Elephant Butte State Park Febuary 2012

     I guess I should start the February  blog before I start getting comments from Sara P.  As you can see by the number of pictures this month, we have been doing a little sightseeing since our last blog. There is so much to see here in the southern part of New Mexico it just takes a little time to drive to every where. We have the White Sands Missile Base to the east of us. If we want to head over to the east side of the state we have to go north 65 miles before we can go east or go south 75 miles before we can head east. To go to the west we have to go over the mountains or go south 65 miles.

Looking for that retirement condo.

                                                                                                                                                    We started our travels at Lake Valley which is an old deserted silver mining town. They have a nice visitor center and some of the old buildings. It was interesting to walk around and see the old buildings and the old right of way for the spur that the Santa Fe Railroad had there during the boom time of the town. We also talked to the volunteer that works there. This area is overseen by the BLM. The volunteer couple works five days a week and they are closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 

     On a another day we took a drive to the town of Ruidoso.  This town is about 60 miles straight east of us but because of the missile base, it is about a 152 mile trip to get there. On the way we stopped at the Valley of Fire which is a park run by the National Forest Service. It's in the middle of an ancient lava field and and has a campground there. I can almost guess how hot it is in the summer with all of that black lava around you.

Smokey is the one on the left.

              On the way to Ruidoso we also stopped at the Smokey Bear Memorial in the town of Capitan. This is the site where the original Smokey is buried. They have a very nice visitor center with a lot of information about Smokey and all of the different programs and ads for the "Only You Can prevent Forest Fires." promotion. They also had all sorts of things related to Smokey such as toys, teddy bears and lunch boxes.  It was interesting to learn that when Smokey died in Washington D.C.  they flew him back to New Mexico and took him directly to this sight with a police escort and buried him at 3:00 A.M. due to the fact that there had been threats to steal the body. As soon as they had buried him they placed a very large boulder on the grave to protect the site. The little bear climbing the tree on the right is his grave marker.                                                         

Our next day trip was to White Sands National Monument. It's an area of sand dunes made up of a very fine white sand and gypsum. It looks like snow from a distance. They sell saucers at the visitor center so that you can go and slide down the dunes. They charge $14.00 for a new one and will buy it back for $5.00. They also sell used ones (that's the new ones they bought back for $5.00) for $10.00 and will buy them back for $3.00. It was really cool to watch the people sliding down the dunes.  They really had some speed on those saucers. 

 This is a really nice area, they have shelters and picnic areas all around the dunes and a lot of families were there making a day of sliding and having a nice picnic. Holly even had to get out and pretend she was back in Michigan sitting in a large snow drift.

     We went to Albuquerque for a couple days to celebrate our 43rd anniversary.  We spent time at Old Town and had lunch at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. We drove up to Santa Fe and went to the  Plaza (that's Santa Fe's Old Town). There's an old Catholic church there that is known for it's spiral staircase. The story goes that the sisters needed a staircase for the girls to get up to the choir loft but there was no room for a straight stair case. Plus the fact that they had very little money. It is said that one day an old man showed up at the church and said that he would build it for them.

 He said he was a carpenter and all he had with him was some basic hand tools. He built the staircase using only wooden pegs and no nails. The work is beautiful and you have to look really close to see where any joints are. It has been studied by several different experts and they say that they can't tell what kind of wood was used but they do know it is not from the area. You can see by the pictures that it is a beautiful church. The stained glass windows are also very beautiful.  The church is now privately owned and very well maintained.

 This is Jackie, Larry and Taiga. Brutus had a crush on her (Taiga). They were camped right across from us and we spent several nights around their camp fire talking. Larry retired from NASA and Jackie was a psycho. Oops sorry, she was a psychoanalyst! They have traveled all over including Alaska, Africa, and England. Very nice and very interesting people. That's one of the many nice thing about this lifestyle, you get to meet such interesting people.

Our last day trip (7 hours of driving) was to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. These are homes built in caves. It was quite a hike up to the cliff face where these were built. The people that built these were the Mogollon natives. They closed off the openings to the caves with stone walls and built living areas inside. Some of these even had porches  that stuck out from the face of the buildings. They figure that the dwellings were built around 1275 AD and were used for only about 30 years.

When we got there it was late in the day and not many visitors so Deborah, who is one of the volunteers, took us on a tour. We have been to different cliff dwellings before on our travels but these are the first ones where we were able to go inside. Deborah was a great guide and was a wealth of information. It was a treat to be able to go thru the different areas and to try and imagine how this area looked when there were people living here.

I guess you could say that these were the original condos. There were several family's living here. There were separate living areas and some shared areas. Some were two stories and some were even hand plastered on the inside. There was one place where you could see a small hand print in the plaster on the wall left by the person that was doing the work.

They have left the area as it was when the government stepped in to protect it. Prior to this, the artifacts, which would have fleshed out the history, were pretty much taken by looters.  The only thing the government has done is repair walls where it was needed to shore up weak areas.

It was amazing to see how well these were built. The stone work was just so well done and where walls came together, they were mated so well that there were no gaps at all.

As you can see the caves were way up on the cliff face. Deborah said that they farmed crops on the area above the caves and hunted game down in the valley. There is a spring fed stream in the valley and that was where they got their water.

This is the trail up to the dwellings, it crossed the stream several times and then started up. It was very muddy and rocky in some areas. The picture of the sign below that was seen in several places along the trail and was self explanatory.

It still amazes me how well these were built. The walls are very straight, the corners are square, and there are even some curved walls. If there was a rock that was to large to move they just incorporated it into the wall.

There are some pictographs that are still visible. It's nice to be able to take the time and travel around and and see all of this history and wonder about the people that built things like this. This sure beats sitting home and watching it snow or the grass grow...and to think, I get to do this with my best friend. Well that is about it for now. We've been doing our "job" and relaxing. I hope everyone has been enjoying our travels as much as we have. See you all next month. Oh that's right....we bought a new Jeep this month. More on that later!

Cute little thing isn't it.

Elephant Butte State Park January 2012

Well, here it is 2012. This month I thought I would start back to when we decided to become gypsies and do a little review about what we have been up to so far. We've been asked "what the heck made you decide to do this"?  Well, 10-12 years ago we started to talk about how great it would be to take off in the motor home and travel. Over the years we have spent our vacations traveling this wonderful country of ours. We have seen so many great things and have been able to meet many different and interesting people.  We've talked to scores of people already full timing on the road. We talked, asked questions, bought books and even read some of them (Holly reads the ones with the big words and explains them to me).

After all of this we started to talk about work camping.  We both knew that we wouldn't be happy just sitting home and doing nothing.  Work camping is where you work a set number of hours or days per week for a full hookup site. The amount of time that you work can vary from 20-40 hours per week. We knew we didn't want to work more than 20-24 hours per week, which would give us time to explore and enjoy the area we were working in.  I will say that when we volunteered at the two lighthouses, we worked 5 days per week but we enjoyed it so much that it didn't seem like work. Over the years  we started with a 13-foot trailer with no toilet and an ice box. Then we went up to a 17-foot trailer with a toilet and a refrigerator and 3 kids. In 1986 we bought our first Honey, That was a 26-foot Honey, Class C motor home. That little motor home made trips to Seattle, Washington; Bar Harbor, Maine; Miami, Florida and several areas in the western states with the 3 kids.

In 2000 we bought our first Class A motor home. It had a fridge, stove, oven, shower, toilet, a lot of storage, two slide outs and no kids. After a few years we realized that it didn't have the storage that we wanted along with a few other things we felt we would like. We decided if we were going to live the life style we planned, we were going to have to go shopping again. In 2006 we found THE ONE. It had everything that we were looking for plus a fireplace and no kids. As soon as we walked into it we knew that this would be the one we could live in. Krista called it our rolling condo when we brought it home. We traveled some more and talked some more and then the big day came. At the end of June 2011 we both retired.

Our first volunteer position was at North Pier Head Lighthouse in Ludington, MI. We have visited many different lighthouses in our travels and thought this would be a great way to start our adventures. We spent a week as volunteer lighthouse keepers. We shared our duties with three bright and wonderful women. We didn't use our motor home for this due to fact that housing was provided by the lighthouse keepers association. We had a great time, made new friends and met people from all over the world.

Our next position was as lighthouse keepers at 40-Mile-Point Lighthouse on Lake Huron by Rogers City, MI. At this lighthouse, the association provided a full hookup RV site for the keepers to park their camping units.  There were three other couples that we worked with. We had a campfire most nights and had a chance to sit around and get to know everyone and enjoy the evening on the shore of Lake Huron. We volunteered here for two weeks. The lighthouse was closed on Mondays and we had one other day off per week.

This gave us time to explore the area and visit other lighthouses  that we had not been to before. We also had a chance to go up to Mackinac City, take a tour of the retired Coast Guard Icebreaker Mackinaw. It was a lot nicer then the icebreaker that I was on in Alaska but it was also newer. It did bring back some memories, especially when we got down to the engine room. Oh, we also made it to the casino a couple times to make our contributions to the Native American College Fund!

After we left 40-Mile-Point we went to Traverse City State Park to relax and meet our friends Jack and Lynn. They both recently retired, too.  They drove their motor home up  from Florida to visit family and friends. We spent 5 days doing the wine tour thing and just sitting around and catching up.

After a short stop back home it was off we go again. This time it was to Young State Park in Boyne City, MI as campground hosts. Every state has different requirements for their hosts. In Michigan they want the hosts to be on site on weekends and to be available 30 hours per week. This includes having a weekly craft hour for the kids in the park and a coffee hour once a week for the campers. The coffee thing didn't worry us too much. The park supplies the pot, coffee, cups, cream and sugar. All we had to do was make it and sit around and talk...easy breezy. Now the craft hour was a whole different thing.

Holly did a great job of getting ideas for crafts and picking up supplies. She also went and bought a bunch of little trinkets we could give away to the kids. We fretted about the craft hour for months.  When the big craft day came, two girls showed up. We did our craft that we had planned. They had a good time and went on their way and it was done. All that to do over nothing. But we did make some great skeletons and spider web.
The grand kids enjoyed making the crafts too.

While there we had many opportunities to visit with our friends Jim and Terri. They live right next to the park so it is a short drive. Terri made us many wonderful meals and it was nice that we were able to do laundry at their place when we visited them (we are on a fixed income you know). We went out on their boat several times and when the kids came up, they had a chance to go as well.  Seems funny we have been here in New Mexico for 3 months and they have yet to visit...maybe I should get a boat! We  spent one month at Young State Park and again,  met many nice people over coffee.  The park staff were great to work with as well.
We left Young State Park and made a swing home to change out some clothes and a few things we found we didn't need and loaded up stuff we felt we did need. After a couple of days and a chance to visit with the kids we left for New Mexico. After a few days on the road, some rain storms and only one problem with a tire, we made it to Albuquerque N.M. We had a chance to be there for the last day of the balloon fiesta and were able to see some beautiful balloons. This is one of those events that I had always wished that I could see but it was never at a time when we were on vacation.....so nice to be retired.

After we left Albuquerque we headed down to Elephant Butte Lake State Park. Upon our arrival we were greeted by Don. Don and Enid were the hosts in our loop. They were at the park until the end of October and then headed back to their home in Arizona. They ran out before it started to get cold.  We are happy to welcome them into our circle of friends.  Shortly after arriving we also became friends with Richard and Betty. They were volunteers at Lions Beach, which is another campground in the park. We enjoyed an outing to Chloride, an old silver mining town, had several dinners  and numerous visits. They ran off to Quartsite, AZ the first of January.  They were ready for warmer weather than what we are experiencing here in New Mexico.  We will miss them.

Everyone here has been so nice from the other volunteers and staff to the campers that we have come to know. There are many campers here who come to get out of the big snows up north. With the annual camping pass it's a pretty inexpensive way to live.

January 6 was the New Mexico Centennial celebration. Elephant Butte Dam has been closed to traffic since 2001 but it was opened to foot traffic for a few hours on the 7th to celebrate the centennial.   We volunteered to help and they had around 1,200 people show up. They were only expecting 200-300.  It was a fun day.
We have been in New Mexico since Oct. 9, 2011 and have loved our travels so far. We feel we've made a good choice for us even though we do miss the kids and grand kids (did I really say that?).

We've met so many wonderful people and made some good friends along the way.  We are here until April 1st, then will head home for a couple of weeks.  Our next adventure will be in Sequim, Washington.  We'll be there May 1st - October 15th. Both Holly and I are excited because we both have family In Washington.  It will be great to see everyone again.

Elephant Butte State Park December Part 2

Good thing we have sun glasses, these candles are bright.

Here is part two of our December blog.  When we arrived at Elephant Butte, we helped fold paper bags for luminaries whenever we worked at the visitor center. In all, that totaled 4000 bags. On Dec. 8 the volunteers and the rangers on duty got together to put sand and candles in 4000 bags. It took a while, but we finally figured out a system to efficiently put the bags together.  In addition to the rangers we had extra help from the local school kids.  After the bags were filled and candles inserted we loaded all of the 4000 bags on trailers and on the floor of the maintenance building.  The annual luminary beach walk was on Dec. 10.  Roads were plowed along the beach and different groups and businesses from Elephant Butte and Truth or Consequences set up trailers along the beach roads. They decorate the sites, have huge bonfires and pass out all kinds of food and drinks. Most popular was a Mexican soup called posole, which is made with green chiles (of course) and hominy.  Delicious!  All donations went to Make A Wish Foundation. I'm getting ahead of myself...on Saturday morning we all met up and started to place the 4000 bags out 4 steps apart and in as straight a line as possible.We lined the roads and parking lots in the campground with the 4000 luminaries. We also lined the beach walk and the road coming from town. .  This took about three hours and then we all got together again around 4 P.M. to light all 4000 of them. When it was dark with all of the decorations and fires it was beautiful and well worth the work. On Sunday morning we had to go pick them all up.  Did I mention there were 4000 of them?                                                  

Now which one needs that candle?

 All of the night shots were taken by a couple that were camping here.  They gave us permission to use these great shots in our blog.

It was a beautiful nite, the sky was clear and we had the most beautiful full moon.  We had a great turnout. Most of the male volunteers helped park cars and direct traffic. By the time I had a chance to walk around  and enjoy the festivities a lot of the food was already gone but I did manage to get some green chile stew, some kind of Frito burrito, as well as some green chile soup. I didn't go away hungry. Love those green chiles!

These shots were taken at the entrance to the park and at the park office. Did I mention there were 4000 luminaries?

Really this is New Mexico not Michigan.

I know this looks like Michigan but it really is New Mexico. The Friday before Christmas we had a winter storm that covered the whole state. We had heavy snow (6 inches here), high winds and cold temps. The main highways, I-40 east and west, I-25 north and south were closed. We had snow drifts across the roads here in the park. I even managed to get hung up on one but was able to get out by myself thanks to my training from back home. I even had to break down and shovel the snow in front of the door because I was tired of having wet floors.

Well that just about covers December. As you can tell we stayed busy. Holly made "puppy chow" and we gave it to the other volunteers and the rangers and staff for Christmas and it was enjoyed by all. To the right is a picture of our tree, it was a little different having Christmas with just the two of us but it didn't take nearly as long to open the gifts. The best part is that when it is time to take down the tree all I have to do is fold the branches up and slide it back in the box and put it back under the bed.  In 2012 New Mexico will celebrate their centennial and will have the road over Elephant Butte Dam open to foot traffic. We have volunteered to help with that on Jan. 7.  I should be a big help because I am so knowledgeable about dams and am such a great public speaker. We've been here three months now with three more months to go. We will head home for a few weeks before we take off again. Hope to see some of you when we are home. That's it for this month. We wish everyone a Happy New Year and the very best to all.