It Finally Got Cold

I'm never sure what order the pictures are going to appear on the blog page. I wanted to show the snow we see in the mountains from our camp. If you click on the picture with the RV's in it you will see the snow in the mountains in the background about 40 miles away. We drove a little ways out into the desert to get a closer look at the snow. Its very pretty "from a distance". We went from 60 degrees on Christmas Day to barely 40 degrees on the 27th.

I also included a picture of the boat launch we use at the state park. It is huge with 10 lanes -- so 10 boats can be launching at the same time. The marina -- floating behind the boat ramp -- has gas for sale and has dockage for over 100 boats of all sizes. There are some huge houseboats there (that we've never seen move) as well as 30 and 40 foot pleasure cruising boats that cost over $200,000. This lake isn't that big anymore since its about 60 feet lower than it has been in the past. I would hate to see this place in the summer with all these huge boats trying to cruise around. It must be as bad as Lake Minnetonka -- and we've also heard that they camp 3 or 4 RV's deep around the shoreline.

We had a very nice Christmas dinner at our RV park. Turkey and ham provided by the park and everyone else contributing the rest of the fixings. It was all delicious. Everyone here appreciates having a get together to make up for being so far from home over the holidays.

More Exploring

We tried to follow a gravel road that went back behind the Caballo Lake Dam. You can see it in the background of the picture with water (Caballo Lake). We finally had to give up -- the road just got too narrow, windy and was going up, up, up. We were trying to get back behind the mountains in these pictures- the Caballo mountains - to do some prospecting for gold. If you click on the pictures of the mountains to make them bigger you can see the gravel roads going up them. You really need a jeep to explore this area. One of the workampers at our park checked into buying a used jeep -- they wanted $4000 and it was almost 20 years old. I have to say -- you see a lot of really old vehicles on the road down here -- in perfect condition. What a difference it makes when you don't have to drive on salted roads.

Jim finally found something of value with his metal detector -- two pennies -- and an old shell casing that no one can identify -- it might be an antique. We will be trying to find out. I found a beautiful piece of petrified wood so at least we are having some luck out in the desert. You should see our nice white truck -- covered in red dust. Poor thing!

Its almost Christmas and they do decorate some around here. I want to get a picture of the tumbleweed snowmen and post it -- very cute. Did you know tumbleweeds are very thorny -- you can't just grab one or you will pay for days while you try to get the thorns out. Thats true with about every plant out here. Thorns!

Jim had to help a guy (Dave) retrieve his boat where he beached it. Dave is the guy with the inflatable that took us to Caballo Lake once. He wanted to go hunting about 10 miles up the lake on the other side of it so he drove as far as he could -- launched the boat - and then the wind kicked up and he was facing 3 foot waves in his little 8 foot inflatable -- so he beached it and walked all the way back to his car -- several miles and drove back to camp to get his big truck and Jim. He had tried calling back to camp for help but -- just got through and then no service -- well this had everyone in camp thinking he was drowning so they sent the park rangers out searching for him. As soon as the rangers found his boat and saw that it was safely beached they knew he was ok. Dave retrieved his boat with Jim's help and needless to say he didn't get any hunting or fishing in that day.

Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

We went to this Wildlife Refuge to see all of the migrating ducks, geese, cranes, hawks and eagles. This refuge is nationally recognized as a major wintering place for these birds and also a major stopover for those birds that continue farther south. This refuge is along the Rio Grande and is huge. The little bit of road that they let visitors drive around to tour the refuge is 15 miles long. There are lots of observation decks -- we got to see a pair of SandHill Cranes up close from one of these decks. We also saw huge flocks of pintail ducks -- they are as pretty as wood ducks. I tried to get a picture of them but those pictures didn't turn out. I posted two pictures of Sand Hill Cranes and two pictures of a huge field of snow geese. There were some serious photographers there taking pictures. They had cameras attached to scopes that were so huge you could have taken a close up of a volcano on Mars with them. The refuge is only an hour's drive north from where we are staying but about a 10 degree temperature difference (colder).

Jim wants to make sure everyone knows we were fishing on December 12th. It was in the low 60's. I caught one small white bass -- so fishing is still pretty slow. Its just nice to be able to still be on the water trying to catch something. While wintery weather is hitting in Minnesota we have been getting hit with really high winds. Saturday night the wind was gusting between 50 and 60 miles an hour. The trailer was shaking all night. I'm not used to wind like that without a storm to go with it. The snow seems to just stay to the north and west of us in the mountains. We enjoy seeing it -- from a distance!

Detecting and Rockhounding

December 1st we were out fishing -- in t-shirts--- I caught one small striped bass. Mostly we catch more rays than fish. Fishing has been so slow that we decided to start exploring the public lands with a metal detector. There is a guy in camp who knows a lot about metal detecting and has owned all kinds. We learned from him what a good one to buy would be for finding "treasure". He has lots of pointers on where to try around here so we have been going out onto lots of gravel roads "detecting".

Of course this is also the guy that has a $10,000 detector -- I should say ground penetrating radar. He and another guy found a great target 14 feet deep and started digging. They thought they were going to be rich and after two days of digging -- they dug up an old volkswagen.

We've also been rockhounding while using the metal detector. We are learning what some of the pretty rocks are: carnelian, jasper, chalcedony, lots of crystaline rock and pieces of petrified wood. We met one couple out rockhounding who have been doing it for three years while down here for the winter. They cut and polish the rocks they find and set them in sterling silver rings. They say they do pretty well selling them. They have also found arrowheads in this same area. We just look and don't really keep anything we find. We can't afford to add the weight of rocks to our load. It will have to be a rock worth a lot of money for us to keep it -- like a meteorite -- which the metal detector will help find -- usually they have a very high iron content, are pretty scratched up looking and are also magnetic.

We hope to have better luck with rockhounding than we have with fishing.