2000,
is the home of Judge Roy Bean. We couldn't resist stopping again,
so we took a couple of hours and toured the museum, walked to the canyon
and once again ate a barbecue sandwich at the local cafe.
After leaving Langtry, we headed northwest on U.S. 90 toward Big Bend. Before reaching the turnoff to Big Bend National Park, which we visited last year, we turned north on U.S. 285 at Sanderson. Libby took over driving the D at this point, which pleased Rich immensely, since she drives faster than I do! As we traveled north on this road, we were stopped by a guy standing in the middle of the road, boots, belts and cowboy hats in plain site. He and his crew were driving a herd of cattle across the road, so they wanted to make sure we did not make one of them our hood ornament. We continued on 285 to Pecos, Texas where we filled up the rigs with diesel at the Flying J. While we were approaching Pecos, I checked into the RV Service net at 14307.5 MHZ on the 20 meter amateur radio band, speaking to my good friends Pappy and Cecile Doughty in Young Harris, GA.
After we fueled up, we went a couple of miles west on I 20 and parked for the night at the TraPark, the SKP park in Pecos. Our rigs were filthy, but the park doesn't allow washing rigs at the site and the place designated for this activity was muddy and also blocked the sewer dump, so we just rolled out the next morning in dirty rigs.
As we headed north on US 285 for Carlsbad Caverns we
came across another Texas oddity. 
You can see that once again, speeding on a road that
is open range is not a good idea. We continued on to the SKP Park,
The Ranch, in Lakewood, NM which is about 22 miles north of the town of
Carlsbad, NM.
When we pulled into The Ranch, a fifth wheel was just getting in and of course the Emonds were behind us. Three new rigs were lined up to register for the park and someone came out of the office and rang this big bell they have mounted on a pole. Folks came out of the woodwork to welcome all of us to The Ranch. This place is advertised as the friendliest park in the Escapee system and they are correct. We were made to feel right at home. We washed our rigs, joined the residents for brats and kraut at the Ranchhouse and in general felt like we really belonged with these folks. Libby and I were so pleased with the place that we leased lot #64 for a nesting place for a few months each year.
Our lease is a lifetime lease and the annual maintenance
if we put the lot in the rental pool is under $400. Basically, we
stay there for the cost of electricity and the maintenance fee spread over
the time we spend there. If we spend two months in the fall and two
months in the spring, we will break even in about three years. Of
course, like all SKP co ops, if we choose to sell the lease, we get back
all of money and all of the money we spend on capital improvements, minus
the annual maintenance costs. With the markets in the toilet like
they are at the current time, we wanted a place to hunker down and save
some money for summer travel. We can live at The Ranch for
about $100 a month and cut our traveling expenses dramatically. I
don't know how long we will actually stay there each year, but our current
plans are to spend November and December and then maybe March and April
there. It does get cold and sometimes snows on the high desert of New Mexico,
so we reserve the right to head south if it gets cold in January and February!
The Ranch is situated 22 miles north of Carlsbad,
16 miles south of Artesia on U.S. 285. It is in the middle of an
8000 acre working ranch and only a single strand of electrified wire keeps
the cattle out. (most of the time) One has to be careful when going
in or out of the gate, since the cattle roam free outside our fence.
Coyotes seem to serenade almost every night and wildlife is abundant.
On Sunday, we traveled to Carlsbad Caverns National
Park with the Emonds and walked for 
about
three miles in the caverns. We entered at the natural entrance
and walked downhill for about 850 feet. After we reached the cave
floor, we did another mile and a half walk in "The Big Room" This
cavern is approximately the size of 19 football fields. The temperature
in the cave is a constant 56 degrees, but our coats came off in short order
as we were really quite warm with all the walking we were doing.
Thousands of bats live in the caves, but they were
all on vacation in Mexico while we were there. They come back in
May and leave in October. There is a viewing amphitheater at the
natural entrance where folks sit and wait for them to exit the caves simultaneously
at dusk. It must be quite a show. 
We stayed at The Ranch for 12 days, sending the Emonds
on to Arizona alone. Had we not had a commitment to the Hofmeister's
for their Movin On camp out, we would still be there. While staying
at The Ranch, John played golf in Roswell at the New Mexico Military Institute.
We both attended a Pizza night at the Pizza Inn in
Carlsbad. This dinner is a monthly thing they do at The Ranch.
The owner of the Pizza Inn came in and chatted with us. He also drew
a ticket and that person got dinner for free. We had banana splits
at the Ranch house one evening and most of us attended the Chili Chapter
of the SKPs luncheon at Golden Coral in Carlsbad. We have learned
that if you hang around with groups of seniors, you too, get a senior discount!
We don't qualify for most of them, but if these folks are making assumptions
about us, its ok with us to take the discount!
When we took possession of our lot at The Ranch, there
was a big Choella cactus right in the middle of the lot. We had a
work party at our place and in short order removed said cactus (it bit
me the second day we were there) and it now guards the entrance to The
Ranch. 
Everyone was very helpful to us when we were there
and we are looking forward to going back to The Ranch in November for the
annual Roundup.
We left The Ranch on Friday the 16th and headed over the Sacramento Mountains, through Cloudcroft, New Mexico and down an 11 mile 6% grade to Alamagordo, NM.
After passing through Alamagordo, we stopped at the
White Sands National Monument. White Sands is a pretty unique place.
The sand is very fine gypsum and is a brilliant white. 
While in the White Sands National Monument we saw some F117 Stealth Fighters flying into and out of Holloman AFB in Alamagordo. They were sometimes sharing the sky with German Tornadoes. There is a large German contingent at the AFB and we saw them almost everyday while at The Ranch.
We continued on through Las Cruces, NM and stopped at Dream Catcher, the SKP park in Deming, NM for the night. We boondocked at Dream Catcher, so it didn't cost us anything to stay there.
The next day, we traveled on to Saguaro, the SKP park in Benson, Arizona. This is a large park but the boondock spaces leave a lot to be desired. They charge $2.50 per night for boondocking as most SKP parks do, but this park charges in advance from night one. Most of the SKP parks give you the first night for free and most of them charge when you check out. I think we paid in advance at Hondo last year and of course, at Benson and maybe at Chimacum in Washington. Maybe there is something about being west of the Mississippi! As we arrived in Benson, we noticed lots of blooming cacti and wildflowers on the desert floor. It was really neat to see them.
After we left Benson, we traveled up I 10 to the Phoenix area and then took U.S. 60 east to the edge of Mesa where we stayed for one night at Valle Del Oro. This is the park where the Hofmeisters have spent many winters. Apparently, this park doesn't really want overnighters either. The daily rate is $38, so we only stayed one night. Up to this point, we had spent $50.50 for camping in March. VDO jumped our daily average up quite a bit! We did finally hook up with our friends the Paynes and the Hammonds, in addition to catching up with Rich and Diane Emond. On Monday, we all left and moved just a few miles to the Lost Dutchman State Park east of Apache Junction for the Movin On camp out with the Hofmeisters.
There were about 26 or 27 rigs at the group campground in Lost Dutchman. It was really fun. Most if not all of these folks have met the Hofmeisters at some point in their travels and it was neat to see everyone greeting each other as we all arrived. The campground had a few water spigots, but other than that, it was all dry camping. We spent three days boondocked there and did not fire up our generator one time. The brilliant sun and cloudless days kept our solar panel working at top speed and we just didn't need to run the genset to replenish the batteries. The compute was a real hoot and we met lots of nice folks. We certainly hope to do this again some time in the future.
After Lost Dutchman we moved with the Emonds to Star Valley RV Park in Apache Junction. This park is a Good Neighbor park so we spent 9 days there at $!2 a day. Normally, GNPs are $10 plus the dollar coupon, but this one charged and extra buck for electricity. It was ok with us since it seems many of the parks around here are charging $30 or more per day.
On Saturday, March 31 we all moved over to the RV America Rally site at Canyon Vistas RV Resort in Gold Canyon, AZ. This a big park, 700 plus sites, and has terrific meeting rooms and pools, hot tubs, exercise rooms, game rooms etc. The staff isn't too friendly, but the park is very nice. I think the monthly winter rate is $500 and you get a discount for signing up for three months. Our rally rate is $17 a day and we get a phone line at each site for that rate! Oh happy days, WE CAN SURF AGAIN! One of the guys told me he got up at 6 a.m. this morning to get on the net. He hasn't been able to surf with a local number for 9 months. (this is the downside of fulltiming!)
Oh, just to let you know that we are helping bring the economy back, we bought another laptop last week. Its a Compaq Presario 1700, PIII 700MHZ, 15gig hardrive, two usb ports, a nic port and a built in modem. No serial ports. You have to go off the USB ports for serial devices. Good thing I have a USB to serial converter cable. I guess they will all go this way soon. No more serial ports. I am going to get rid of our tower machine, so if any of you are interested in a 500 mhz tower, with two CD drives, one is RW, 10 gigs of hard drives, a nic card, a 14 inch flat screen monitor, a modem, an internet keyboard yada yada yada, let me know!
Diesel Fuel for March
$167.77
Camping for March
$229.00