Tombstone, AZ

So on our first day camping in Benson, AZ we decided to recon Tombstone. We knew it would take more that one visit to see everything we wanted to see. I've been a fan of the history of the town and loved all the movies about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and the Cowboys.

The picture above is taken in the Crystal Palace Saloon. We had lunch there and loved the decor.



There are a lot of folks in period costume like the fellow at the visitor center with Martha.



Some of the characters have jobs like the visitor center guy or the gun fighters in the shows, but the fellow above just dresses up and plays the part because it's what he likes to do.


These were the real gun fighters in town. They were the local Arizona Rangers. No six shooters for them. They looked like Glock's to me.

We are going back some more to see the museums and gun fights, but for now, here's a link to the photos I took on the first day. Flickr

Palomas, Mexico

We are staying in Deming, NM which is about 30 miles from the USA Mexico border.  So when you talk about what to do in Deming, you get all kind of suggestions, but everyone mentions go to the Pink Store in Palomas, Mexico.  So we decided to take our passports and head down.

The real draw for us was the Farmacia Express. i.e. drugstore.  Martha has some prescription topicals that are expensive even with drug insurance.  Plus they have to be approved by a lot of people.  Well at Farmacia Express you get them without a prescription and they are really inexpensive.

We went to The Pink Store next, this is the only way I want to shop anymore.  First the store has a lot of stuff including liquor, pottery, leather items, home decor items, etc. and there is a nice restaurant.  Adjacent building have eye glass stores, dentist, doctors, etc. all catering to the US customer.  You can get dental crowns for $140 each.  We know people who've gotten crowns there and they are pleased with the results.  Same for glasses.

Now here is the part I like, they offer you free beer or margaritas while you shop.  The faster you drink, the more you get.  We found a number of knickknacks and I got some nice belts.  I got a good price on George Person's favorite tequila he introduced me to.

Next we had a late breakfast/early lunch.  The food was very, very good and a margarita with Huevos Rancheros is a perfect breakfast.  Lots of fun was had by all.


I have some more photos on Flickr.

We hit a Rock Hound place on the way back.  There are a lot of interesting and artsy rocks in this area.  The lady who ran the store we stopped at had some wonderful pieces with staggering prices.  She even had some that when viewed under a black light fluoresced greens, blues and a very rare to find red.  Those were the multi thousand dollar pieces.

Next hit the other winery in Deming.  Luna Rosa.  They had a lot good wines.

Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus, NM

We did a run down to the border, but not across, yet.  In Columbus, NM is a state park where Pancho Villa invaded the United States.  Last time that was done.  Pear Harbor and 9/11 were attacks, but not armed men occupying USA soil.  There isn't much left of the camp that General Pershing setup to track down Villa, but the museum has a lot of good documentation of the events.

This all happened a few years prior to the USA getting involved in WWI.  In fact you can look at it as the first use of mechanized forces and calvary on the battlefield together.  General Pershing learned a lot about this prior to President Wilson putting him in charge of the American expeditionary forces in Europe for WWI.  It was also the first time the Army use airplanes in battle and reconnaissance.

The museum talks about the reasons for the Mexican forces invading the USA and there are conflicting reasons.  Homework is for you to google that and learn something because I'm on my second bourbon and have a case of CRS (can't remember shit)

View from Coots Hill in the park toward Mexico 3 miles in the distance.


There were tons of blooming cacti in the park.


It also had a small campground that would be good to allow you to park on the USA side and walk over to Mexico to shop and buy cheap prescription drugs. There's always tomorrow.

Day trip to Alamogordo, NM

We decided to drive over the mountain to see the White Sands Monument.  We picked the most direct route, but it's was a 2 lane state road.  It's a truck route, but only for trucks under 65' total.  Since I was only in the pickup truck I wasn't worried, but did want to evaluate whether I could pull the RV trailer over on this road.  We are camped at around 3500', and the road would take us to 9000' and them back to 4500' in Alamogordo.

First observation is don't expect bathrooms on any highway in NM that isn't an Interstate.  After about 1.5 hours we found a small roadside stand with restrooms, a petting zoo, canned everything homemade and candy and nuts.  The road got curvy after that stop and it was a gradual rise up to Cloudcroft at 9000'.  It was 20 degrees cooler there than back at our camp. The photo above is from a picnic area in Cloudcroft looking toward Alamogordo, NM with the White Sands Missile Range in the distance.  I could tell I was at 9000', I was light headed, the same as I got at Pike's Peak years ago.  Very uncomfortable feeling when you have to drive.  I posted a bunch of photos on Flickr.com  Day in Alamogordo

After lunch at Cowboy's Steakhouse which was recommended to us, we went to the White Sands Monument.  They have a small museum with a theater and we watch an informational video on how the white sand area was formed and keeps expanding.  Then we took the 16 mile drive, some of it on the sand roads.  People were sliding down the dunes with plastic saucers or just hiking on them.  We mostly did the slow roll though the park stopping for photos.

Since the drive over was 2.5 hours we decided to head back by a different route which was all 4 lane. but still when up to 7500' and back to 3500' and took an hour longer.  I still need to decide which way to leave the area towing the RV.  We might wait to do more stuff in Alamogordo after we leave Artesia and just camp there, or move on.  It depends on how much we can do in day trips over the next week.

We did see a roadside pistachio store where they grow them.  Picked up a bag or two. There was a giant nut in the parking lot.
 

A day in Roswell, NM

Got a late start but got the Roswell about 11:30am and the first stop had to be the UFO museum.



It's actually really well done.  It's cheap to get in and we got there just in time to watch ~hour video on the history of the UFO crash that put Roswell on the map. The video has interviews with some of the folks who were caught up in the event and not by their chose.

It's pretty clear that whatever happened, the Army Air Force put a lot of pressure for everyone to keep quiet, which they did until most of them were getting old and didn't want to leave it untold.  The museum has a lot of displays containing the newspaper clippings from those days.  It's has a lot of notarized affidavit from just about everyone who was involved.  Nurses, pilots, ground crew, etc. who were involved with the coverup. It's interesting stuff.  I bought an autographed book on it.

The museum also has displays from the movies made about aliens, Roswell, and space in general. It's a lot of fun.



After all the UFOs we were hungry and tried a local place called the Cowboy Cafe. I had the best Chicken Fried Steak I've every had and Martha had a Green Chili Brisket Enchiladas. Good food, good service.

We also found a winery tasting room that only had New Mexico wines and beers. Many European varietals especially Italian. I found a locally brewed beer call Alien. I tried their wheat and Amber Ale.

The Ranch, Lakewood, NM

After San Angelo, we figured we could make it to The Ranch in Lakewood, NM.  We picked The Ranch because we'd heard about it from some of our Montana Owners Club (MOC) friends.  It's an Escapee RV Club, which as members we can stay at cheap.  You can't make reservations at an SKP park like The Ranch, but you are guaranteed a place to park, even if you have to boondock, i.e. no hook-ups.  All of the site are owned by a lease holder, but when they are gone RVing, their site can be used by folks like us.

The folks here are very nice and helpful. A lot of them are already gone for the summer season or are leaving soon.  A few stay through the summer, but basically, it's a place to come to get out of the cold during the winter up north.  The Ranch is located 15 miles from the nearest town, Artesia, NM.  So it's remote.  It's 2 miles off of US285 so you can't hear any noise, and there are very few lights to distract the view of the night sky.  We decided to stay a week or so to recover and see a few sites in Roswell and Carlsbad, both a 30-60 minute drive.  Also maybe we'll be lucky and Martha will be out of her walking boot she's been in for 5 weeks so far.

I've included a few photos looking outside the park both from the east and west view.  As you can see we are in the high desert in the middle of a cattle ranch.  I haven't see cows yet, but have seen roadrunners and a fox.

San Angelo, TX

I've been chastised for not posting more on the blog about where we are.  I've put some post on Facebook, but that's not everyone's cup of tea.

We drove from Waco to San Angelo on the back roads because our GPS didn't know any better apparently.  Ended up on a dirt road due to construction so the RV got dirty.  Got to San Angelo and chose to stay at Spring Creek RV Campground and Marina on Lake Concho.  Great little park, picturesque, quiet.



We found a few things to do the one day we stayed over. First, I washed the RV before Martha even got up.  Then we went to Ft. Concho which was a very well preserved frontier, post Civil War, fort that due to the lack of local wood was mostly make of limestone, so a lot of the original buildings were there. The town seems to take a lot of pride in the fort and has a lot of volunteers working to keep and promote it with re-enactments, events.  Oddly enough there is no wall.  Just buildings. They didn't need walls in those days.





When we went to look in the barracks, we saw a cat sleeping on one of the beds. It seems to work there because they had a water dish and food plate. Must have kept the mice away.



The details in some of the restored buildings was as good as I've seen. I didn't take pictures of everything, but it was worth the stop. Seniors got in for $2.00.

On the way back to the RV, we hit a liquor store and found Buffalo Trace Bourbon, when they can't seem to keep on the shelves in NC.  I could have bought any amount at this store in TX.

Satellite TV on the Road

This discussion is mostly for RV'ers who are compelled to have all the conveniences of home while on the road, especially TV.  I've tried several solutions over the years, but I've settled on my currently solution and it's getting a big test on this trip.

I'm a DirecTV customer and sometimes I question that decision, but it's made and I'm down that path at least for a few years.

I've tried the automatic satellite systems, but they all have one big problem.  They can only point at one satellite at a time so 2 TVs can find themselves fighting over which satellite to focus on.  That is unless your talking about the roof mounted oval dishes like you use on a house, but are motorized.  Those are nice, but at $2,000 installed, they are not for me.  Particularly when Murphy's law says your RV will be under trees.

So I'm using a standard Slimline DirecTV dish that is mounted on a tripod.



I've been through 3 tripods and the one I have now and is pictured above is the best I've seen, so I don't think I'll need to change. I got it from tv4rv.com.  The tripod is based on a surveyor's tripod.  Each leg is adjustable in angle and length.  The concept is to aim the tripod and then set the dish on the tripod is a fixed position.

When you setup the tripod without the dish, you insert the provided compass into the tripod in a fixed position.  Next you move the tripod around until you are pointed at the required azimuth.  You get the azimuth, elevation and tilt settings for your current location by using the dish pointing feature of the receiver setup function based on zip-code.  You use a bubble level to make sure the tripod is level in addition to being pointed correctly.  Next you remove the compass and set the dish on top of the tripod at the fixed position and tighten it down.  I also recheck the bubble level and tweak the legs.  Once it's all level, I use one of the several tight down methods provided in the kit.  I also have the folding LNB arm feature, so it stores better, and all I have to do is fold it into place and tighten it.

Usually the tilt and elevation setting are close enough to get a signal just by setting the adjustments by sight.  But I have found that the easiest way to align everything correctly is to have the wife on the phone or walkie-talkie to watch the onscreen signal meter while I tweak things.  Generally small changes to the azimuth will get the signals at the 80% point then I use the fine tuning screws to get high 90's on satellite 101.  I check satellites 99 and 103, but they are usually okay.  Once you are high 90's on 101, minor changes to elevation will tweak sat. 99 and 103 to 80-95 and that works for anything I watch.

Since my Montana RV has direct coaxial cables run from the convenience to the living room, bedroom and basement I put the SWM splitter in the convenience center.  So I run one wire from the satellite dish LNB to the splitter.  I have the SWM power supply in the entertainment center cabinet along with the Genie DVR.  I use Genie clients in the bedroom and basement.

I'm getting better at the setup and now I can usually get the dish setup in 15 minutes.  What takes the most time is done sitting on the couch.  That is getting the local channels integrated into the DVR.  Since DirecTV doesn't let you receive your local channels outside of 500 miles from home, you have to buy a AM21 OTA receiver.  It connects to your OTA roof antenna and via USB to the Genie DVR.  Once you get it setup, you see your OTA local channels in your guide and can record your CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX programs assuming you are in an area with OTA coverage.

The trick to getting the AM21 working is you have to reset it's settings, then power everything off and back on.  Then your can setup the AM21 via zip-code.

All of this is easier the more you do it. I can setup the complete RV is 45 minutes with 15 minutes on electric, water, and sewer.  The remaining time is 15 for the dish and 15 for local channels.  One could think that it's not worth it, but if the wife doesn't get her programs recorded she's not happy.  And as we all know, if the wife isn't happy, no one is happy.

Texas wild flowers

This is the time to be driving though Texas. The wild flowers are in bloom. They even have a booklet on the flowers at the visitors centers when you stop at the border.

It's enjoyable just to drive down the road. They are everywhere. It's not easy or safe to just pull off the highway especially when I'm a combined 60 ft. So we didn't get any photos.  Until yesterday.  We let the GPS put us on some farm roads where we didn't see a car behind us for 65 miles, so we just stopped in the middle of the road and shot a few photos with the phone.

Waco Mammoth Site

On the next day in Waco we went to the Waco Mammoth Site National Park.  Mammoth bones were found back in 1978 by some teenagers and they were smart enough to get them identified by the Baylor U science department.   The mammoths in Texas are not the woolly mammoth found in colder climates, these are the Columbia mammoths and they are, of course, bigger than the woolly mammoth.

They built a building over the dig site so they can control the humidity to help preserve the bones.



This area must have been a watering hole or river 68,000 years ago because the mammoths were found in herds like they were trapped by a flash flood. Most of the bones have been removed to Baylor to be preserved. Some are starting to come back to the site for display.

I have a number of photos on Flickr if you want to see them in the Waco Album.

Waco Flickr Album

Camel bones were found at site….. most likely they went from the Texas area to where they are located today by the way of the land bridge between the continents of North America and Asia.  Since eyesight is not good on mammoths and the camel’s are good, the camels were tolerated because they could alert the mammoths of any dangers.

They've even found a baby saber tooth tiger at the site.

Waco

We left Texarkana with a plan to go to Waco, tour there and then plan the next stop.  Waco looked like it had a number of things to see worth the stop.

We decided to stay at the Riverview RV park.  It's close to downtown where most of the things to see are located.  Decent park, seems to be about half permanent sites and half transient. We had a level concrete pad for the Montana and gravel for everything else.

So Monday, 4/11, we went to the Texas Ranger Museum.  It was interesting.  The film they show is a composite of some professional history channel type shows on the Texas Ranger history.  I enjoyed it.  A big collection of guns.  Most of them are the actual firearms used by the ranger who is being honored in each display.  We spent about 1.5 hours there.



We were on our way to the Dr. Pepper Museum when we saw an In-N-Out burger, so we had to stop and get lunch first.  This was Martha's first In-N-Out, but I've had them in Candler, AZ when I worked at Intel and travel there occasionally.


Then on to the Dr. Pepper museum.  It's in an old bottling plant and is probably more interesting to they real fans of the soft drink.  Lots of collectable, old bottles, signs, drink machines, bottling lines, capping machines, bottle washing machines, etc. worth the stop and the price was cheap.  The best part is they had an old soda fountain and did hand made Dr. Pepper ice cream floats using syrup, carbonated water separately.



Next we wanted to find the Waco suspension bridge down by their river walk.  Found it and took some pictures. It's a nice pedestrian bridge to cross the Brazos River.  Originally the first toll bridge on the river in the 1800's.



Next we went to a place I knew nothing about but Martha was dying to go.  It's Chip and Joanna's Magnolia.  They are on HDTV's Fixer Upper show.  It's an old grain silo and factory, that they fixed up and turned into a store that sells very expensive decorating stuff.


Tomorrow, we are going to the Waco Mammoth Site and see some 68,000 mammoths being excavated. 

Memphis then on to Texarkansas

On our full day in Memphis, we got a late morning start, but finally got to the National Civil Rights Museum. It's located at the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King got killed. They did a good job with the museum, particularly how they tied the exhibit into the old hotel and walking you by his room with a view of the balcony where he was shot. Lot's of history and very moving.

Next we went to Sun Studios just to say I'd been there. Here about it all my life. A lot of great music came out of that building.

We didn't have the time to party at night on Beale St, but we walked it during the afternoon and stopped for a beer at B.B. Kings restaurant. We had stopped at the one in Nashville, last fall and it's similar. We ran into Rarecas Bonds at the bar. He is the flipper who at 11 years of age was making his money by tumbling/flipping down Beale St. He got the part in the movie, The Firm. He's the one in the scene with Tom Cruise and Jeanne Tripplehorn were walking down Beale Street and the 11 year old starts flipping beside them to get tips. Tom starts flipping with him. Rarecas Bonds today trains the young flippers to keep them busy and out of trouble.

Had to make a stop at the Memphis Pyramid which is now a Bass Pro Shop.  A very huge one.



We left Memphis without much of a plan except to head to Texas. The main thinking is Oklahoma is on fire, north of that is too cold, so we headed I-40 to Little Rock then I-30 to Texas. We are stopping in Texarkansas for a couple of days with no agenda. But we'll wash clothes and do some serious Texas planning so we'll know where to go next.

First stop for sightseeing

When we left of Monday, we consumed a lot of time getting the refrigerated food transferred and the essential items loaded, so we didn't get but 4 hours down the road. We stopped in Marion, NC at the Tom Johnson's RV Campground. It's part of the Tom Johnson's Camping World service center. It's right before the big climb into Asheville, NC on I-40. It's a good place to camp for Mt. Mitchell and for getting service to the RV. Luckily, nothing major needed work after 5 months in storage.

On Tuesday, we drove hard for 6 hours to Dickson, TN just beyond Nashville 45 miles or so. Stayed at Tanbark Campground. Not impressive to look at, but the Passport America price was $16.75 for full hookups on a pull-thru lot. Most of the rigs were long term and only a few spots were for transients like us. Nice folks, very helpful.

Got to Memphis on Wednesday and stopped for a few days at Tom Sawyer's RV Campground right on the banks of the Mississippi river in West Memphis, AR. Great location if you miss the flood season. This park is frequently completely underwater, but this week it's great. As we setup, we saw John and Shirley pull in with their Montana RV. Haven't seen John since Myrtle Beach, SC. They are heading east and we are heading west where they came from.

Got to visit with Dina and Jeffrey. We usually only meet up with them at Oktoberfest Zinzinnati, in Cincinnati since we moved to NC. They took us around town to scout out a few places we are checking out today. Jeffrey loaned us his car so we can leave the RAM 3500 dually parked at the CG. It's not an around town car. :-)

We haven't seen much at this posting, but I wanted to catch up on the blog and post the sunrise I caught over a barge on the river: