'Twas the Day Before Christmas...

Temps in the mid to high sixties today, light wind, bright sunshine.  Definitely shirtsleeve weather.  

The park does a whole bunch of things for the holidays.  I volunteered one day to help decorate the rec hall.  Some decorations are especially eye-catching:

This is the Old West...you make decorations out of what you have.

There is a contest tonight with a parade through the park to choose the best-decorated golf cart or off road vehicle.  Here is one of the entrants:

And some decorations are more successful than others.

Faithful readers of the blog may remember that there is a lemon tree on the planting area next to the trailer and in front of it, a grapefruit tree.  While the lemon tree obviously isn't doing well (dead limbs, few lemons), the grapefruit tree is covered with fruit.  I brought my juicer from NM this year and I've had the BEST grapefruit juice on the planet for the past week or so.

The folks next to us on the north left the park at the end of last season and we had new neighbors this year for a month, Nancy and Paul.  (They have gone to San Diego for the holidays but will be back in a few weeks.)  One day the four of us wandered around in the mountains and wound up at Jail House Rock.  Already there was another group, several rigs.  Turns out they were from Parsons, Kansas, and they spend several months here every winter.  

Nancy with one the the ladies from Parsons.

I have been fighting with the seat belt/shoulder strap on the Polaris since I got it.  Finally I decided to order a four-point harness and take the factory-installed equipment out entirely.  This is an annoying job because you have to take the center console cover off as well as taking out both seats.  We only made one tiny little miscalculation:  when we removed the factory seatbelt, we engaged the governor that automatically limits the speed to 15 mph.  Fixed that the next day with a butt connector and electrical tape.  But we had to take the cover off the console AGAIN.

Paul kindly came over to assist in the job both days.  So now if I roll the Polaris, I will probably stay in it.  Probably a better plan not to roll it.

So to you all, loyal readers, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Whew, what a summer!

I'm just about worn out.  As you know from earlier posts, we took the Lance trailer to Burro Mountain Homestead, southwest of Silver City, for what we thought would be 4-6 weeks.  We liked it so much we signed a lease agreement and traded the Lance trailer  (22 feet) for a much larger one which we parked on the leased lot.  Within six or eight weeks, a much better lot, leased for decades, became available so we traded the Pinon Crest site for the Sunrise Ridge site, which meant moving everything.  (For you loyal readers, you may remember that Sunrise Ridge was where the cougar was spotted earlier in the summer.)

The new site came with an existing deck and two good-sized storage sheds.  It continues to baffle me how we have so much stuff when the object of living like this is NOT to have so much stuff.  The Hitchhiker trailer in Deming, with its great screened porch and storage shed, is for sale.  

No maintenance to speak of has been done on this site for a very long time.  It came with a 22 year old trailer which we just had hauled away, as the trailer we bought at the start of the summer is 20 years newer.  We did our best to get some of the maintenance done (the deck hasn't been stained for probably 20 years) but we ran out of time.  Lots of projects for next year. 

Many of the permanent sites have either a wooden roof/deck built or they have a car port covering everything.  Our new neighbor down the lane, Sam Bowman, has been incredibly helpful in solving a lot of issues and he told us unless we owned a lumber yard, a wooden structurer was cost prohibitive as well as taking weeks to get built.  He recommended a car port company out of Gallup, NM.  (Usually the first thing that goes bad on trailers is the roof; lots of caulking, a rubber sheet "shingle," and lots of opportunities for disaster.  The car port protects the roof and removes the dangers of leaks.  An additional benefit is the roof is shaded during the hot summer months and the trailer stays much cooler.)

Below are a couple of photos of that crew putting up the car port.  

Giant erector set.

When I ordered the car port, the company said to expect delivery in 6 to 8 weeks.  Although we were going to be in AZ at that time, Sam agreed to project manage it.  A week or so later, Sam got a call from the company that they could deliver it in 10 days (!).  So on the last day we were in the park, the crew showed up and got it finished in one day.  The wind kept rising as the day went on.  I finally quit watching the workmen because they were ON TOP of the rafters and passing big sheets of roofing steel which were like giant sails in the wind. A couple of times the sheet got away from them.  Fortunately no one was hurt but it was a dangerous day to be building one of these.  

We are now at the place in Hope, AZ, which consists of the park, a small chapel, and a closed gas station across the road.  The nearest "town," Salome, is six miles away.  I go to Parker (47 miles) or Wickenburg (60 miles) to shop.  It does encourage me to do a good grocery list because there is no running out to pick up something I forgot.

We have the side-by-sides with us but we haven't yet had time to go adventuring out onto the trails.  I hope we can get ourselves organized soon, as we haven't had much time to ride in a couple of months.  

Rains almost over, I hope.

This is a short post, as we haven't been doing much other than getting settled in the new park.

The monsoon rains started the second week in July and have been with us consistently.  It poured from Saturday of Labor Day weekend to Sunday noon.  Definitely took a lot of the fun out of activities here in the park.  Most of the temporary people packed up and left the park either Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.

One of the Labor Day weekend events was a silent auction.  Park residents cleaned out storage sheds and closets and brought all their unused stuff down to one of the park buildings.  You have never seen so much junk!  However, the park made $600 for the general fund and Habitat for Humanity sent a truck to pick up all the remaining items that didn't find a new owner.  

We had seen does and fawns at the salt block but no bucks until recently.  The bucks are growing out new antlers and the antlers are covered in "velvet," the covering which supplies blood to the growing antlers.  Soon the velvet will start dying and the bucks will rub it off on trees.  Now we are seeing the bucks at the salt block.  Do they need extra salt/minerals for their growing antlers?  And oddly enough, they ignore apples; they are only interested in nibbling the salt.

I don't count my occasional apple or carrot as feeding them.  I am careful to place the goodies when there are no deer in sight.  They connect the treats with the salt block, not a human.  

Earlier in the summer a stupid camper near the park was attacked by a bear.  This week the notice below was posted on the bulletin board in front of the office:

There is speculation that the cougar is a female with cubs and she has built a den in the woodpile.

The park is surrounded by thousands of acres of wilderness with a few scattered cattle ranches.  It is perfect habitat for the big predators, bears and cougars.  I have been told that bears occasionally show up in the park as well.  Before the dumpsters had lids, one slid down into one and couldn't get out.  A very angry bear.  Game officers had to come out to extract it.

We will be here at Burro Mountain for another six weeks or so and then we'll tow the side-by-sides to Arizona for the winter.  Riding is really good there and we will be ready to get lost again.

Rain, rain, go away...

Odd as it may sound, we are experiencing the infamous Southwest Monsoon season.  We have had torrential rains, lightning, thunder, almost every day for the past 10 days and this will continue intermittently for the next month.  Nearly all the rainfall in this area comes in a very short window in mid-summer to early fall.  People in the park have said that the rains will continue until about the middle of September.  When it's not raining, the weather is gorgeous; blue skies, temps in the mid-70's to mid-80's.

I attended the Burro Mountain Homestead Association meeting last Saturday morning.  The park functions more like a coop than a regular RV park.  Only residents with a year's lease are invited to attend.  

There was the usual reading of the minutes, treasurer's report, coffee fund report, etc.  The park sponsors a whole bunch of activities, including a champagne brunch next month.  I volunteered to help clean up after the brunch.  (I did go to the brunch and bused tables.  It's about the only work I've done in five years.)

At the end of the meeting, there was a spot for announcements.  A gentleman behind me stood up.  He knows someone (Forest Service guy, maybe) who has ten wildlife cameras in the area around the park.  The camera has recorded SEVEN individual Cougars.  The message was "BE AWARE."  There are a number of ranches in the area near the park and lots of cattle.  If the cougars get tired of deer, they munch on cattle which explains why there is a hunting season on them (the cougars, not the cattle).

Update:  It is still raining almost every afternoon. Lots of lightning, thunder, and poor Muppet is terrified.  Indy just sleeps through it and Lola is uneasy but not hysterical.  Mike's old dog, Bela, would panic and try to hide in any little cubbyhole she could find.  Once she got under the bed in the RPOD and got stuck.  It took both of us to work her out.

Strange accidents sometimes happen out on the trails.  Mike's left front wheel locked and would not turn.  Weirdly enough, somehow a stick exactly the size of the opening in the wheel got rammed all the way through and jammed the wheel.  

You can see that the stick was all the way through the wheel, barely visible from the outside.  When Mike took the wheel off, we could see why the wheel wouldn't turn.  Note the bent piece.  Took us half an hour or so to bend back the damaged piece, remove the stick, and get the wheel back on.  Took tools in both of our tool boxes to get all the work done safely.

I have mentioned that the deer wander freely through the park.  We have a doe who comes to visit and has developed a taste for bird feed.  No wonder this feeder is empty every morning.

Several weeks ago, I put a salt block down the hill behind our site near a game path.  Occasionally I put an apple on the salt block.  This morning, I looked out to see a doe munching the apple with a fawn at her heels.  The apple fell to the ground and the fawn tried to get a bite.  Mama gently nosed him/her away and ate the last of the apple herself.  The fawn had to have milk for breakfast.  

And now for something completely different...

We returned from Arizona to Hidden Valley Ranch at the end of March.  The wind was blowing and blowing and blowing.  Miserable weather.  

Was it time to do something else?  In the past two years, we've only been at Hidden Valley for about four or five months.  The remainder of the years we were on the road or in the park in Arizona (last winter).  With increasing age, it gets less attractive for us to wander around the country, taking the risk that if one of us has a health problem, we can find adequate care.  In the past couple of summers, we've seen most of the major national parks in the west and last summer we wandered around in Utah, riding off-road trails.

Deming gets unbearable (in my opinion) temps in the summer, lasting until mid-September or later.  This year it hit 107 degrees the first week in June.  Too hot to stay there.  About 70 miles away is Burro Mountain in the Gila National Forest.  There is a very old park, originally a homestead settled in the early 1900's.  Altitude is 7,000 feet so it's substantially cooler.

Burro Mountain Homestead

Just down from the lodge is a metal sculpture of a buzzard.

There is NO hunting inside the park.  The outcome is that mule deer have free run of the park and have absolutely no fear at all of humans.  Even though every incoming camper gets a copy of the rules stating DO NOT FEED THE WILDLIFE, dummies insist on doing it anyway.  

We had only been in the park for a few days when we made a run into Silver City, about 20 miles away.  On the way back, we were about two miles from the entrance to the park (up a 7 mile gravel road to Burro Mountain) when I looked at the gauges and saw that my right rear tire was losing air at a frightening rate.  

We limped into the park and made it to our site and saw the tire had failed.  Since we hadn't tried to change a tire on this truck, we had a horrible time trying to figure out how to drop the spare tire.  Some neighbors saw us struggling and came over to help, as they have the same truck.

Years ago, Larry Downey told me that RVers are the nicest people in the world.  If they see you might need help, they stroll over and volunteer.  In this photo, Kevin is lying on the ground to Mike's left, Jane at Mike's right is getting ready to crawl under the truck.

After all this excitement, we decided to make a run to another local peak.  More interesting experiences.  Jack's Peak is miles down a county road before you get to the road up the peak.  So it is a boring run.  We made the turn at Gold Gulch Road, proceeded a mile or two and saw CRIME SCENE tape.  

Across the road was another sign on a post reading WARNING:  BAD BEAR IN AREA.  Okay, what happened here?  

We went on to Jack's Peak, took a few photos, and went back the way we came.  I went into the office and saw they had posted a sign warning of a bear attack on a camper (a stupid camper, I might add).  The Continental Divide Trail runs through this part of New Mexico.  A very inexperienced camper had food in his tent.  The bear wanted it.  The bear got the food and the camper got a trip to the hospital.  Last I heard, rangers were looking for the bear to relocate it to a more remote area.  

Speaking of wildlife, it abounds here.  One of the park managers told us that there is an adult female cougar in the area and two juveniles and to be careful about the dogs.  We have seen javelinas, wild turkeys, and lots of mule deer.  It's no surprise that there are cougars; when you have such a large population of prey animals (the deer), you will have large predators.  No wolves left but there were once wolves here as well.   

Both of us liked the park so we signed a lease for a year.  The 22 foot Lance is just too small to live in for an extended time.  On a whim, I checked an RV dealership in Hatch, NM, 150 miles away and the nearest dealer.  I had heard they did not take the longer trailers as they were too hard to resell so I didn't expect to find much.  Voila!  They had a 2017 38 foot trailer which served our purposes.  I will post photos in the next blog.  

We drove down to Hatch, looking forward to eating green chili cheeseburgers at a famous restaurant down the road when we finished at the RV dealership.  Imagine our disappointment to find we had hit a day when the restaurant was closed...  But we did close a deal on the trailer so the trip wasn't wasted.  The dealership took the Lance on trade and delivered and set up the new trailer.  All I had to do was get out of the way.

I will get this out and start another post.  With any luck, I will get it finished in less than a couple of months!

Life at Burro Mountain Homestead

In the last post, I gave a quick overview of Burro Mountain Homestead.  Here's a bit more detail.

We have a site which is on a ridge above the main campground.  No one behind us, as you can see from the photo.  Lots of trees, junipers, pines, oaks, and others I can't identify.  A dramatic contrast to the view at Hidden Valley of desert and Cooke's Range in the distance.

  

There is a game trail which passes behind our place, just downhill from us.  The deer use it as a pathway from one end of the ridge to the other.  

We have one doe who likes to come onto the site to visit us.  She is so tame she would eat from our hands if we gave her the opportunity.  When we have had the dogs out and she has wandered in, she is not intimidated in the least by the barking.  She just sneers at them.  

I asked one of the park managers what happens to these deer when hunting season opens.  They have no fear of humans at all.  He said as soon as the first rifle shot of the hunting season is heard, every deer in the county comes into the park and stays until hunting season is over.  

Spring in the Desert

Spring here in the desert has some unusual aspects:

This sign was posted on the laundry room door when we returned to Deming.  Jeannie, who works at the front desk, said someone hunted her up one day to tell her there was a rattlesnake in the library.  Jeannie hustled over and sure enough, the snake was stretched out along the bottom row of magazines.  Time for a snake pole, a five gallon bucket with lid, and good nerves. As I write this, the sign is still up, although it's five weeks later.  I am beginning to think the park management will keep it up.  The rule is kill snakes if you must inside the park but out in the desert, leave them alone.

Almost as disturbing are the spring winds.  It has been blowing since we got back.  One day we had 65 mph gusts.  With how dry it's been, the dust clouds are almost impenetrable.  

It is still fairly cool (at least the winds are cool) which is surprising.  We are slowly creeping up into the 80's but it is not consistent.  By the end of the month, we usually are hitting the 100's.  

One bonus for spring is the beautiful flowers.  Most of the year the plants are scrubby, dull, and appear lifeless.  But for a few weeks in the spring and a few weeks in the fall, the desert is in technicolor.

I know I have posted photos in the past but indulge me...

 This variety of desert willow grows wild out here along the banks of the washes.  

This is another variety of desert willow which the garden centers sell.  Lots of them in the park as well.  They remind me of the little orchids used as decoration in Hawaiian drinks.

 This plant is native as you see them all over out in the desert.  The locals call it Spanish Spear. The blooms appear on long stalks before the plant leafs out.  Supposedly the red/orange tips are blood.

Close up of Spanish Spear.  Real name is ocotillo.  Spanish Spear

I have no idea what this beautiful shrub is but it grows only the the park.  Obviously, it is not native to NM.  It bears a vague resemblance to mimosa.





There hasn't been much of anything newsworthy since we returned to the park.  In another few weeks, it will start to be unbearably hot.  The Burro Mountains are just northwest of us at 2,000 feet higher altitude.  We will be there for six weeks and then go north to Reserve, adjacent to the Gila National Forest, for another six weeks.  It will still be too hot to return to Deming so we need somewhere for another two or three weeks.  

Are we having fun yet?

The past two months, since we took delivery of the park trailer, we have spent more time working on it than we have riding trails.  Everything is taking more time (and money) than we had planned.  

The trailer is roughly broadside to the afternoon sun so erecting the screen room became a necessity as the weather continued to warm.  We will need to take the screens off before we leave for the summer as the monsoon winds in August can top 50 mph.  Leaving the screens in place guarantees they will be in shreds when we come back in October.

It's amazing what you look at and don't see.  I have had this 5 gallon bucket for quite some time.  Recently as I sat outside staring aimlessly around, I looked at the bucket.  Have IQ's dropped sharply in recent years?

We didn't ride much at all in February, partly because there was so much to do with the trailer and partly because the weather turned ugly.  On one of the last rides, we passed through Saguaro Squeeze.

We also did a reconnaissance run on Tank Pass but decided not to run it that day as we were running out of time.  Plans are to run Tank Pass before we leave in a couple of weeks.  Local lore says the pass was built by Patton's tank trainees to get from their base at Bouse to the local entertainment district in Salome.  

Upper Tank Pass

Ugly weather, in this context, means chilly (highs in the 50's) and windy, with some rain and overcast.  As I write this today, we have overcast, sprinkles, and cooler weather.  Yesterday when we were out in the desert it was beautiful.

We have tried twice to find the trail which leads up to the top of the ridge in the Little Harquahalas.  Failed miserably.  (Those of you who read the blog regularly will recognize this is a problem we have had several times.)  Since we could not find it from the highway side, we decided to go to the other end of the ridge (through the whoop-ti-dos mentioned in an earlier post), up the mountain and then turn back west.  We had looked at this trail earlier and it appeared to be more dangerous than I feel I can do.  We talked with our neighbor who said that it is not dangerous but it looks that way from where we were.

We started up the trail and saw a group of four rigs heading down.  Since we were at a point where we could move off the trail (trails are one lane only), we got out of the way and let them pass us.  Now that I saw rigs running the trail, I felt I could do it.  Our neighbor is right:  it looks a lot steeper than it is.  We crested the ridge and found the area with the flag.  There was a group there having lunch so we didn't stay.  Before we left them, they told us to look for another left turn which will take us to a very scenic spot called Picnic Hill.  More on this later.

As we made our way west, we encountered cross trails in every direction.  It was just a guess which one to take to find our way back to the highway as much of the time the highway was not visible.  

We went up, down, left, right, doubled back when we hit dead ends.  By sheer luck we hit the right trail to Picnic Hill.  Really spectacular views.  As at the flag stop, someone had placed a bucket of golf balls and an old club at the edge of a cliff.  Apparently launching golf balls into thin air is a popular pastime.

Mike played golf two or three times a week for years until his back gave out.  The temptation was just too much:  he stepped up to the tee, placed a ball, took a mighty swing...and missed completely.  On his next try, he launched the ball into space.  

If you look carefully, you will see palm trees to the right of the center of the photos.  That's Ramblin Roads RV Resort.  

We continue to do battle with the dreaded Cholla.  Indy rides in the passenger seat of Mike's rig.  I noticed that Mike must have bumped a cholla on the trail as there was a chunk of it stuck in a tire.  The next time we stopped, we saw that the tire had flung the cholla up and into the passenger seat.  Must have just missed Indy's head.

Suicide Hill

There is a particularly dangerous trail which we have passed several times.  Our neighbor says there have been some serious crashes on this.  He told us to look at the trail which goes up to the left of Suicide.  We took a look and decided it was no improvement.  Two trails we will not be taking.  

The park shuts down for the summer at the end of March.  We have plans to leave here March 24, getting into Deming March 25.  After a couple of months there, we'll head to higher elevations with the rigs to get out of Hidden Valley's unbearable heat.

The Road to Dripping Springs At Last!!!

Since the holidays, our friends Ron and Sally arrived and we ran Preacher's Pass again from their park.  Another day we went out of this park and ran some fun, rough trails in the Harquahala Mountains.  

Last year with Ron and Sally we tried twice to find the elusive Dripping Springs.  Our first effort ended in a day of frustration and harsh words, as we wandered around in the washes and never did find the right trail.  On our second effort, a day or two later, we finally got to the top of the trail down to the springs but it was too late in the day to run it.  We would have found ourselves coming back in the heavy shade in the late afternoon.  We did the sensible thing, turned around, and said "Next year."
Fast forward a year:  With confidence and high hopes, we started out again to find the springs.  Success!  

The way to the trailhead requires we pass under I-10.  Last year I lost two flags to the culvert so this year we stopped to remove flags.  On the way back, Mike took one of the openings which had sand/gravel washed into the bottom and wound up scraping the roof of his Wolverine.  It was only less than an inch of debris but enough to make the Wolverine too tall for the culvert.

The tenacity of desert plants continues to surprise me.  If you look carefully, you will see a reddish barrel cactus on the cliff face.

Ron and Sally:  how do we get back from here?

There is a very narrow canyon which leads away from Dripping Springs, away from our direction of travel coming in.

Note the photographer's fingers in the mirror.

Ummmm...one little problem.  Once we cleared the canyon and turned east, for a while we had no bleeping idea where we were, GPS units not withstanding.  It was growing later in the afternoon than any of us liked.  Fortunately, Ron got us to the right road for a REALLY SPECTACULAR RIDE back across the mountains to return to the park.

Do  you see the tiny little thread of a trail in the distance?  We came all the way up:  steep, rocky, tilted in spots.  An altogether great ride.

Ron and Sally have a 38 foot toy hauler pulled by their big truck.  They have an interesting way to transport their Polaris when they are unhitched from the toy hauler.  See below.

They are staying at a park down the road so to ride together, either they must haul their rig to us or we trailer our rigs down to their park.

On another topic, we decided to find a larger trailer we can leave in this park permanently.  The weather here in the winter is substantially nicer than in Deming.  We have had one day of rain and most days don't require a jacket.  Today we are waiting for the owners of the trailer to deliver it to us.  Then our work starts, moving items from the Lance to the Cottage.  (It is 40 feet vs the 22 feet in the Lance.)  Our site had to be re-graded to accommodate the longer trailer so we moved the Lance down to an empty site for a few days.