Ken & Diane Travel

 February 27, 2024 Our 52nd day. Well we made the trip to Cedar Crest, NM and a hell of a drive it was. Sustained cross winds in the 30-40 miles per hour. Steering wheel was always turned to the left to keep me going straight. It was only supposed to be a 4 hour drive, we left at 9:30 am but did not arrive until 2:30 pm.  After about 2 hours we pulled into a wayside for a break. I let Buddy out and heard something banging. Put Buddy back in coach and did a walk-a-round. That is when I saw the bed slide awning flopping against the coach. I quickly got my ladder out and extended it to the awning. Diane came out to see what was going on and held the ladder as I climbed up.   I grabbed the loose part and it took off like a kite, luckily I was able to hang on or who know where it would have ended up. I told Diane to watch her head and I got control of the part and made my way down the ladder.  Now the question was: how do I control the awning from unraveling while driving...

 February 25, 2024 Our 50th day. This past week we did a little hiking at a local state park and again at the Carlsbad Caverns. The state park was just a flat open desert area out side of Carlsbad. An easy walk of about 1.7 miles but we got our 5000 steps in. After the walk we hopped in the Jeep and drove through some of the area we just walked and came across a dried up river bed. What was interesting about this river bed was a concrete barrier that would slow the water when the river bed fills during their raining season.    Local schools and perhaps gangs tagged most of the barrier and side walls. Typical in New Mexico and Texas are the dried up river beds or washes. Many are 10 to 20 feet deep to manage the water when it comes down off the mountains. With the rocky surface little soaks into the ground.  I did end up in the briar patch with the Jeep as we continued to navigate through the washes.  We visited the Living Desert and Zoo also outside of Carlsbad,...

 February 16, 2024 Continued: On Thursday we took a drive to Roswell, NM expecting to see a small town but it turns out is has 40,000 people. We did not know what to expect but did locate the downtown with all it's Alien shops. We went to the UFO Museum which had the history of the 1947 crash of a Weather Balloon i.e. space craft.  There was a lot of information posted from eye witnesses and military personal with Secret Documents signed by President Harry Thurman. We spent about an hour and came to the conclusion that the THING (the place we visited last year) was more entertaining.     Today we decided to head back to the Buffalo Gap Falls and do some hiking. It was 64 degrees and sunny with a nice breeze. We hiked up the stone path to the top of the mountain. We were out for 1 1/2 hours and walked until we encountered a Angus Cow on the path. He and I had a stare down for about 5 minutes, he lost and bowed his head.  Had to turn around at this point as t...

 February 16, 2024 Our 41 Day When we arrived in Carlsbad, NM two weeks back and tried to do a load of laundry, the washing machine quit working. So it is to the campground laundry room. Not the worst place but a bit inconvenient. Then to add to that the water pump stopped working. I ordered a new one from Amazon which came this week. Only took an hour to install but I had to drop down the panel in the wet bay to to get at.  They don't make it easy, should have been a 15 minute job if not for the panel. Anyhow, got it in and it is working.   We went for a drive to check out the Brantley Lake State park and campground. The park was nice but only one pull thru site and not big enough for our rig. We saw a sign for Jumping Rock and decided to take the dirt road and check it out. It was on the Pasco River. The trail was rocky with some tricky spots but we made it to the Jump Rock. This is an area where the locals must party, there was glass everywhere. The "Rock". You ne...

 February 12, 2024 Day 37 Feels like Wisconsin all over again.  beautiful sunset at night                                Then snowing with 30 mile an hour winds and 23 degrees this morning.

 February 9, 2024 Our 34th day. Early this past week we headed out looking for Buffalo Gap Falls. It was to be 32 miles from a turn off. We went 35 miles and did not find it so we turned around and headed back. Needless to say about 13 miles back we saw the sign telling us to turn down another road to get to the falls. As we were low on fuel we decided to call it a day and try this again another day.  Yesterday we went to the Carlsbad Caverns which lies 800 feet below ground. We got to the park at 11:30 am and started the hike to the cave shortly thereafter. The entry was a zig zag walk way leading into the cave. entrance to Carlsbad Cavern           This is a self guided tour at your own pace, for the most part you were in the cave by yourself. I think we saw maybe 10 people throughout our time in the cave. About 45 minutes in we came across 3 people who lost track of their guide (you can also have guided tours) and asked us if we saw a tour grou...

 February 2, 2024 Our 27 Day We have been in Study Butte for 11 days and for the most part we have been sick:( Diane got it first, chest cold with cough. A few days later I came down with similar stuff, sinus, runny nose and cough. But we have made the best of it. The weather has been warm with highs in the mid 70's. lots of sunshine with only a few drops of rain. Down here it is a big deal when they get 1 tenth inch of rain.  Bath house in the mountain above Terlingua, TX Sunset in Study Butte  We have managed to get out and drive around the country side looking at what had changed since we were last here. There is lots of new housing construction and camping areas if you like yurts, single room A-frames and overnight rental units.   We were in the back country and saw a for sale sign listing 40 acres with two older homes on. We found it and the homes were 10 X 12 foot corrugated steel rusted and falling apart.      There are a lot of home like t...