Foss Reservoir State Park, Oklahoma

Yesterday we cycled down to the main highway. It's downhill about a mile. We bicycle there very quickly, hitting speeds of 50 miles per hour, but use double-low gears for the long grind back up.

I notice that Paul's yellow gas can for the Ratty Bastard pontoon boat is marked 'Das Boot', a reference that confuses the marina workers. They always ask Paul what type of boot is a Das.

We got another solicitation in town to play doubles with the Montain Home grandmothers (who are really good).

Paul offered to take me last night to the local charcoal factory thirty-five miles away in Toad Suck. He says the four chimneys belch plumes of blue, yellow and red sparks nearly 100 feet high. This reminds me of times when we used to go sit under the approach lights at Tampa International and watch the jets land. Not a good idea these days.

We turn south at the 'Kum n' Go' convenience store. Not much to see in the route we took though Oklahoma except a giant waterslide complex in the prairie, oil pumps and a huge farm of giant windmills. Phaedrus was right: the way to travel is to find roads between nowhere and nowhere that parallel the interstate system and go though the small towns on the prairie. Gas has dropped from $3.10 in Tampa to $2.40 here in oil country.

We are parked on a lakeshore tonight in the Foss Reservoir State Park. The ranger said that the striped bass fishing is hot right now. It's 53 miles to North Texas. The old, two-lane Route 66 runs right beside the Interstate 40 highway we're following.

Should be in New Mexico later tommorow — first stop, Area 51; then Alamogordo and the White Sands National Monument. Things should begin to get weird soon, as we cross north Texas. Stocked up on ether and Wild Turkey to help fend off the bats.

The motor home is complex and small things break often. One of the radio/CD players stopped working and the fix turned out to be pulling and reinserting a fuse to reboot its computer chip. The generator stopped putting out electricity. This was a breaker on the generator that needed resetting. The alarming wobble on the rear motorcycle rack was caused by two critical bolts which I failed to install when I put it together. Added bolts. The 500 pounds of motorcycle and rack on the back causes the front end to wander if both the water and gas tanks are running low because of weight distribution issues. One kitchen light is out — we'll pick up spare bulbs at the next auto supply store we hit. The crossover switch is stuck. That means we can get A/C power when plugged in at a campground, but not from the generator while rolling. It needs a new part and warranty work. In the good old days this was controlled by a foolproof manual switch instead of a computer chip. As far as I can tell, the generator is only important in the summer when air-conditioning is needed while rolling or when camping in the 'boondocks'. This will wait until the trip is over. The house battery went dead. I put a voltmeter across the terminals and it read zero. No water at all in two cells. Apparently I boiled it dry leaving it plugged into shore power at home for two months. Wal-Mart had these in stock, of course. The tires are filled to 55 pounds in the front and the dual rear wheels are 70 pounds. This is ten pounds under-inflated all around, which needs to be fixed.

A goose flew over Foss lake in the 5.00am pre-dawn. I could tell by the moving honks. They have sandspurs here, too.

Roswell, New Mexico

Area 51 turns out to be in Nevada, not Roswell, New Mexico ... what a letdown. On top of that, the largest hurricane ever recorded seems to have drawn a bead on my Florida home with a projected arrival time of 2.00am on Sunday. I'm only a block from the bay.

On the bright side, we saw a double rainbow in the west this morning and also my first wild porcupine. It was huge but, unfortunately, was dead on the Oklahoma roadside shoulder.

Groom, Texas has the largest cross in the western hemisphere. It's about twice as high as the town water tower and is made of pipe and fabric so it can be lighted internally at night. The sign, visible from the interstate, said 'Gift Shop Open'. We were really tempted to stop in the Blessed Mary restaurant.

A little later, another sign said, simply, 'Rattlesnakes. Exit now.'

The high plains of North Texas and New Mexico seem like flatland, but the elevation signs coming into towns show them as being just short of a mile above sea level.

A bottomless lake is outside Roswell, the site of the flying saucer crash. The Air Force pilots I flew with were convinced that the alien bodies were stored at Wright-Patterson Air Base.

The small, bottomless blue lake is spring-fed and ringed by red limestone bluffs. The temperature of the lake felt like about 68°F. We are the only people in the campground.

There are lots of large yellow wasps or hornets flying everywhere. Two got inside. I killed them and disposed of the bodies.

Star viewing conditions are as good as they will ever get. It's now or never for seeing the Milky Way.

Bottomless Lake State Park, New Mexico

The New Mexico high plains: a mile high, no atmospheric moisture, no moon yet, no human lights for twenty miles, no cities for 200 miles and no visible air pollution. The Southwest offers the best star-gazing in the US.

Outside, at 8.00pm local time with no night vision, the things you can see from any city jump out. There's Venus high in the evening sky, the Navigator's Triangle overhead, Sagittarius the Teapot, the Chair of Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper and Polaris.

Night vision slowly fills in and the background clouds with so many stars that it becomes difficult to find these constellations. A wide cloudy swath of millions of faint stars glows from tens of thousands of light years distant.

Then the moon rises and its bright light dims the Milky Way once again. This is my first time to see it. How small we are. How transitory.

At 5.00am, Orion is up and the fire of Aniliam glows like a diamond to the brain from the center of the belt. It looks like Jupiter or Saturn is near the moon. My companion wanted to pack my telescope. A small voice in my head tells me to listen to her more.

Baxter, New Mexico

We hiked four miles though the New Mexico desert yesterday. The plants are as strange and alien as a coral reef 100 feet down. These are scrubby, tough, prickly survivors and desert flowers. On the spaces where nothing grows the sandstone has reformed into many strange gray nodules that look like very small cabbages rowing close together.

Later, a 20-mile motorcycle ride to Baxter (population 200) for a shared turkey and avocado sandwich. No vehicles on the road at all either way. Then another swim in Bottomless Lake and Google planning for the next move to Ruidoso. Ruidoso has four tennis courts and will serve as base camp for a motorbike ride up 10,000-foot El Capitan Mountain.

The Crossroads

a place where ghosts

reside to whisper into

the ears of travelers and

interest them in their fate

—Jim Morrison (1943 - 1972)

Ruidoso, New Mexico

The landscape has changed in seventy miles from high desert to mountainous forest.

Ruidoso is a ski resort that is showing the typical sprawl signs of being too nice a place to live. It has large casinos and a Billy the Kid quarter-horse racing track. No cellular service for the laptop modem for the first time.

We've been paying about $15 a night for state park campgrounds. This is our first time in a private RV campground and the cost is double that. There are a few more amenities like a swimming pool (empty for the season) and cable TV (two channels, one of them in Spanish).

We're getting nine miles per gallon for the RV and 60 miles per gallon on the motorcycle. So far, we've put 2,170 miles on the RV and 150 on the Yamaha 250. We decide to ditch the helmets next time. I rebuild the motorcycle trailer so that we can take the motorbike on and off without removing the bicycles each time.

We ride the Yamaha to the municipal tennis courts and I lose again (six-love both sets). Later, a forty-mile ride up a long bumpy fire trail to a fire tower called Moryeau Lookout, at the 9,600-foot summit. The stone tower was built during the Great Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps, whose works tend to endure. As we reach the top of the tower, my companion's cell phone gains service and rings. We can see two hundred miles in every direction. The ride back down is in gathering darkness and my hands are very cold. My companion told me to bring my gloves. Maybe I should listen to her more often.

New Mexico is a no-helmet state. I'd feel very guilty if anything happened to my companion because of an omitted safety measure. I insist on helmets and she grumbles about hers continuously for the first two miles while clinging to my back.

We're getting good pictures, but my laptop is not letting me upload them to my website. I'll try using my alternate picture site later this week.

Lincoln, New Mexico

A trip to Wal-Mart for gloves and then another bike ride from Ruidoso — seventy miles to the Lincoln County Courthouse. The very small town of Lincoln is where Billy the Kid killed two guards and escaped. Ghosts whisper my fate in my ear as I walk, alone and slowly, up the same stairs as Billy to the room where he was shackled to the floor, awaiting the hangman. I look for bloodstains at the top of the stairs. Large legends for such a tiny place. It's almost unchanged since the 1880s.

This is not the dry, dusty place that one might imagine. It's rolling grassland with mountains and hardwoods that turn brilliant yellow at this time of year. The Kid was perhaps innocent, but was sucked into a feud between two rival shopkeepers. An Irish immigrant and an English newcomer both wanted to sell cattle and other goods to the soldiers at the nearby Fort Stanton. The fort was established to control the Mescalero Apaches and make the area safe for settlement. Billy worked as a cowboy for the dead Englishman and became embroiled in the cycle of violence. The two large competing stores are still the main buildings in Lincoln, which seems to have a population of about fifty with no services other than the stores that have been made into museums.

I discuss Pat Garrett's book with the curator. She says it sucks and recommends Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life.

Near the closed fort, five miles from Lincoln, we find a lonely fenced graveyard with a large anchor. It has graves and crosses for thousands of Merchant Mariners. A sign says 'No metal detecting'.

We will be traveling though the Mescalero Apache Indian reservation on the way to the White Sands National monument, Las Cruces, Truth-or-Consequences, Elephant Butte Lake State park, Gila Cliff Dwellers National Monument and a ghost town named Mogollon. Then into Arizona.

Journey to the Heart of the American Southwest Archive

Phred

12.01.06 Front Page

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