New Mexico January 2018

The month of January found us back in New Mexico. We came here years ago on vacation and loved it. When we started work camping we decided to find a position here and it was a great decision. When we first retired we were docents at two light houses in Michigan and at Young State Park in Boyne City also in Michigan. They were all short term but Elephant Butte was our first long term position.

Elephant Butte Lake State Park is the largest state park in New Mexico. It is on Elephant Butte Lake which was formed when a dam was built on the Rio Grande River. We are 250 miles south of Albuquerque and 75 north of Las Cruses and 5 miles from Truth or Consequences (yes that is a real city)  just off I-25. We are here for 3 months this time as camp ground host. We take care of 16 sites in our area making sure they are cleaned when campers leave and ready for the next guest. We are also the main contact for our campers and help them enjoy their stay with us.

This is the butte that gave the area its name. Look closely and you can see the elephant. Here is a little hint...the trunk and head area on the left which means the elephant's butt is to the right. There you have Elephant Butt, oops I mean Butte.
Below is a picture of us working at the park entrance. This is from 2011 our first time here the only thing different is we are a few years older but we are still looking good.

This is our site in Lions Beach Campground. The other two times we were here we were in Quail Run. We have a full hook up site with a view of the lake. Great way to spend the winter. We enjoy staying a little busy (12-15 hours a week) and meeting the campers. We have a couple here now from Pullman Michigan which is not far from our home.

We were out Geocaching one day and had a great view of the lake from the south end. We have been Geocaching for a couple of years now and it's a great way to get out and enjoy Mother Nature. Geocaching is where you use an app on your phone to find little treasures that others have hidden. It can be as small as a pill bottle (or smaller) or as big as an ammo box. There is usually a log to sign and you can log it on the app for your own records.

We did drive to the town of Hatch. This is where they grow chiles. If you use red or green chiles in your cooking, chances are they came from Hatch. This is where Sparky's is. We go for the green chili cheese burgers, green chili cheese fries and the green chili corn. These pictures are of the outside and the parking lot across the street.The inside is just as interesting.

We have quail, morning dove, roadrunners (Beep Beep), bunnies and jack rabbits around us all the time. We even have coyotes roaming the park.  Holly puts out food for them every morning.  I'm not sure if they are all sitting up in the trees waiting for food or trying to keep from being coyote food. Below is just a small group that shows up for breakfast. They are sure fun to watch and I love waking up in the morning and hearing them talking amongst themselves.

This is me standing in the middle of the Rio Grande River (bed). This is about 1/4 mile below the dam. Because of the drought conditions here they are trying to get the level of the lake up before they start letting water out for irrigation. Once they start letting water out the water would be around my chin. So sad to see the lake so low and the minimal snowfall this year to the north is not going to help much.

We do get storms rolling thru once in awhile. Not much rain out of them but we do get some beautiful cloud formations, especially at sunset.

We drove up to Bosque del Apache to see all of the migrating birds that winter there.They have several ponds for the different water fowl. They also have fields of corn and grain. This pond was mostly snow geese. As you can see, there are a lot of them and there were other ponds with more. There were also ducks and blue heron in and around the ponds. Tends to be quite noisy around all these birds. 

We were lucky to catch this Bald Eagle checking out the area. It is always a thrill to see one of these magnificent birds. We saw a number of them when we were work camping in Libby Montana but it is still exciting to see one wherever we are.

This is a corn field full of sand cranes. These are impressive birds. They are very large and very loud. We have seen them fly in to a group and hover in the air and float straight down to land in a hole among all of them. At night they gather in shallow ponds away from the edges so if any predators try to sneak up on them they will have to come into the water making noise which gives them time to get away.

We also drove out to White Sands National Monument. These are very large sand dunes made up of real fine gypsum sand. Because of the white color it almost seems as you have driven into a winter wonderland.

Due to the constant shifting sands they plow the roads to keep them open. This also helps the illusion of snow. People come out for picnics and to slide down the dunes on saucers. That's not flying saucers...that's over by Roswell on the other side of the state.

That's all for now. We have not been out too much as we have been here twice before so there isn't much we haven't already seen. I'll keep trying to find something interesting for our blog and hopefully show you some of New Mexico. So for now, just like the guy to the right, I'll just slide out of here and see what I can come up with for the next post. Till then stay warm up north.

Arizona December 2017

We hope you all had a great holiday season. Holly and I and some friends went to the Arizona Temple of Latter Day Saints in Mesa to stroll the grounds and enjoy the Christmas decorations. The grounds cover a whole city block and there isn't very much of it without lights and decorations.

It was very relaxing and enjoyable to wander and look at all of the lights and scenes of the birth of Jesus Christ. There was Mary and Joseph and the three wise men .

I don't know how long it must of taken to put up all of the decorations and lights but I can say that just from hearing everyone there it was appreciated by everyone.

We went to the Arizona Commemorative Air Force  Museum on one of our outings and learned a lot of new things. At least I did. Holly is much smarter then me and probably already knew how a airplane  rotary piston engine works.

I love museums like this. They had displays that you can get up close and personal with. The mechanical side of me loves to able to see how they mount stuff like bombs and guns on these fast movers and how the wings fold up on the planes used on air craft carriers.  You can see how the engines are mounted and on the older prop planes you get a real perspective on the size of the planes and engines.

If you thought your car's dashboard can be confusing at times take a look at the inside of the Phantom II from above.

I know that most people know what the table setting above signifies. But do you know what the meaning is of everything on the table? They had a sheet explaining everything and I was enlightened by it.

I have often wondered how those pilots of old got up the nerve to jump in the old by-planes. Wood and fabric and paint held together with screws and wire. Nope not me, I don't even like flying in the modern stuff.

They have an operating B-17 on site that you can walk through. Well sort of anyway. When you first climb up thru the hatch in the nose you crawl up into the plane before you can stand up.

After you stand up you can see the pilots and co-pilots seats and the navigator-bombardier-nose gunners position. Then you turn looking towards the rear of the aircraft and you are looking at the top turret gunners position. The front of the aircraft is very crowded when everyone is at their battle positions.

You then walk towards the rear and through the bomb bay area.  You needed to step over an air frame and then down to the walk way. Nope no steps and after my back surgery it took me a while to figure that one out.  That is Holly at the other end waiting for me. It is a very narrow and tight walk way. I now know why there were no large people on B-17's.

This is the radio operators position. On take off and landings the crew all had seats in the middle of the air craft but once airborne they went to there assigned positions.

The tail gunner had to crawl over the rear wheel housing and back to the tail of the plane there he kneeled down to man the guns. No seat or laying down on his knees. Then there was the poor ball turret gunner. He entered the turret from inside the plane thru a hatch after he was in they closed the hatch which he used as a back rest. The hatch was armor plated to give him some protection. He more or less laid  on his back with his legs up on each side of his guns. Sounds a little more comfortable than the tail gunner but a little cramped for space.

The sign said this was a troop transport. I expected to see row of canvas seats down each side but this must of transported higher ranking troops as you can see from the shot below.

Nope have no idea what model this is but it had a lot of guns on it and a pretty girl on the side. Inside the bomb bay were a lot of signatures from former service members. Some were from former flight crews with dates of service.

Our son Mike introduced us to Geocaching a few years ago. That's where you go and find hidden treasure that others have placed (there is an app for it). There are caches hidden all over the world, that's right the world. When you find one you have been looking for there is usually a log to sign and sometimes little trinkets. I like to leave little plastic steam engines. Then you log it on the app under your name and it marks it found and keeps track for you. There are also trackables that people can move from cache to cache. If you start one it can be tracked as it moves. It could find it's way to a foreign country.

Before we headed west this last fall Mike gave me a trackable coin (it has a serial number on it)  to place somewhere for him. I found the perfect spot in Yuma Arizona. It was in a cache hidden under the tender of this Southern Pacific steam engine. Hopefully the next person that takes it logs it in their list then logs it out to the cache where they dropped it. If done right Mike will be able to track it as it moves. Hope it has a good journey.

While in Yuma we took a little trip to Mexico  and did a little shopping. The next day we drove up to Castle Dome City. It is a old mining ghost town. There are several mines in the area. They mine silver, gold and lead. The biggest mineral mined is lead. During WWII the mines worked around the clock supplying lead for ammunition for the war effort. 

This is Castle Dome. There are several mines in the area but only a couple are still operating.

As with most mining towns there were several bars. This is just one of the many.

There was a little cafe/gas station/garage. I have never heard of this brand of gas but I sure do like the price per gallon. The very last picture is a machine that was seen in gas stations all over the country. Some will know what it is and the rest of you are way too young to know. Well that ends our little 3 month vacation in Arizona. My back is healing nicely and I can sure tell the difference.

We have moved on to our new winter job. We will be spending the rest of the winter in Elephant Butte State Park. I know we have been here before, twice before to be exact. We figured this was a good place to finish my recovery as we already know what the job requirements are. There are a lot of new people here so we will have a chance to make some new friends. Well that's all for now. We'll be looking forward to seeing everyone next month. Everyone up in cold country stay warm and the rest of you stay cool.  Adios my friends.