Author Archives: Jill and Bud

When I was making our plans for this leg of the journey I found out that Adler would be competing at the WGI World Winds Championships in Dayton and Northern Kentucky University Arenas this weekend. So I booked us into Stonelick State Park just east of Cincinnati and between the two venues.

It’s a pretty campground on a little lake…

but this weekend it was filled with campers with kids and dogs.

Yesterday morning Matey and I took a long walk through the woods.

I was happy to find May Apples,

red Trillium,

and Dogwood in bloom.

We then left Matey in the trailer and drove to the Cincinnati airport to pick up Jamie and Sean. We had lunch

at Grassroots and Vine in Fort Thomas, Kentucky.

We ate outside despite the chill because there was a baby shower taking up most of the tables inside and the din made it impossible to have a conversation. The food was great, though. After lunch we drove to watch Adler in the preliminary competition (where I forgot to take pictures) then dropped Jamie and Sean at their hotel.

Matey and I had a late walk.

We took another long walk along the lake this morning, because he was getting left behind again.

This time we picked up Jamie and Sean and drove to Dayton to watch the finals. We stayed for the awards. Here’s all the bands that made finals. There were scholastic and independent entries in three levels, A Class, Open Class and World Class. Adler’s band was entered in the highest class, the World Class.

They are the double column behind the Arkansas flag. They came in fifth, not bad since they were probably the smallest school competing in that class. I think they were pretty happy with their performance and their score.

This is the celebration after the awards. Obviously all the band members were excited. It was a fun day, but another long one. After awards we got to see Adler for about a minute and then he got on the bus back to Hot Springs and we took Jamie and Sean to the Dayton airport for their flight home.

When we got back to camp and I took poor Matey out for a walk, I was happy to see that most of the other campers had left. We have two more days here and will enjoy the peace and quiet.

Today we drove from Hot Springs to Fort Massac State Park in Metropolis, Illinois. It feels good to be moving again after 13 days in Hot Springs. As usual those days were filled with appointments. We had 10 visits between doctors, dentists and the vet. We also installed our new hitch and had a new mattress delivered. And I washed and waxed the trailer. Amidst all that we managed a few visits with Jamie and the family.

It turns out that this is the oldest state park in Illinois and I appreciate the mature trees.

Matey appreciates the grass, great for rolling.

There’s a disc golf course that wanders all through these woods and I’m looking forward to trying it.

We are right on the Ohio River.

And there is the fort. Being right on the Ohio River I thought this was probably a civil war fort. Nope. This was a French fort, built to keep the English from moving west into the then French territories.

Altogether this is a very nice park, and it’s great to be moving again.

We are back in Hot Springs, back at The Vista at the Lake where we sat out Bud’s knee replacement surgery a year ago. Better times this year.

We got here in time for me to see Adler compete in the state Winds competition for marching band. This is just the wind players with no percussion instruments or color guard. The percussion and color guard each compete separately. This is because it’s an indoor competition on the basketball court and the whole band wouldn’t fit. Adler was disappointed with their performance, I thought they looked and sounded great. They still won gold as they were the only school that sent a winds contingent!

The other thing we were in time for was the eclipse. Hot Springs was in the path of totality and we had clear skies. This is a shot of the start of the eclipse that Jamie took. She taped one lens of a pair of eclipse glasses over the camera lenses on her phone. I couldn’t get mine to focus, but hers came out pretty good.

Here’s the progression she took as the moon moved in front of the sun.

The sun is almost hidden.

At this point it was still bright out, just a bit dimmed. But if you look closely at the points of light in the shadow of the tree you can see that the smallest ones are all crescent shaped, like the occluded sun.

Here we are, Bud, me, Adler, Jacey and Tia, all on the back porch waiting for the last of the sun to be covered. (Bria is on the pool cover chasing leaves, oblivious to the whole thing.)

And then the sun was covered and you could look without the glasses. This is a photo with my phone. It makes the corona look way too large.

And though the sun didn’t look right, I did manage to catch one of the planets that showed up in the now darkened sky.

Adler remembered to take a picture of the darkness around us with the lighted clouds in the distance at the edge of the area of totality.

Jamie had her regular camera out, and took this shot.

That bright spot on the bottom wasn’t the sun being uncovered, that was a solar flare!

It was a wonderful experience and I’m glad we were here for it. And very glad we had clear skies. That night we had thunderstorms.

On Easter Sunday we came further east to Little River Park in Ringold, Oklahoma.

We are out of the desert and into the woods!

We have lots of space around us and it is very quiet here.

It was not quiet at the disc golf course we found. It was on the grounds of an International Paper plant.

They were working and it was noisy and stinky, but otherwise fun.

Back at Little River Park it was peaceful and quiet. Not even the fish were moving.

A storm front passed by last night with a chance of severe thunderstorms and hail. But although there were storms around us it stayed quiet here.

We woke up to a still and lovely dawn.

Matey and I found flowering dogwood…

and birdsfoot violets on our walk. I’m glad to be in the woods for spring.

We came to Lake Arrowhead State Park on Wednesday. You can see it has nice, paved level sites and they have some room around them. Also, we have great internet and we’re only about 15 miles from Wichita Falls, Texas. So we could get groceries and refill our propane, fill up with diesel and do the wash.

But this isn’t a place I’d come for vacation.

There’s a fairly large lake, but the water is brown. Still, folks were fishing…

and swimming.

Everything is pretty flat around here,

including the disc golf course.

The prettiest trail went up and along a levee.

The only hills were going up and coming back down the other side.

The most interesting thing on the trail was probably this culvert taking us under a road.

The park has its own old-time oil well.

I’d like it better if it weren’t working. It’s not far from our site and the low “pud, pud, pud” it makes under the clatter carries quite clearly to our site. It makes an odd backdrop to the bird calls.

Still, there is beauty in every landscape…

if you just look closely enough.

It’s spring here and the wildflowers are out. I learned that these are a hemiparisitic flower that grow from the roots of grasses. They can photosynthesize if conditions are right, otherwise they can get water and sugar from their host plant. Life constantly amazes me.

And though I had to walk a half mile to get this picture, there are Texas bluebonnets here.

So, a nice stop.

We spent four days camped at Palo Duro Canyon State Park in northwest Texas.

The campgrounds are all down on the floor of the canyon, which is the second largest canyon in the U.S.

It made for beautiful surroundings but no Verizon, so no blog posts.

We also had a wild ride weather-wise.

Sunday morning we went out early and hiked some of the Lower Comanche Trail.

I love the gray rocks that seem tossed around on the red soil.

We hiked up along the side of the canyon. The views were fascinating. The thin white layers are a form of gypsum.

We hiked up…

until the trail started to make its first descent. We turned back because we were worried about Matey getting too tired; not us mind you, it was the dog we were worried about.

Anyway, it was a lovely walk and the air was cool and crisp and the sky was mostly blue.

Then it got warmer and the wind began to really blow. They were having a dust storm up out of the canyon. It was so dusty at the campsite that we turned the air conditioner on rather than open any windows.

It rained just a little and there was so much dust in the air that the rain drops left mud marks on the windows!

I drove to the canyon rim in the afternoon when the wind had subsided a bit. The blue sky and vistas were still swallowed in the dust.

The next day the dust was gone and so was the warmth. We bundled up for another hike.

We hiked back the Lighthouse Trail as the sun poked through here and there to light up the canyon walls.

It was a nice wide trail, probably the most popular trail in the park. It goes back 2.8 miles to Lighthouse Rock, which is the symbol of the park.

Matey would be too worn out if we took him the whole way, but I wanted to get far enough back to see the rock.

Finally, at about a mile and a half I saw it and was able to get this picture.

On the walk back it brightened up but it didn’t get any warmer.

We finished this beautiful walk in snow flurries! No need for the air conditioner that day!

The next day, our last full day at the park, the weather was pretty nice, still chilly in the morning but more sun than clouds. We chose the Rock Garden Trail for our last hike.

This trail wound up through an ancient landslide on the side of the canyon.

It was our favorite of the three trails we walked.

That’s our campsite across the canyon.

It was a dramatic landscape in places.

We hiked the first mile of the trail, it went on another mile and a half until it reached the rim of the canyon, but a two mile hike was enough for Matey.

We still got to enjoy the views on the way back down.

And there were plenty of views to enjoy.

In the afternoon Matey and I drove up to the visitor center on the rim of the canyon. This stone structure was built in 1933 by the CCC.

Even the late afternoon walks Matey and I took on the canyon floor were lovely.

This canyon was the place of the last free stand of the plains Indians. Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne people were all living here with their horses and wild buffalo herds. At dawn on September 24 of 1874 the US Cavalry came down the canyon walls and attacked their settlements. The women and children fled on foot with only what they could carry. After driving away the warriors the cavalry came back and burned the villages and the winter stores. They rounded up 1,400 horses, took those they wanted and killed the rest – 1,100 horses. The natives, with no food, tools or horses walked 200 miles to the reservation at Fort Sill, ending their way of life.

As I enjoyed the beauty of this place I mourned their loss.

Yesterday we drove down to Oasis State Park in eastern New Mexico. When we got here the temperature was close to 70 degrees and the trees were green.

On closer inspection the green was the developing seeds, not leaves, but still.

The sites here are very nice.

I think Matey and I will be able to spend some time outside.

I think this park gets its name from the small artificial lake that is here.

It’s pretty enough and has some trails…

but the sand dunes are the highest hills around!

The spring weather is certainly welcome.

But Bud and I both miss the mountains.

After a number of days of questionable weather including this hail, yesterday was cool but with just a 20% chance of rain, so we decided to try golfing at the very interesting course right down the road.

This was the Pueblo de Cochiti Golf Course and both the setting and the building were beautiful.

The course was in good shape…

and it was a fun place to play.

I enjoyed their signs.

Well, most of them.

We didn’t see any rattlesnakes but I did manage to see quite a few sand traps more closely than I liked.

Neither of us had a good score, but we did have a good time.

And it turned out to be a beautiful day.

The weather was almost decent yesterday so we decided to get outside. I found Cerrillos State Park on the map, looked it up and it sounded promising. It had a number of trails through the hills where mines remained from the late 1800’s. We stopped at the visitor center and the volunteer there recommended the Escalante and Mirador Trails for a short loop (about two miles) that would take us by three of the old mines.

These were well made and well maintained trails. They were worth our $5 daily fee.

The Cerrillos Hills were formed by magma bubbling up through what had been a sea bottom. As the hot magma came through the calcarious soil above it, it reacted and a number of minerals formed. Erosion has left these minerals close to the surface of the hills.

The first mine we encountered was an iron mine. These mines weren’t what I was expecting. They were all hand dug and the ones that remain are all from a period from 1879 to 1884. This mine would have been profitable only until the railroad came through making it reasonable to transport heavy iron articles. It was only 9 feet deep.

Besides iron the hills had silver, lead, gold, copper, manganese and turquoise. The turquoise was only prized by the native peoples and a few miners who thought it was an indicator of gold.

We hiked by two more mines. This was the Pride of the Camp shaft. I don’t know how deep this one was, it was probably a lead-silver mine.

Some of the shafts in the park are a hundred feet deep, but there was no way to gauge the depth as all of them that are deep enough to present a hazard are now secured, like this. The sign didn’t say how deep it was.

The last mine we saw was the Rosellia Lode. It yielded 30 pounds of manganese per ton of rock and was 19 feet deep. Seems like a hard way to make a living.

The mines were interesting, but the most valuable thing for me was the chance to walk in these hills. This is the view at a knob. At the beginning of the video you see the snow capped Jemez Mountains. Next is the broad Rio Grande Valley and finally the Sandia Mountains. I miss the trees out here, but I love the long vistas.

Things did not go our way in Santa Fe. We planned a trip for Friday because it was going to be windy and cold, not a day for outdoor activities. So we left Matey in the trailer with our Waggle Pet Monitor and drove a bit over 40 minutes to downtown where the plaza, Palace of the Governors and museums are.

Well in an old city like Santa Fe downtown is not conducive to driving, especially in a big pickup. We looked for a parking space and found one about four blocks away. It was metered and the meter took credit cards; I was prepared to pay whatever it took to give us two or three hours. Not going to happen. The meter was limited to an hour. Since we were already parked and I had paid for the hour we took off walking.

Walking briskly, to save time and stay warm, we got back to the plaza. Too cold for a leisurely stroll so we looked for the Palace of the Governors. It faced the plaza but access was on a side street through the New Mexico History Museum. We entered and paid $12 each for admission. By then we had about 45 minutes left.

This is the Palace of the Governors. Sorry I have no outside pictures, it was too cold and we were too hurried for me to remember to take any.

This was my favorite room because it showed under the skin of this remarkable structure. The Palace was first built in 1610. Because it is adobe it has been constantly renovated. Notice the huge support logs. Across the room the thing that looks like a picture frame was a glassed opening into the wall. The two squares on the floor are glass portals to the subfloor.

The walls of this building are thick as you can see from this window.

It was hard to get an image without glare, but you can see the wall layers involved through the portal.

The floor was not always nice wood. There’s flagstone down there…

and more than one layer of that.

I took a shot of the plaza from inside the warm building. We took a quick turn through exhibits covering 400 years of history and practically ran back to the truck. We got back in exactly 60 minutes and the parking enforcement person was across the street from our truck.

We’d planned to go out for lunch, but our pet monitor said the trailer was slowly cooling off, so we decided to do the errands we had to and get back to see what went wrong. Returned to find one of our heaters off. We must have had a very brief power outage and that heater didn’t come back on. It wasn’t bad yet, but it was down to about 65 degrees.

I’d like to go back and explore the city, but not on a cloudy, windy, 45 degree day. We’re not due for any really decent weather before we leave…so another time, I hope.