Friday, May 2, 2008

Friday, May 2

I am sitting in the Silver Dog House in the driveway of a tire shop, typing the first half of this entry on the Pink Flamingo. White One the magnificent is disconnected from the trailer and in the bay getting his poor flat tire fixed. Duncan is with me sleeping, oblivious to the problems of travel. This repair should not take too long.

This morning it was COLD again, there was ice on the bottom of Duncan's water bowl and we dressed fast for the drive out of the campground with hopes for no more slow leaks in tires and to meet no one coming into the campground. The thermometer on White One says it is 23* We were not as early as we had hoped – 6:54 AM.


We did meet one vehicle not far from the campground but had no trouble getting around. The biggest problem turned out to be visibility with the sun already over the horizon and directly in our face on the dusty, sap specked, windshield. Washing it did not help much. But we arrived at US 180 with no unpleasant events in about 35 minutes.

We stopped for breakfast at a roadside litter barrel. In Michigan we have roadside tables here there are roadside barrels more often and no tables. How the landscape has changed.

No more Ponderosa Pine. Now, where there are trees, they are the evenly spaced Cedars and Pinion Pines, competing for water. Where it is treeless there are bushes, with small chartreuse leaves beginning to come out and Yucca dotted thickly over the range land. Here the Yucca grows to at least six feet tall and sometimes branches near the top. Old bloom stalks, often several year's accumulation, stick up from the tops. I wonder if they are indicators of overgrazed range much like Hawthorns are indicators of overgrazing at home. The Prickly Pear cactus here have pads as large as a salad or even luncheon plate with thorns that look at least four inches long, unlike our native Prickly Pear at home with pads the size of teacups or smaller.



spring is beginning to show its face in the wildflowers that are blooming along the roadside.

We found this place in Silver City, NM to have the tire fixed. We were able to just pull into their parking lot, unhook the Silver Dog House and pull White One into the bay. And they did not charge us anything to fix the tire.

There was a Super Wal-Mart across the street where we tanked up on pop and chicken for lunch. Then called the local KOA where we dumped our tanks for $10 and they let us tank up on fresh water. They even gave us very good advice on what road to take to the Gila Cliff Dwelling and the campground we were looking for.

We passed a HUGE open pit copper mine. It is at least two miles long and maybe a full mile across. They have been actively mining there since the 1800's

The Campground turned out to be just fine, with clean pit toilets, good water, and nice hosts.

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