Month: February 2023

Yesterday, we left V&S’s beautiful home and headed south to warmer climes. It was a late start, thanks to last minute unexpected problems (isn’t that how it always goes?): the truck wouldn’t start (battery terminals) and Pippin started leaking a lot of water. Gratitude to the patience and ingenuity of S&V: we were able to address both issues successfully and head off into the sunset and high winds around 2:30 PM, arriving at Elephant Butte around 7:30pm.

After a good night’s sleep in Pippin, which, as you may know, has a too small bed (6′ x 5.5′ for 2 adults and 2 dogs, but that didn’t matter as we were all tired. We rose to a beautiful, warm morning. Needing groceries, we drove into Truth or Consequences, got drinks at Mile Marker 7 Coffee Shop, and then stopped at Bullocks, where Alan documented a found-object collage art van. (Zoom in for some curious details).

After lunch, we took a 6 mile hike along the lake, hardly saw a soul, and were exhausted by 40mph headwinds and walking through sand. GREAT training for backpacking!

Now, we’re relaxing in Pippin, after a sumptuous spaghetti dinner. We’re watching the latest Itchy Boots video on YouTube. Our mobile Starlink is up and running; it took all of 5 minutes to set up and works wonderfully. What an amazing thing, I’m able to teach from the road. We’ll sleep in Big Agnes (our 6-person tent) tonight, on fat air mattresses. Tomorrow, we move to a more remote campsite. In a couple days, we’ll head further south, no destination yet….

So, enough of the white stuff. We’ve decided to head out, a few days early, to seek spring adventures. We’re trying to sneak away between storms, which have been coming one on top of the other for several weeks. Since the above picture, there’s been another foot. Tomorrow’s supposed to be nice, so we’ll leave in the morning, pick up the camper at the storage place in Chama, and head south. The weather app has more snow on Sunday, Tuesday, Thurs-Sat of next week, so we’ll hope to be out of it before then. I hate pulling a camper in bad weather.

Planning 6-8 weeks of camping and backpacking with 2 dogs takes some work. We’re also trying to do it in a way that will keep it better organized between trips. The process is complicated by the fact that the camper is not here. And that we have been unable to drive up the driveway all winter until just now. And that the truck was in the shop for over a month. Alan’s been doing more minor repairs, and we’ll stop in Santa Fe to pick up some last truck parts before visiting S & V for a couple days.

The plan is loose, but we hope to go south all the way to the border, then back up to Tonto National Forest, where, I’ve mentioned earlier, a backpack trip is planned on the Arizona Trail. Then, in early April, we’ll travel over to Texas for a week of fun with friends. Then, who knows? I don’t think we want to come back until we hear that the mud is dry! I hope to hit Organ Pipe Nat’l Monument, the Petrified Forest, and some other parks down that way. On the other hand, by the time we head home, I’ll be itching to start a garden, and Alan will be contemplating his next project(s).

What might those be? Well, this summer, we need to finish the water system and plumbing. That’s a big job, and we’ll likely hire a crew to do a lot of it, as it will include installing underground cisterns and laying pipe 5′ underground. Other projects will be building the workshop and remodeling the kitchen. We’re considering attempting to become more fossil-fuel free by putting in a wood cook stove. Not sure yet, as we’d still need to figure out a hot water system. Our solar is big, but not quite big enough to manage a hot water heater in the winter.

I cooked on a woodstove for many years and still think it’s the best way to go, no joke! Of course, we’d have to design a summer kitchen, but that’s pretty simple: electric stove top indoors and a brick oven outside covers it!

Enough on next summer…have to focus on the next 2 months!

We have some new gear for the trip: replacing our old down puffies for new alpaca-filled ones. (Believe it or not, lighter and warmer, although slightly more bulky). We also have an Enlightened Equipment Accomplice Sleeping Quilt for 2. (Replacing our 24-year old bags). Goose down, good to -10.) I’ve waterproofed raingear and collected a selection of dehydrated meals, all for the Arizona Trail.

On another note, we had to give up on our free, come-with-the-house Envirolet composting toilet. Not to go into detail, it just didn’t work like it should. We’ve replaced it with a Nature’s Head composting toilet which not only works perfectly, but is small and easy to use. Here it is getting installed. The next picture is of Alan emptying it into the humanure composting bin before our trip. (https://modernfarmer.com/2017/03/humanure-next-frontier-composting/

Alan has put in some new outlets and lights upstairs: we look like a supernova out here at night. It’s awesome. And the solar’s been wonderful even with all the cloudy days. We generally hit 100% charge by 10am.

I have been busy with classes: teaching 4 and taking 1. One class is through the Department of Corrections, and it has been a struggle to satisfy all their requirements: they wanted me to get fingerprinted by driving all the way up to Colorado Springs (6 hours from here) at 8am. I declined that and instead got fingerprinted at a photography store in Pagosa Springs! (Whodda thunk?) I told them my prints are already on file in D.C. but they didn’t believe me…those old anti-war protest arrests should count for something! Anyway, they are still insisting I come up to Co. Spgs., so maybe I won’t be teaching that course after all!

Alan and I wish you a happy end to winter and a welcome start to spring. We’ll keep you updated from the road!

Alan and I have always played a lot of music in our homes and cars. More than most people? Probably not, but hours every day. During the past few years, with streaming services, we abandoned our large CD collection for subscriptions with Pandora (first), then Spotify, and currently with YouTube. For the past few years we’ve had a small Bose knock-off speaker that worked pretty good, but lacked decent bass. Anyway, Alan gave me an early birthday present of a new Sharp stereo. Old school, 3 piece system. It sounds awesome! So, I dragged out our ancient CDs and am going through them to see which ones are still ok. The Sharp also has Bluetooth, too, of course….what doesn’t?

Our road is beginning the spring melt already, although it isn’t too bad yet. With snow coming next week, it’ll get pretty sloppy. We brought the red truck home today after a month in the body shop (result of a hit-and-run last November). Good to have it back, as it handles the county road a bit better than Alan’s heavy Ford. Now we can start prepping for our road trip in March, too. (More on that in the next post).

Around 4Fords, we’ve been focused on doing small projects and chores. Alan’s been running circuits for more lights, which are going to be wonderful. I put new treads on the stairs and other piddly things, along with quite a bit of school work….oh, and taxes. The house intermittently looks sort of like a construction zone. We spend hours every day playing and taking icy/muddy hikes with the dogs, although Zane re-sprained his neck and is back on steroids, so we can’t do that for a while. The vet is worried he will need to have his cervical area fused! We have to figure out how to keep him from playing SO hard. It’s a bummer…he’s in a lot of pain.

Cabin fever finally struck last weekend and so we impulsively packed up the dogs and a change of clothes and drove down to Abiquiu, 75 minutes south of us. No snow! 60 degrees. We took a couple of short hikes in the desert and spent the night at the beautiful and friendly Abiquiu Inn. We strongly recommend it! There’s a wonderful restaurant, too, with great art. I ate fresh trout (my favorite fish!) for breakfast, and a friend joined us for a great meal. www.abiquiuinn.com.

At home, it’s becoming clear that the days are growing longer. Being in a canyon, we take great pleasure in watching how the sun moves throughout the year. On the winter solstice, it set just over the cliff on the left of the picture below. You can see how far it’s moved north in just 6 weeks.

The picture below shows how powerful the albedo effect can be. This is the garden, where we spread our wood ash during the winter. You can see how effectively it works to melt the snow under the ash. The ground is completely bare here, while the snow around it is still 18′ deep.