May 3 to May 5, 2010

Monday, May 3, 2010
It has been over three weeks since we left home, and we have seen a lot. Weather and scenery wise the Davis Mountains in Texas are as nice as anywhere we have been before, and without the real high altitudes. These mountains are from 3,000 to 7,000 feet, mostly below 5,000 feet. The night sky has been spectacular the last two nights. We are really enjoying the cool weather but I do get a little too cold at night sometimes. It is dry, but not extremely so. We saw Javelinas in the campground this morning, and the mule deer again. This afternoon we traveled 35 miles north on Route 17 to the Balmorhea State Park. There is a giant pool fed by artesian springs with temperatures between 74 and 78 degrees. People come here to swim, scuba dive and snorkel. It is 58 degrees here, so we will not be going in the water. Along the deck it looks like a normal pool, only huge. It is rectangular except for a uniform curve on one end. But it is filled with spring water with fish so it looks like a pond or a lake with a rough bottom. Along the inside edge the pool is about 2 feet deep, and in the middle it is up to 25 feet deep, and you cannot see the bottom. The pool was built by the CCC in the thirties and so it also has that old time look. I so wanted to get in, but it is just too cold today. After taking pictures all around the pool we met a young family who were just leaving. They have three very talkative children and they enjoyed petting Joey. They are on a long trip in a big van and pulling a utility trailer. Their stove does not work and a few other things, and they dry camp quite a bit. Apparently they are missionaries and are home schooling. We thought we were roughing it, but now I feel like I should not be complaining about our camper. We have decided that we are limited to staying in cool places because when it gets over 90 degrees, and the camper is out in the open, it is just too hot. Of course we don't want to go where it is too cold either....oh well...Charlie is surfing the net for interesting places to go, and he is looking for dealers that might have ultra light campers that will work better for us. We had a really nice authentic Mexican dinner at La Cueva De Oso (The Bear Den). Afterward we took a walk in our campground and found a kind of stream called San Solomon Cienega that is full of turtles, snakes, and large fish. We watched a snake catch and eat a fish. It was very shallow and clear and Joey was watching them all intently. I held on tight to our little dog.


Tuesday, May 4, 2010
It is about 10:40pm EST, and we just got set up and are settling in at a KOA in Santa Fe. We drove about 390 miles today straight up Rt 285. We stopped in Carlsbad and looked at the R pod campers. They are very nice and are very tightly packed with all the things we want. The camper we were most interested in was brand new for $12,000. The dealership is really more of a service center for RVs, and we couldn't get much help, so we moved on. We considered hanging around until we could fully check it out, but we felt that we didn't really want to waste a few days buying and setting up in a new camper. Plus, they would not take our camper as a trade, but only on consignment. Not a complication we want to deal with. Though we would have liked to learn more, we think that once loaded, the camper would have topped out at 2,900 pounds, which is probably too much for the mini-van on long trips. Since we didn't spend a bunch of money on a new camper, now we feel like we are rich, and will stop fighting our camper's limitations. We are going to continue to eat out a lot, and not worry about it. We only brought two folding chairs on this trip, like always wants to sit in a chair too. So Charlie bought him his own chair today....it is a lot fancier than ours.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010
We went into Santa Fe today and I went through the Georgia Okeefe museum. Charlie waited outside with Joey in a nice courtyard there. We took turns going into the Monitou Gallery, a place I really enjoyed last year. This year they have some of the same artists I remember but different works. Also, some new ones, all in the style of the southwest. I especially like the sculptures. While I was waiting with Joey out front next to a big cat statue, the owner came out and said that dogs are welcome in the gallery, that this is Santa Fe! Maybe we should move here. We walked around a bit more, and I did some shopping pushing Joey in the stroller while Charlie waited in the plaza. Later we drove to the capitol, which we missed last year. Last year we were limited to seeing what was on the bus line since we bused in from our campground. We took a lot of pictures of the plaza and of the churches last year which are still on this blog if you want to go back to see them. It is a really nice capitol with a nice setting. But I had enough of walking so Charlie went inside by himself. Inside is like an art gallery with a nice rotunda in the center. All the government offices are on other floors. We had a nice dinner on the way back to the camper. The restaurant is in front of the one and only mall in the area and behind the mall are rows and rows of small adobe houses that looks like a massive and old Pueblo village. Charlie posted a picture of it. He started a new album when we left Texas, so there are a few new pictures in album 4, and album 5 is started. Don't know where we are going next because it is a little cold in Hooper, Colorado which is supposed to be our next destination....