POPPED THE CLUTCH ON MY KEYBOARD BEFORE PUTTING MY BRAIN IN GEAR AGAIN!!

ALL OF TO-NIGHT'S PHOTOS ARE FROM CITY OF ROCKS STATE PARK, NEW MEXICO.

Our 'after the rain' photos of the park are HERE

Was reading Joe's blog SOMEWHERE IN TIME this morning about the difficulties they were having finding a decent RV Park in Hope Arkansas. Some other bloggers had commented as well about deplorable parks so of course I had to go & put my 2 cents worth in as well ending my comment with the words, "RV Parks?? Bah Humbug!! Sometimes I am much more opinionated than I really need to be & that thought stuck with me this morning as I made a paint connection to Joe's blog while sitting on the floor painting our kitchen cabinets. Thought occurred to me that I have a habit of negatively painting all RV Parks with the same brush & that just isn't right on my part!! We have actually stayed in some nice RV Parks & would you believe I even had some nice things to say about them. Manzano's comes to mind in Silver City, New Mexico. We stayed there for a few nights & liked it so well I even wrote up a good review for a campground review site. We were there the first week in December of 08 & if anyone is interested they can find our blogs for our time at Manzano's in our archives under December 08. Before moving to Manzanos for a few days we had been at City of Rocks State Park just south of Silver City New Mexico Here are the photos I took of MANZANO'S RV PARK. It always annoys me though when I see RV Parks with sites jammed so close to-gether folks can hardly get their slides out. That smacks of pure greed by the RV Parks owners with no consideration whatsoever for the RVer. Jam as many people onto a plot of ground as humanly possible & then charge them astronomical rates for their stay on top of it. I do understand the need for RV Parks because without them there would be no RVing whatsoever for hundreds of thousands of people. It's just too bad that so many of them offer a minimum amount of comfort for a maximum amount of money!! I am a very fortunate fellow in that Kelly & I are alike in our RVing thoughts, ideas, plans, & dreams. Kelly comes from an RV snowbird family & as kids her Mom & Dad would load the family up in the old station wagon for camping & fishing trips into Canada. Kelly is actually from Spencerport NY where here parents, brother, & sisters still live. Her Mother & Dad had went to Florida every winter in their trailer, Class C, & Class A motorhomes so the RVing life comes natural to Kelly. Having raised 5 kids she came from a very hectic, busy, & socially active lifestyle & by the time we met back in 93 she had had enough of all that & was ready for a complete change of lifestyle. So was I & we've been pursuing the quieter, roads less traveled way of life ever since. We love the remoteness of the desert with all it's peace, serenity, & tranquility. Stars from mountaintop to mountaintop, only the sounds of the desert winds in the cactus. Morning walks in beautiful natural surroundings. No sides of buildings or RV's to look at, no traffic, no screaming kids, no noisy neighbors, & no people problems of any kind. I know we are in the minority with this kind of thinking but I'm glad we are because otherwise if people really understood the wonderful experience of boondocking they would for sure all rush out to the desert which would just turn it into a massive RV Park with paved roads, potted palm trees, pink flamingos, & golf carts. We would then be back to the place where I was when I originally started this blog. Oh dear, how did I get so off track again. Sorry Joe, I was just wanting to say a few words & apologize about my comment..........RV Parks?? Bah Humbug!!
Oh, & how's my day going?? Well, now that I asked.............it's not going worth a hoot. My right knee is killing me, my left leg is now sore from trying to compensate for the injured right leg, I got more paint on me than I got on the cupboards, our van is in the garage undergoing a transmission change & my planned blog for to-day about another ghost town will have to wait because.........I popped the clutch on my keyboard this morning before putting my mind into gear again & here I am!! Just read Jerry's comment from, OUR LIFE ON WHEELS & had myself a light bulb moment as to why I couldn't get RV DREAMS in our rotation list. Went back, made a simple change & Walla.............they are now in our, 'Blogs We Follow.'
GROANER'S CORNER:(( In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England , when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them "Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down." It's where we get the phrase......."mind your P's and Q's"

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/
The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...AL.

LETS HAVE US A LOOK AT PINOS ALTOS

On our way to the Gila Cliff Dwellings on Monday we kind of blew right through the old mining town of Pinos Altos before we even new we were in the town. The small highway skirts by it before the few houses you see actually registers in your mind they are part of the town. To-day we drove the short distance from Silver City back to little Pinos Altos. http://www.pinosaltos.org/histsites.html

In 1859 a group of forty niner miners heading home to California discovered gold in Pinos Altos. A rough & tumble town sprang up & was soon the center of a gold bonanza, and ................Apache Indian raids. One of those raids occurred on Sept 22, 1861 when 400 Apaches attacked the town. Capt. Thomas Mastin, nine Arizona scouts, & a number of miners defended the town's mining camp. The Indians finally withdrew but not until Capt. Mastin & his brother Virgil had been fatally wounded.

Pino Altos is not a town in the way we think of a town. It does have a main street with some pavement at one end & dirt at the other end about 2 blocks away. That is basically Pino Altos except for a smattering of buildings in various states of livability scattered about for maybe a quarter mile in each direction. And yet, as the owner of the general store & post office told us, "this is paradise." And, you know what.....I am inclined to agree with him.We spent maybe three quarters of an hour in Pino Altos, taking photos, walking around looking at things, & talking to a total of 2 people. The General store/post office/restaurant/gift shop/ is the hub of activity as we noticed people driving in to pick up their mail. Check to-day's photo album for the pictures I took inside the general store & Kelly's "special friend" sitting at the lunch counter.

Many of the houses & buildings here are well beyond repair but it is this very fact that gives this town it's special ambience & authentic western feel. I could have taken pictures of houses that we are used to seeing but decided to focus my attention on the decaying history that makes this little place....paradise. My kind of town:))Nice scenic drive back to Silver City & our little home away from home. It was 1 o'clock & we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing & soaking up the warm New Mexico sun. Well, at least I did. Kelly slipped into town for a bit of browsing at some stores she had noticed earlier.

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/

I have added a few more pictures of the RV Park we are staying at to a previous web album.......
http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/MANZANOSRVPARK

IT'S MONDAY MORNING & WE'RE TAKING CARE OF GREMLINS

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TRY TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE MOON & 2 PLANETS WITHOUT USING A TRI-POD:((
Most unusual to look out the window & see a streetlight, but there it was, an actual street light. At City of Rocks the brightest thing outside was the planet Venus in the southwest sky. We have a decorative little light right on top of our utility post beside the rig too. Like I said in the previous post, this is a nice little well kept RV Park. Twenty dollars a night & that includes full hook-ups, a warm friendly clubhouse with spacious washrooms including tubs & showers. Laundry room, exercise room, free hi-speed wireless, DVD & book exchange. Big porch with rocking chairs, full size kitchen & living room.

Didn't take Kelly long to get on our Skype phone this morning & begin taking care of business. Phone calls went out to cancel our Hughesnet & Starchoice accounts but of course as we all know when dealing with these large type companies things never end up as hoped. They sure know how to throw roadblocks in your way to keep their bottom lines profitable. Hats off to Skype though for making their superb & free computer-phone capabilities free. (ok, $32 yearly) http://www.skype.com/welcomeback/

Checked the oil levels in rig, car, & generator. Holding tank problem solved. Fresh water replenished, tanks dumped & a few other small problems cleared up. It was Monday morning & we were on the offensive getting ourselves re-organized from our on-set of Gremlins in the past few days. One by one, down they went until I began to get a little paranoid about not having enough to worry about so it didn't take me long to convince myself that the fan motor in the laptop was not working. Couldn't hear anything & couldn't feel any air moving out the side of the computer. So, shut it down, closed it up, popped into it's Samsonite carrying case, put it into the car & headed out to find a computer repair place that was going to have a Toshiba fan motor. Oops, car's gas tank bouncing off empty so filled that up for a whopping $22. Spotted a computer store right on highway 180 not far from the park so in we went. Nice fellow who thought he just might have some Toshiba parts around, but first suggested a little compressed air blown in around the fan motor after noticing it looked a little congested in there. Into the back room went the computer, a big whooooooosh of air & out the door came flying enough dog fur to knit a couple new sweaters. "There," he said, "should be OK now," And so it was & so away we went.

ABOUT A MILE & HALF THAT-A-WAY IS DOWNTOWN SILVER CITY

Next stop was the propane facility we had also spotted from the road. In we went with the Blue Flame heater. Lady said the repair fellow would be back later & to just leave it with them. And so it was & so away we went.
(Picked it up later in the afternoon & they said it checked out ok but to make sure the unit has a better oxygen supply because it has a sensor that shuts it down if the air's oxygen level drops. That's probably what has been happening. Also noticed our furnace has been running fine since being plugged into electricity so that stopping & starting problem probably had something to do with the coaches battery. Not a big problem.)

Next stop was a second Verizon store in town for more information. It's a complicated business when you get into all these cell phone plans, Sim cards, air cards, roaming charges, Wilson antennas, amplifiers, boosters, wireless weasels & butterscotch milkshakes. And so it was & so away we went. Quick stop at McDonalds for 2 Seniors coffees. And so it was........awww, you know the saying.

Last stop was Wal-Mart (of course) for a few groceries & then back to the rig for some much needed rest & relaxation.........that just somehow seemed to last for the rest of the afternoon. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

When we checked into Manzano's RV Park yesterday we were pleasantly surprised to find out they had free high speed internet so we have been using that service since then & saving our Verizon bytes for later when we are either on the road, in State Parks, or out in the desert boondocking.

To-morrow we are planning on heading to the Gila cliff dwellings north of Silver City. The old mining town of Pinos Altos is on the way so we'll have us a look around there as well. Nice area here so we just might stay longer than planned.......................

7:30 P.M.......Just walked over to the park's clubhouse & took some photos inside. I will upload them to a photo album to-night & then add some outside daylight photos around the park to the same album to-morrow night.

THE CLUBHOUSE

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/