Abbey's Road

Believe it or not I did do a little skiing near Moab, but it was of the cross country variety. They still have a lot of snow in the La Sal Mountains above Moab. The conditions weren’t great, but at least I finally made use of my x-country skis that I have been carrying around. I also used my snowshoes and took Abbey with me. She had a ball rolling in the snow, of course. The funny thing was that we did a short hike in the desert that morning before driving up to the pass to play in the snow.
Morning
Afternoon

I arrived in Moab on Saturday not realizing that it would be so crowded. Spring break is a popular time in Moab, the mountain biking mecca of the country, since it is so hot during the summer. There is a ton of stuff to do around Moab like rafting, hiking, mountain biking and, of course, cross country and backcountry skiing. Today I rented a Jeep and Abbey and I went four wheeling. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy most of the day so the light wasn’t too good for pictures. The scenery was still spectacular though I’m not sure Abbey thought the very bumpy ride was worth it. She seemed to do OK though and had fun running around when we stopped for breaks. There were a few hairy spots and a cool set of switchbacks that reminded me of the Moki Dugway if you remember that from last year (see the May archive). It was fun, but I’m not sure I got excited enough to want to get into it like the fanatics do. You wouldn’t believe some of the “trails” they drive their vehicles up.

This part of the country is just so unique. I wouldn’t want to live her due to the extreme summer heat and lack of trees and grass, but it sure is beautiful especially in the spring. We’ve also done a little hiking here and I’m hoping to try out some of the bike trails if my ancient bike is up to the task. If not, I’ll just have to rent one. You can’t go to Moab and not ride any of the mountain bike trails. If I didn’t I think my cousin Tommy would die. He loves this place. Speaking of him, when he found out I was out here it was killing him. So I invited him to come on out and he couldn’t resist. He’ll be here next week so I have to rest up and get in shape. More next week.

Moab Area Pics

Posted by Ed at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well I did manage to stay in Ruidoso for 2 nights before heading north. Ruidoso is a nice area with some good hiking, but the town is a bit touristy. Abbey and I got in one good hike before we moved on to Santa Fe. We got into Santa Fe late in the afternoon but with enough time to hit Trader Joe’s and stock up on our supplies. If you’ve never been to Trader Joe’s you don’t know what you’re missing. It has all kinds of good food and it also has wine at reasonable prices and I’m not talking about 2 Buck Chuck either. After loading up there I think my RV was probably over its weight limit, but luckily noone ever checks. When I got back to the RV park after Trader Joe’s I found that my camp chair, electric and TV cable that I had left at my site had been taken. I was pretty bummed because I wanted to watch TV that night, but I figured one of the workers must have picked them up figuring I had left it behind. When I asked the next morning, however, the guy said nothing had been turned in. Then I was really bummed. It was the first time I had ever had anything stolen. Guess I won’t stay at that park again.

On Saturday the whole Gibbons clan, Ryan’s friend, AJ, and I drove up to Frisco where we had rented a condo for 3 nights. Poor Abbey and their dog Lydee had to go to the kennel. It was Lydee’s first time, but at least she had Abbey with her. Abbey gave me that deer-in-the-headlights look when I turned to leave and told her I’d be back. It killed me, but skiing helped me get over it. We skied 2 days at A-Basin (Arapohoe Basin for the uninitiated) and 1 day at Copper Mtn. A-Basin is more of a locals hangout and a lot less crowded. It was my first real time skiing in about 13 years. Needless to say I was a bit rusty, but I escaped the 3 days without injury and I skied fairly well all things considered. So, I was usually the last one down the hill, but I was also usually one of the last ones to come in or take a break. It was a lot of fun getting back on skis again and it was a real bonus to come back all in one piece. I didn’t want to think about driving the RV with a broken leg or worse.

While I was in Colorado I took Abbey to the vets again for some more testing. It turns out they are pretty sure she has Lyme disease even though she’s not showing any symptoms. So they have her on antibiotics for a month and we’ll have to see how things go from there. I’m trying to cut down on her hiking as she seems to get tired more easily these days. Of course, she is getting up there in age too. She’s 12 now so I can’t expect her to do as much as she used to anyways.

View from the Top of A-Basin
Ed and the Kids
The Gibbons Clan

Posted by Ed at 5:55 PM | Permalink

Driving by the Cloudcroft ski area I felt pretty sorry for the owners. It looked pretty sad with absolutely no snow. I later found out that Cloudcroft has been so warm this winter and because of the drought they’ve only had about 3” of snow. The ski area never even opened up. So I was even more surprised when I checked the weather on the internet and found out that a big cold front is coming through New Mexico and it’s supposed to be down in the 20s at night, and up in Santa Fe next week, where I was planning on going, it is supposed to be in the teens at night! Thank God for a flexible schedule. I found all this weather information out while I was waiting for someone to come unlock my RV. Yes, I finally did it. I locked my keys in the RV with Abbey inside, which was probably better than her being outside waiting with me. That way I could go to the library and get on the internet in the meantime. Following a ranger’s suggestion, I was driving up this winding mountain road wondering if it was a good idea to be heading this way with cold weather coming. I decided not to listen to the voice of reason and went anyway. When I got to the spot I was surprised to find someone already parked there. They had a pickup truck and an old Airstream trailer, a real classic. After I fed Abbey I was sitting down figuring out where to go to get out of the cold weather when someone knocked on my door. You have to understand that this doesn’t happen very often. It was Brian and Leigh, the owners of the Airstream, and their dog Curtis. They were coming to check out their new “neighbors”. It turns out they are fulltimers as well, though they are even younger than I. They are working from the road so they stay put from Monday to Friday. They have a satellite dish they set up wherever they go so they can “dial in” to work.

Brian & Leigh & their Airstream

Abbey and I went on a hike that left right from the campground on Wednesday morning. There’s an Air Force base nearby and there were quite a few planes going overhead so she was her usual timid self. It took a lot of coaxing at times to get her going. We probably hiked over 6 miles which was a little long for her. She hasn’t done that much in a while and she’s a bit sore now. I guess I’ll have to take it easy on her for a few days. Brian and Leigh stopped by again and invited me over for dinner. Two dinner invites in one week. I’m getting spoiled. That night it got even colder and it was really windy to make matters worse. My furnace came on about every five minutes so I didn’t sleep well at all. Plus, I’ve been suspecting problems with my house batteries so the next morning I packed up and headed for Las Cruces. After stopping at a service center I found an RV park that didn’t look too bad. I at least had a nice view of the mountains without worrying about freezing pipes. The next day I went to Oliver Lee SP near Alamogordo, which is known for being outside of White Sands National Monument. I’ve been hanging out here for the last few days because it is still too cold anywhere north or in the mountains. Unfortunately, it has been really windy – 20-30mph with gusts in the 40s – so I have been able to see the white sand without even going to the monument. Yesterday and today it’s been so bad that they issued a “Dust Alert” and the whole area looks like it’s engulfed in fog.

I’m hoping to stop for a night in Ruidoso if it warms up a tad before I head up to Colorado. I’m sure it will be even colder up there, but I’m going to go skiing with the Gibbons family and I won’t have to stay in the RV at night.

Posted by Ed at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On Friday I left the Davis Mountains and drove up to Guadalupe Mountains NP. I had remembered being told in the past that the park is supposed to be a beautiful place. Of course, I had to apply the Texas factor so I wasn’t getting my hopes up too high. The park is pretty small – only 82,000 acres – and there are very few roads into it. The campground was in a nice setting, right up against the mountains, but the RV area was actually part of the trailhead parking lot. I wasn’t too excited at first, but it turned out to be not that bad. There was even a short trail I could take Abbey on. We got there in the early afternoon so after taking Abbey on her lone trail, I took a moderate hike up one of the canyons. It wasn’t quite as beautiful as I had been told, but I think part of that is due to the severe drought the whole southwest has been under the last several months. The next morning I started out early on a loop hike which was supposed to be pretty strenuous climbing over 2300 ft. up to the Bowl. It also was supposed to have an entirely different ecosystem than down below. The Bowl did have pine trees but it wasn’t overwhelming, at least not to me. The view from the top, however, was quite nice and it felt good to get in a moderately difficult climb. Besides, I can't complain too much. I did get to see the tallest peak in Texas - Guadalupe Peak. I’m sure Abbey was happy she missed it, especially since it was pretty warm. I got done much earlier than I expected. That afternoon a couple from Germany pulled up in the site next to mine. They had a pickup with a truck camper on the back that they had actually shipped over from Germany. They have been traveling around since July and are winding up their trip in a few months. They had a really big dog, Mila, with them so I can only imagine how cramped it was in their camper. Poor Mila had sore paws from the rough rocks and all the burrs. Apparently she had gotten a few stuck in her paws and they must have gotten infected. They didn’t have any booties for her so they put socks and plastic bags on her front paws. It was pretty funny looking but I felt bad for her because I’m sure they hurt. I have to pull the burrs out of Abbey’s paws all the time. They didn’t have anything to disinfect them with so I gave them my peroxide and some other stuff. I told them I used to live in Germany but was embarrassed that I could hardly speak a word of German. I really have forgotten much of the little German that I knew. Anyways, they tried to talk me into going to Alaska this summer instead of the Canadian Rockies, which I have been planning on. It was their favorite place so far. Of course they could go to some pretty remote places with their truck that would be hard for me in my RV. Maybe I’ll have to look at trading mine in for a truck camper so I can see the real Alaska. Decisions, decisions. And I thought this was going to be easy.

On Sunday I went to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. I was anxious to compare it to the previously visited Caverns of Sonora. I have to admit that they aren’t really in the same class, but in some ways I like Sonora better than Carlsbad. They were much smaller, but much homier. For their size they had an amazing amount of formations and they did have more color than Carlsbad. But for sheer size and volume of formations Carlsbad prevails. Carlsbad also had helictites, like Sonora, though they kind of got lost because of all the other formations. It also had something I hadn’t seen before – cave pearls. I’m learning more about caves than I ever imagined. I wanted to do one of the auxiliary tours which were supposed to be a bit more active so I signed up for one on Monday to go down into Lower Cave. Other than climbing down a rope and a few ladders it wasn’t that strenuous. It was an OK tour, but it was a little slow for me. The guide did a lot more talking so we didn’t cover as much ground as I had expected. However, there were some pretty amazing formations nonetheless. Sorry, but the lighting wasn’t that great so I didn’t take any pictures in Lower Cave. We mostly just had the light of our headlamps.

Sunday evening I moved to a new campground at Brantley Lake State Park north of the town of Carlsbad. It turned out that a couple I had first seen in Big Bend, and ran into several times in Terlingua and the Davis Mountains, were staying there as well. When they saw me pull in they came down and invited me over for dinner – my first dinner invitation by other RVers. I guess I’m one of them now. Actually, Doug and Liane have been fulltimers less than I (only 2 months) so I even had some tips for them. They plan on traveling around for about 2 years or so before looking for some type of work to do. Of course, they are in their 50s and a bit closer to real retirement than I am. Then again, I could always do workamping or be a park host….. Just kidding Dad. In any case, I had a good time talking to them and comparing notes on places to go, but I probably had a bit too much wine. I was pretty tired today, Monday, after the Lower Cave tour. Tomorrow I’m heading to either Cloudcroft or Ruidoso, NM, depending on which has less snow and open campgrounds. That’s all for now.

Carlsbad Pics

Posted by Ed at 2:46 PM | Permalink

The Big Scopes

The McDonald Observatory, near Ft. Davis, TX, is one of the best known observatories in the US. Any of you NPR listeners may have heard their Star Date radio program. It supposedly has one of the darkest skies in the US, a great thing if you want to look at the stars. The Observatory has many programs but they have Star Parties every Tuesday, Friday and Saturday evening. I made sure I arrived at Davis Mountains State Park on Tuesday so I could catch the big show. It turned out to be nearly a perfect night for star gazing – no clouds and just the first day of a new moon. I went to the Twilight program first, which I wouldn’t recommend, but the Star Party more than made up for it. They had a general program pointing out many constellations, the Andromeda galaxy and some of the planets. We then got a chance to look through several telescopes of various sizes at some interesting stuff like the Orion nebula (fancy word meaning gaseous cloud) and Saturn. Saturn was so clear it almost looked fake. After checking out the 5 telescopes they had set up for individual viewing, we then went into the theatre where they beamed in live camera shots from other, more powerful telescopes. It would have been really cool if they had printed off shots that we could take, but no luck with that so I have no pictures for you. You’ll have to settle for going to their website at http://www.mcdonaldobservatory.org. All in all, it was pretty amazing and I would highly recommend it if you ever find yourself out in the middle of the West Texas desert.

Davis Mountain State Park is a nice little park with a couple of hiking trails. I tried to take Abbey out in the morning before it got too hot so she got a little exercise. They have a year round population of white-winged doves. They were quite loud in the morning and evening and I think Abbey was even wondering what was making all the racket. Luckily they slept most of the night and didn’t wake up too early. On Thursday night the Interpretive Center had a showing of the March of Penguins which I had been wanting to see. It’s a pretty amazing documentary if you haven’t seen it yet. Of course, my nephew, Robbie, told me “Uncle Eddie, it’s stupid. It’s about penguins,” when I told him I wanted to see it. What else would you expect from a teenager, though.

Posted by Ed at 2:41 PM | Permalink