the perfect place to stop, sleep, then get back on the road. Friday and Saturday we were in Ft. Walton Beach with Ira and Mary. We met the garage gang and had a lot of fun. They tried to spoil us, and it worked!

We left Ft. Walton Beach Sunday morning to continue our trip to El Paso. We plan to be there for Bobby's promotion January 23.

From El Paso we will head to Tucson for a reunion with the people who use militarycampgrounds.us We met them in Quartzite last January and we're looking forward to seeing everyone again.

After the reunion February 3, we have no plans, but I know we will come up with something fun.

We'll keep you posted as our blog is up and running again. Our only problem is that we have gotten out of the habit of taking pictures! We'll try to change that soon.