February 16, 2005

February 16, 2005

Pecos, Texas to Lakewood, New Mexico

DAY 243

 

Today was cool, and partially sunny, with high, thin clouds.

We left Tra-Park SKP Park in Pecos, Texas this morning, heading northwest on Hwy. 285. The desert landscape changes slowly, but constantly. The terrain goes from flat to hilly to mountainous, and back. The vegetation is the most noticeable change. Every few hours of driving, what is growing on the desert changes. For example, a few days ago, there were endless Prickly Pear Cacti, and now there are none. No more tall desert palms, no palmettos, no yucca, no more aloe vera plants. There's a lot less grasses. There's lots of stuff growing out there on the desert, but it's not the same as a few days ago, or even what we saw yesterday. Starting yesterday, we've been seeing tumbleweeds rolling across the land, and the road occasionally. I hear music in my head every time I see a tumbleweed. I have fragments of many songs that keep coming into my head. I'm surprised by how many songs about Texas, and the "wild west" creep out of my memory. "Down in El Paso ...." We'll be in El Paso in a few days.

We crossed into New Mexico today. In a few days, we'll be crossing back into Texas for a couple of days, then back into New Mexico again. We're zigzagging northwest, then southwest, then northwest again. Shortly after crossing from Texas into New Mexico, we stopped in the city of Carlsbad to buy groceries and supplies, have lunch, and buy diesel. About the time we got to Carlsbad, I started to feel ill, and it has persisted all day. I think I have a 24 hour flu or something.

Once we crossed into New Mexico, we started to see road runners. Now we realize that those ostrich like birds we saw at Padre Island National Seashore that we thought were road runners weren't. I don't know what they were.

When we crossed into New Mexico, we changed from Central Standard Time to Mountain Standard Time, so we gained an hour today. It's going to be a bit of an annoyance, however, because we'll be crossing back and forth between New Mexico and Texas over the next few days.

We arrived this afternoon at "The Ranch" SKP Park in Lakewood, New Mexico. Like the SKP Park at Hondo, this is a Co-op Park. Each site is "owned" by an individual, and the sites not currently occupied by their owners are available for short term occupancy by travellers like us. There are a lot of little rabbits running around here. Bo likes it. Miles off in the distance, there is a large flame shooting up out of the ground. I think it's an oil well on fire. There were a lot of oil wells all along the route we drove today, in West Texas and Southern New Mexico. Good thing there's lots of oil in the ground around here, because this land is pretty much useless for anything else.

After arriving, we went to social hour, a daily occurrence at 4:00 P.M. at all SKP Parks. Each park's approach to social hour is different. Here it's very laid back, and actually quite "social". Not like Rainbow's End in Livingston where social hour was at least 30 minutes of structured, tedious, daily announcements. We ended up sitting and chatting for 2 hours with Bob Gambol, an Escapee whose membership number is in the low "hundreds". He's one of the earliest Escapee members still around. The latest membership numbers being issued are in the 89,000 range. Bob has travelled with his RV down though Mexico and into Central America, all the way through Costa Rica to Panama. We sure meet interesting people in the ranks of Escapees.

This morning there were flocks of honking geese flying over head, headed north. When we started heading south in mid-October, we were travelling along with the geese headed south. Now they’re headed back north already. Goodbye, little geesies. Have a safe trip. Too soon for us to turn north and join you. Or should I say ... y’all.

DSK