Where is Bernardo?

May 5

We stayed at a park last week in the mythical township of Bernardo, just off I-25 north of Socorro.  Stayed there a couple of times last year.  Some optimistic soul expected a town to develop here, complete with a platted subdivision...and nothing happened.  There is no town and nothing in the subdivision.  Oddly enough, our friends Steve and Nancy re-located to this park a month or so ago and we went to see them.

The RPOD had to have major repairs (has been in the shop for two months) so we wanted to do a test run to verify that everything worked properly.  And we got to spend some time with our friends.  The drive home yesterday was exhausting...30-35 mph winds.  Mike pulled the RPOD with his truck, I pulled the trailer with his side-by-side.  Got home about 3:00.  Of course today I have a mountain of laundry and a trip to Walmart to get groceries ahead of me.

Our new friends, Jill and Paul Rossell, joined us for three days and left Thursday for Durango.  Hope we have an opportunity to do more fun things with them in the future.

Jill and Paul

l to r:  Steve, Jill, Paul, Mike.

Muppet seeks shade.

Nancy and her mare, Molly.

This cute little buckskin was abandoned in the desert.  Fortunately, someone found him and brought him to Kiva, the closest horse facility.  He is friendly and probably quite young,  Most likely, he won't get very big.    Blessings on the person who found him.  He couldn't have survived very long in the desert without water.

Saw some interesting cacti and the plants here in the park are starting to bloom.

All the flowers below are on my lot or next door.

When will the wind stop and spring start?

29 April

Winds are hitting in the low 30 mph today.  The whole Hitchhiker rocks and I have to latch the screen doors on the decks twice to keep them from banging.  Coupled with colder than normal temps, the weather is, in a word, miserable.  A hard winter and so far, no spring.  

We are headed north to Bernardo to visit our friends Steve and Nancy for a few days.  It's a good shakedown run for the RPOD and we need it.  There were many repairs after last year's travels and we need to be sure they are all solid before we take off for three months.  Our new friends Paul and Jill are going to stop in Bernardo for a few days with us before going on into Colorado.

Just to keep things interesting, I have had two flat tires on the Jeep in less than a month.  After the second one, I took the Jeep to a local tire shop and got all new ones.  I can't really complain, as the old tires are probably original equipment and had 73,000 miles on them.

Several days ago, we took Jill and Paul out to some of the local sites, including the Homestead Mine, Homestead, Pony Hills, and a couple of other stops.  When Jill and Paul were in the mouth of the cave, they stirred up a flock (?) of bats, who blasted out past them.

Jill and Paul at Homestead Mine.

Jill and Paul and their new friends, the bats.

The spring-blooming stuff is going full blast now.  One of the more interesting is Ocotillo, commonly known around here as Spanish Spear.  The plant blooms before it leafs out, as you can see in the photos.  

Decent Weather At Last

April 13

We have beautiful weather today and took a long ride to the foot of The Frog.  I think I have mentioned in an earlier post that there is a section of the mountains to the north that is known as The Frog.  If the shadows are right and you have had enough wine, you can see the head of a frog.  Sometimes it takes quite a bit of wine, actually.

This is a trail Mike will not run and only took me today as I had not been there.  After driving it, I won't do it again, either.  It is so rocky and steep and difficult, it's not really much fun.  I mistakenly continued across a wash and found out the trail ended.  Mike was right behind me and there wasn't much room to turn both rigs around.  Must have taken us 30 minutes of back and forth to get headed back the other way.  

Here are a few photos of this trail.  You will see why it's difficult.

16 April

Two days ago, we did an all-day ride with a couple from the Carolinas.  They are full-time RV'ers and will be here in Hidden Valley Ranch for another couple of weeks.  Lots of fun to talk with them about where they have been and where they might go next.  They spend most of the summer in the high country in Colorado to escape the heat.  Good riding where they are, I understand.  

Paul and Jill descend the bottom of Suicide.

Paul, Mike and Jill at Indian Bathtub.

April 23

Went up to Silver City today (50 miles away) for a horse rescue fund raiser.  Wyatt's mother-in-law Pat volunteers there.  Two other women from the park who have/had horses rode along and a good time was had by all.   

A horse came in yesterday who is in terrible shape.  She was tethered in a yard, thin, broken down, with a big sore on her withers.  The livestock inspector who seized her says she is 17 and I can believe that.  Her legs show evidence of her having been worked very hard for a long time.  The good news is she is now safe and will be fed and cared for the rest of her life.

Several months ago they got a band of wild mustangs and they are working to gentle them and get them the care they need.  A big job and at times a dangerous one.  These horses are not used to humans at all.  The people who own the ranch fund most of the rescues out of their own pocket.  The event today was to try to compete for an ASPCA grant.  See below.

Help A Horse Day @ End of the Road Ranch Spread the word and save this date & Time APRIL 23, 2016  10-2 End of the Road Ranch is Celebrating the ASPCA's Help A Horse Day    Community support is needed for chance to win up to a $25,000 ASPCA grant to help save more horses!   We will be taking part in the national celebration of ASPCA®'s Help A Horse Day on April 23 and competing for a chance to win up to $25,000 in grant prizes to assist with our efforts to protect horses.  Stopping in and signing our roster and/or making a donation this month helps us qualify for a grant from the ASPCA. Please stop by and/or donate to show your support of the horses.   To celebrate the day, End of the Road Ranch will hold an open house in honor of the ASPCA's 150th Anniversary celebration this year, the contest has been expanded to include a total of $100,000 in grant prizes, including a grand prize of $25,000.  This nationwide competition is for equine rescues and sanctuaries to raise awareness about the lifesaving work we do year-round to care for at-risk horses in our community who have often been abused or neglected.        End of the Road Ranch 4092 Mountain View Rd. Silver City, New Mexico 88061 Turn onto Mountain View from 180 W (Between the Comfort Inn and the Econo-Lodge) Drive approx. 3mi. to End of the Rd. Food-Games-Raffle Bring a friend, spread the word and come celebrate with EOTRR. Can't make that date, you can still help. Donate in honor of Help A Horse Day

Is It Spring Yet?

Today is Easter Sunday.  We are still having high winds (30-45 MPH) and days are mostly chilly.  Today has been warm but weather will deteriorate over the next day or two.

Michelle and Wyatt were here weekend before last. They came down to attend Columbus NM's 100th anniversary of the Pancho Villa raid.  (Hey, it's New Mexico...you have to stretch to find festive occasions.)  

No photos because my new-in-November Fuji camera had to return to Fuji.  They have, however, sent me a new one but it took several weeks.  And...I have to set it up again.  There must be 300 different settings or options.  

The next day they stopped to see us and to bring me the firearm I had asked Wyatt to find for me.  I have felt positively under-dressed during the warm-weather months, as everyone else is packing a sidearm loaded with snake shot.  I need a lot of practice or I better plan to throw the pistol at the snake and run like hell.

Later...

It's April 5 today.  FINALLY, WE HAVE WARM WEATHER.  Going to have 23 mph winds today so still not that great.

We went to an area (new to me) today where there are old mines.  It's a fair trip to get there and the road ends at the mines so you just turn around and go back.  There is one large open pit type mine and since we don't know what the area is called, we named it "3 Dog Mine" in honor of Indie, Muppet and Lola who were with us.  You can get an idea of the size as Mike is at the top in the first photo.  It's quite deep.  Don't have any idea what they were mining but it's been abandoned for a long, long time.

It reminded me of David Shrum who died as a result of a mine collapse in the California gold fields in 1861.  Dangerous business.  And there are idiots out here who like to go into these old mines.   

Life out here on the open range can be tough on the old, the young, the stupid or the sick/injured.  This unfortunate beastie didn't make it through the winter.  

Are We Having Fun Yet?

5 March

Well, nothing is perfect…

In addition to the problems we had with the furnace not working (it’s cold at night in the desert) we found that the water pump for the onboard water wasn’t working.  Inconvenient but not critical when you are connected to the park's water. I will return to this topic later.

So we started out home on I-8.  Mike looked at the rear view mirror and saw white smoke coming from the driver’s side RPOD wheel.  Uh oh… And there are only a few exits on I-8 between Phoenix and Casa Grande.  Fortunately Mike was yards from one of them and got the rig off safely.  I was ahead; the walkie talkies weren’t working.  Mike used the phone, told me the RPOD was ON FIRE, turn around NOW.  I had to go 10 miles or more to exit and turn around, spent 30 minutes (mostly on hold with Good Sam’s to place the service call), and turned back west to join a very aggravated Mike.

Mercifully, not on the shoulder of I-8.

And there we sat for five hours, increasingly angry at the poor response time from the repair service in Phoenix.  Fortunately, I was sufficiently foresighted to have cold beer and lunch on ice.  So we waited…and waited…and waited.  The repair guy finally showed up and did a great job.  He told us he couldn’t do a permanent repair but only a temporary one to get us home (we were about 200 miles away). 

Help at long, long last.

We started up again at 5:45 pm.  Mike wanted a Walmart away from the Interstate and on the east side of Tucson .  (Had to cancel our reservation in Willcox because it was too far).  Found a Walmart online and plugged the address into the Garmin and off we went.  And it got very, very dark and I’m night blind.  We finally got to where Garmin told us to get off I-10, far beyond Tucson and in the middle of nowhere with no lights visible.  Garmin kept saying “X miles to destination, .X miles to destination, etc.”  And still no lights.  I figured we would come to the address and there would be a big sign “Coming in 2017, Walmart!” 

I may never be as glad again to see a lighted-up Walmart.  We were dead tired.  Of course, we had no on-board water which made it majorly inconvenient.  I made the mistake of putting down the electric jack and forgot about it.  When Mike started up the next morning, the jack bent and jammed.  (Were we having fun yet?)  So we limped back to Deming with the jack 1.5” above the pavement. 

Well, the RV life is not all beer and skittles, as they say.  We got home safely which is the important part.  Hauled the RPOD into Jimmy’s RV Repair in Deming and went through a laundry list of things needing fixing.  Jimmy has until June to get them all done as we aren’t going anywhere until then.

For the past two days, I have spent all my time cleaning, doing laundry, and re-organizing .  With better weather, cold beer, and gas in the Honda I will be able to return to what I like…desert riding.

Arizona Adventures - Part 3

The Grand Canyon of Bouse (insert trumpet fanfare here)

The young man at the tire store in Bouse is an off-roader.  Mike asked him what, if anything, was east of the highway, as we had spent all our time riding trails west.  He said we could go to the Grand Canyon of Bouse, which, he said, is just a big hole in the ground (well, really, isn't that a description of the Grand Canyon?). He kindly drew us a map with only a couple of significant omissions.  After wandering around a bit, we stumbled on it.  

Grand Canyon of Bouse

Lots of old mining activity around it.  And it is just a big hole in the ground.

One day we were parked in a wash in the shade, having lunch.  A guy on a four-wheeler passed us going the other way and he stopped to talk.  In the front basket he had two Yorkies, Lola's mortal enemies. She had a fit jumping up and down so I put her back in the Rhino but I didn't fasten her clip to the frame.  

The guy said goodbye and headed down the trail.  We decided to pack up and go.  And we were a dog short.  Looking in the direction of the ATV, we saw Lola, legs pumping like pistons and tail flying, disappearing over the hill in hot pursuit.  We turned the Rhino around and started up the trail to recover her.  In 50 yards or so, here she came over the crest of the hill, hot, thirsty, and unsuccessful.

On our last day in Bouse, we went back to the box canyon, hoping to see big horn sheep.  There were people at the end of the canyon who said "Oh, yes, there were three of them here just a few minutes ago."  Of course, they were long gone.  And so were the 10 mule deer they saw.  AARRRGGHHH.

The lady is the group warned us she had thrown away a turkey sandwich because it had gone bad.  Of course, Muppet and Lola found it, with predictable results. 

What's a guzzler?

This funnels rain into a basin underneath.

Watering hole fed by the catch basin.

Water is scarce in these parts.  AZ Game & Fish constructs these rainwater catch basins for the wildlife.  

There is a small outdoor park on the highway which goes through Bouse, a memorial to the WWII tank crews who trained here and fought in Europe.  

Eight Ball, the morale officer at Camp Bouse.
Slain by a jealous rival, according to the plaque.

We have had a great time and are headed home.  Will spend tonight in Tacna AZ and tomorrow night at a park in Willcox AZ.  Home to Deming Saturday.