Sunday, December 07, 2008

SILVER CITY TO KARTCHNER CAVERNS STATE PARK

A WALL PAINTING IN THE DISCOVERY CENTER

A co-worker in Clinton, Ontario once told me he gets up a 4 a.m. every morning & starts his day by reading our blog when we are traveling. Well Bruce, I'm here to tell you that I'm sometimes up at 2 a.m. just writing the darn thing. And so it was last night again. Don't know what wakes me up occasionally but when it does I'm usually beat for going back to sleep for an hour or so. It's either watch some TV or hop aboard the computer & catch up on some email, edit some photos, or start on the next day's blog.

Another cold morning so we cut our doggy walk a bit short & started packing up the rig. Had to kind of wiggle the motorhome around to clear the tight campsite & slightly re-arranged a wooden post in the process. I exited the motorhome & re-re-arranged the post back to it's original position & I was off. Kelly followed in the car & we met up at the Wal-Mart store just down the road to hook up the car. Probably the first time we were ever in a Wal-Mart parking lot without actually going into the Wal-Mart store itself. BARREL CACTUS FLOWERS

The drive heading southwest to Lordsburg on highway 90 was very scenic with hardly any traffic. Just a nice sunny quiet Sunday morning drive all the way on a gentley winding road. Picked up interstate 10 & swung our nose westward. Crossed the Arizona State line at 10:30, or 12:30 Ontario time. Most of the traffic was trucks but did notice more RV's on the road than a few weeks ago. Watched a big widespread dark cloud cover rolling in from the southwest. It's the stormfront that is expected to bring snow to northeast New Mexico to-morrow.HEADING DOWN HIGHWAY 90 INTO LORDSBURG, NEW MEXICO

We reached Kartchner Caverns State Park about 1:15 p.m. Very nice campsite & very few people here. That is always a bonus!! State Parks in New Mexico are $14 a night with electricity & water but Arizona is $22 a night. You don't want to even know what California is:((

Didn't take us long to get things set up & within one minute of turning our computer on & slipping in our Verizon air card..........WE WERE ON-LINE:))))))) If we were still using the tri-pod system I wouldn't even have had the maddening jumble of wires out of the car yet. And who knows if we would have got a good signal from the satellite because we had a heavy cloud cover over us. We know this air card isn't going to work everywhere but so far it sure beats all the hassle of physically setting up that tri-pod, dish, & arm plus all the computer stuff we had to go through to get on-line. And then you had better hope the wind didn't come up & move the dish off the satellite!! Got your note in the Shoutbox Don & we have been looking into that....thanks for the link. The only disappointment is that we can only get one channel on the television & being this close to Tucson, that has surprised us. Looks like it is a boring sports channel too:(( After a little afternoon siesta we walked over to the main visitors building here called the Discovery Center. Beautiful desert hummingbird gardens surround this superb building. A lot of money has been spent here. Very spacious & modern with lots of exhibits & a large screen theater showing a 15 minute movie explaining the caves. HOWEVER, there are two main drawbacks. First of all it is very expensive to see the caves compared to Carlsbad over in New Mexico. (to see our tour of the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, go here..... http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/THURSDAYDEC21
$18.95 a person to see the Rotunda/Throne room & $22 to see the Big Room here at Kartchner. Needless to say we'll be doing the Rotunda/Throne tour. The second bug-a-boo for me is....NO CAMERA'S ALLOWED IN THE CAVES!! !^**#!!(*>+**%# Couldn't believe it when I heard that!!!!!!!!! So, the only thing I can do is take a few pics around the Discovery Center.......... which I did. But, no photos of the caves themselves. I'm so mad about that I could almost go outside & spit....maybe even spit twice!!

Well, at least we've got a nice campsite. We are ringed by high hills & mountains all around & this is a really picturesque place. Another well thought out & beautiful State Park. We were really lucky to catch a beautiful sunset going down so I grabbed my camera & scrambled up on top of the motorhome to crack off a few shots. They are at the end of to-day's photo album. To-morrow morning we will take the Kartchner Cavern tour of the Throne room & then decide where we feel like going next. There is a free campground over near Benson so we might slip over there to-morrow night but not sure. Some RV friends from British Columbia that we met last year are in the area so we may get to-gether for a coffee with them to-morrow too. We'll wait & see which way the wind is blowing in the morning:))
SHE'S A GREAT LITTLE PICTURE TAKER:))

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