Lakewood, New Mexico

We arrived at the SKP Ranch Co-op this past Monday afternoon. The Ranch is located about 20 miles north of Carlsbad in Lakewood, New Mexico. The area is part of the Chihuahuan Desert, days are dry and warm (85 degrees) and nights are cool (50 degrees). The co-op members are a very friendly and social hour (4pm daily) is well attended. The first thing we found out when we arrived was the reverse-osmosis water system was down. They were waiting on replacement filter membranes. Water was being trucked in from Artesia and we could fill up our fresh-water holding tank on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evenings.

On Tuesday, we visited the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens which is part of the New Mexico State Parks. It is a 1.3 mile self-guided walking tour through a variety of habitats found in the Chihuahuan Desert. There were several species of birds in the aviary, reptiles, mule deer, bison, elk, mountain lions, wolves, prairie dogs and a black bear named Maggie. All the animals were part of a rescue program for injured or orphaned wildlife. At the end of the walk was a greenhouse containing several hundred varieties of cacti.




On Thursday, we drove down to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This time of the year is the off-season and there were not many visitors. We opted to walk down the natural entrance (about a mile). The path is steep, but well maintained with hand rails the entire distance. Once at the bottom, we walked the Big Room tour which was another mile. Since we were last at the Caverns (~10 years ago), I think they have changed the route. We saw some new formations and did not see formations that we remembered from our previous trip. No pictures, forgot the camera *&$$#!@. Here is a park link to some of their photos.

We plan to leave on Monday, September 29th and make our way into Texas.

Deming, New Mexico

We've spent the last week at Dream Catcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico. Dream Catcher is a RV park in the Escapees organization. The social hours were quite lively. We spent a couple of evenings playing Pegs & Jokers with Jessie and Ann (park managers).

We visited the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum. The museum contains an extensive collection of items depicting the history of Deming.

We drove down to Columbus (35 miles south of Deming) on the Mexico border. Columbus was the site of the Pancho Villa raid in 1916. We visited the Railroad Depot Museum while in Columbus. The museum has numerous artifacts from the old railroading days and the 1916 raid.

There are several state parks in the area. We visited Rockhound State Park to take pictures of the Florida Mountains (pronounced flor-ee-da).



We will leave Deming on Monday and head over to Lakewood, New Mexico (between Carlsbad and Artesia).

Visiting in Los Alamos

We spent this past weekend visiting with Rick's sister Joanne and brother-in-law Jay in Los Alamos. We toured the area of the 2000 fire that destroyed a significant portion of the forest and numerous homes...including Jay's previous home. We spent the rest of the weekend learning and playing various board and card games. We really enjoyed the home-cooked meals and playing the Mahjong game!

We did our first dry-camping with our new Excel in the Los Alamos County Entrance Park. The "park" is a basically a parking lot with public restrooms and a dump station. There was a lot of road noise since we were adjacent to the main road in/out of Los Alamos. There was also construction on the other side of the parking lot where they are building a new school district administration complex. The county charges $10 per day...expensive for no hookups, but there are no other choices.

We left Los Alamos around 8:00am this morning and drove to Deming, NM. We stopped in Albuquerque at the Flying J Travel Plaza for fuel and breakfast. We arrived at the Dream Catcher RV Park (Escapees Rainbow Park) at 3:45pm. This was our first trip driving separate vehicles...Rick driving the truck and trailer and Y driving the Jeep. It worked out OK. We were able to communicate with each other using our walkie-talkies.

Eagle Nest - Summer 2008

We have had a very busy summer. We began our first camphosting position in May at the Golden Eagle RV Park in Eagle Nest, New Mexico. We enjoyed working with the entire crew. We ended this week and will be leaving on Saturday.

We plan to visit two of the parks in the Escapees system; Dream Catcher in Deming, NM and The Ranch in Lakewood, NM. From there we travel to Bastrop, TX to visit the kids and grandkids. We will spend the winter camphosting at the Paradise South RV Resort in Mercedes, TX with our friends, Jerry & Charlene Dyess.

We flew home to Austin twice (June and July) for family reunions. On our second return trip, we purchased a new 2008 Jeep Wrangler X in Albuquerque. We have had lots of fun taking the Jeep offroading on several US Forestry roads in the area. It has allowed us to visit sites that are only accessible with a high-clearance vehicle. For instance: Goose Lake, Cabristo Lake, Greenie Peak and Midnight Meadows.