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| Welcome to Cottonwood Campground |
After a great winter in the Texas Hill Country, we are on the road again. We spent a week in Midlothian, Texas with Doug and his family (or as I like to call them "some White folks"), capped off with Katie’s Graduation from The University of Texas at Arlington. She earned a Bachelor of Science Degree with a major in kinesiology. It was a very big day and we are all so proud of her accomplishment. After taking a week long break, she will be jumping right back in, beginning work on a Master’s degree. If I understand correctly, she was selected for one of only three slots open in the program beginning summer semester. Once again, Way To Go, Katie Dark!!!
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| Katie Dark is now a UTA Alumnus! |
During our stay in Midlo (that’s what the locals call Midlothian) we dry camped (boondocked) in the White folks back yard. This gave us the opportunity to make some repairs and modification to our rig while the White folks were off at work and school. I gave my new Honda generator a shake-down, which involved spilling oil all over the tailgate of my truck and my sunglasses. The Honda generator is a wonderful machine, but its design for oil fill sucks. If anyone out there has a suggestion for dealing with this, please let me know.
In addition to the generator shake-down, I repaired the fender skirt on the trailer that had been damaged when we blew a tire last fall.
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| Before |
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| After |
I also added an outside receptacle for our Satellite TV connection so we
don’t have to run the coax through a window. I think it was quite brave
of me to whip out the power drill and bore holes right through the side
on my trailer.
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| New Satellite connection |
With these projects done, and Katie graduated on Sunday, we hit the road on Monday, May 12. When we were doing our planning last winter, we were focused on making the Oregon coast by late June. The route we planned took us through the northwest corner of New Mexico into Utah, then north into Idaho, before turning west into Oregon.
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Our plans for Oregon have changed, but we decided to keep the first leg of our plan and headed for the San Juan River in northwest New Mexico. The trip from Midlo is about 850 miles, which is a comfortable two day drive by car. So, for the Leos, it’s a four day run. We spent Monday night at the Old Town Cotton Gin RV Park just west of Quanah, Texas, Tuesday boondocked at Flying J in Tucumcari, NM and Wednesday night at the Flying J in Albuquerque, NM.
Then at 10:31 AM Mountain Daylight Time on Thursday, we crossed the Continental Divide for the first time in 2014!! I always get a thrill making that crossing, because it symbolizes that we are really On The Road Again!! The crossing was at an elevation of 7000 and we were beginning to see snow capped peaks in the distance to our north.
A few hours later, we pulled into Cottonwood Campground on the San Juan River in Navajo Lake State Park, where we will be spending our first week. While we can see the snow caps to the north, the San Juan flows through rugged high desert country. This is dusty badlands where cottonwood trees grow in the river bottoms and the rest of the terrain is barren, except for
piñon-juniper.
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| View west near Aztec New Mexico |
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| Looking north from Aztec, New Mexico toward Durango and the snow capped peaks |
As with all the parts of the country we have traveled so far, it has it’s own kind of beauty. The rocky outcroppings and vast vistas are stunning.
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| On the road into Cottonwood Campground |
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| Behind our site in Cottonwood Campground |
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| A closer look |
This is oil and gas country. Every road in the area is bordered and crisscrossed by gas pipelines. It’s hard to find a location to take a landscape shot without some of the petroleum infrastructure in the scene. On a drive from Cottonwood to Aztec, NM to pick up provisions, I noticed that about 80% of the vehicles we saw where white Ford pick-up trucks, with ConocoPhillips’ logo on their door. And they all have oil field service gear on board and a buggy-whip antenna that has a red flag above a yellow flag on its tip. It didn’t take long the figure out the significant of these flags. It seems like no attempt has been made to moderate the terrain when building the two lane highways in this part of the country, so traveling from Cottonwood to Aztec is very much like taking the roller-coaster at Six Flags. The first indication that there is an oncoming vehicle headed toward you over the next rise are the flags fluttering atop the buggy-whip!
Since we are only going to be here for a few days, we are using our time to explore and get acclimatized to being back at altitude. We’ve now been here long enough that the headaches I got for the first few days have subsided. While the San Juan is a top rated trout fishery, I have decided to save my our-of-state fishing license fund for Colorado where we will be spend a couple of months instead of a few days.
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| At the head of the Texas Hole, San Juan River |
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| Above the Texas Hole, San Juan River |
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| Drift boats line up at the Texas Hole like taxis at DFW! |
But we have been exploring the river and will plan to come back here when we can spend more time. I’d like to combine this with fishing the Cimarron and Valle Vidal for a month or two. But that’s not this year’s plan.
On Friday we will hit the road again and head for those snow caps to
our north, near Durango, CO, for two weeks on Vallecito Lake. Then we
will wander our way north so we will be in Woodland Park, CO to meet up
with Maggie and Jonas for the Fourth of July. After that we Wander On.
