Home and running

We slept in until almost 10:00 this morning so we must have been bushed from our long journey but we made it home without any accidents and in good health. 

I wanted to go to town and weigh but changed my mind so we went to town and ate instead.  I got my hair cut then went to have a manicure and pedicure and get an appointment for the truck before we head out to Montana.  After all that, I stopped and got a new pair of Sketchers (pink) and then headed to Walmart for groceries. 

It is very hot today with a heat index close to 100 so we messed around in Walmart for a couple of hours buying groceries and more junk! 

I wanted to get the blog caught up to date so that is what i have been working on for the past several hours.

Headed home

My geocacher

Camp site at Osage Hills SP

We are headed for home today.  We hiked up to the lookout and found a geocache and stopped and paid for our nights camping.  This is a very nice park and very quiet.  We had lunch in Afton, OK and stopped at George Washington Carver NM and got the book stamped and looked at the civil war display they had just put in.  We made it to Lebanon, MO for dinner at Dowd's Catfish and home at 7:45.

Osage Hills State Park

We stopped at the Rockin A Cafe in  Boise City, OK for a great breakfast.  This is a little local cafe that had lots of cars around it, a sure sign that it is a good place to eat.  We stopped for gas at Love's and they didn't have ice tea.  It was a bummer for me but Hardy got coffee so he was a happy camper.  (Mighty nice of me.)

We stopped for lunch in the might metropolis of Slapout, OK and did a bit of geocaching while at it.  Two muggels were there ahead of us but they were more interested in each other than us.  I am not sure they even noticed we were there!.

No Man's Land is as empty as ever with rolling hills and prairie with an occasional abandoned farm house.  We saw an interesting burned out motel and restaurant with a dog on the roof in Elmwood, OK.  We struck Fort Supply about 1:18.  It seemed to be out of supplies but has a nice grove of trees along the Highway 412.  We changed drivers in Woodward, OK and stopped at McDonalds for coffee and ice tea.  Hardy didn't want ice cream, go figure, and I even had the points all figured out for Weight Watchers.

Fuzzy tarantula in our camp

We were in camp by 8:00 and took a walk around the park.  We met a nice fuzzy tarantula and Kyle the Park Ranger who said we could pay when we leave in the morning.  He was a nice young guy who has been all over at different parks.

Capulin Volcano NM and Clayton State Park

We left after breakfast and a trip to the dump.  We saw and heard a turkey gobbling on the way out of Sumner Lake.  Yesterday we saw a beautiful orange, black, white and yellow robin sized biird in our camp.  The weather is cool at 67 and it is overcast.  The park lighting is superb without any street lights and a few subdued walkway lights that looked like Easter Island statues shining orange light.

We had lunch at a rest area without facilities outside Las Vegas, NM.  The wind was really blowing and it was 76 degrees at noon. We stopped at Capulin Volcano National Monument.  This was a cinder cinder cone volcano about 1,000 feet high.  The lady at the desk named Vanita Brown is a shirt tail relative of Hardy's.  Her grandmother was Vanita Willett whose grandfather was Alexander Hamilton Willett.  He found two geocaches and answered questions to the earth cache.  He took a picture of him and the casita showing that we could not take the trailer up on the volcano so hopefully that will fulfill any questions.

Capulin Volcano is at more than 7000 feet in elevation. Summers are cooler than typical of the Southwest and winters are cold and snowy. In summer, highs may reach 85 with lows in the 50s. Winter may have warm days in the 60s, but single digit temperatures and snow are common. Between 58,000 to 62,000 years ago, just yesterday on the clock of geologic time, the scene near Capulin would have been one of fire, ash, glowing lava, and ear-shattering explosions.

Capulin Volcano

Capulin Volcano formed during the most recent period of activity in the Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field. The cone rises more than 1,000 feet above the plains to 8,182 feet above sea level and consists chiefly of loose cinders, ash, and other rock debris. These materials were ejected during successive eruptions and fell back upon the vent, piling up to form the conical mountain. The symmetry of Capulin Volcano was preserved because lava did not flow from the main crater but from secondary vents located at the western base of the cone. Evidence of the other episodes of activity can be seen in nearly 100 nearby volcanic peaks and lava capped mesas. The largest of these volcanic peaks is the Sierra Grande, an extinct volcano rising some 2,200 feet above the surrounding plain, about 10 miles to the southeast. The largest lava flow is Johnson Mesa, 14 miles long and 7 miles wide, to the west of Capulin.

Clayton State Park

We headed to Clayton State Park in New Mexico.  We traveled about 300 miles today and mostly along the Santa Fe Trail.  Apparently you can still see old wagon tracks in some areas.  We didn't see them but that is what is reported.  We met another camper from Vernon, TX who was quite a talker and a ham radio operator.

A big dude

We took a walk out to the spillway and looked at the dinosaur tracks that were uncovered when they were building the spillway for the dam. Along the spillway, more than 500 dinosaur footprints have been preserved and identified. Plant-eating and carnivorous dinosaurs, as well as some ancient crocodiles, made these prints. Markers identify significant tracks.

The Annular Eclipse

Today is the day we have been waiting for and why we traveled 1,000 miles to New Mexico.  We were up at 7:30 after a very windy night of rocking and rolling in our little camper.  There is a clear blue sky with a few skiffs of thin high clouds and a darker mass in the south.  We went to breakfast in Fort Sumner at a different restaurant.  We were going to wash clothes but the laundromat was closed on Sunday.

Hardy had the scope out last night and we saw Saturn and some nice star fields around Corvus.  The scope was setting on the window sill of the small cabins on our site.

Small clouds started moving through which was a cause for concern as we didn't know if it was going to block the sun during the eclipse but they started to move away right before the eclipse was supposed to begin . We parked out on the highway at the Seal Team 6 memorial site.  He rigged the scope up around 6:30 and I saw a little dimple on the sun about that time.  By the time he got it aligned and centered the eclipse had started and we started taking pictures.  The clouds had totally gone by 7:15 and we had an unobstructed view of the sun throughout the entire eclipse.  Hardy texted Steve and his brother Jan to let them know what was going on.  Steve couldn't get the eclipse where he was in Texas as it was too cloudy and Jan was too far north.  We got some great shots of the annular "ring of fire" on both of our cameras but mine seemed to do the best.  We used photography through a filtered 25 mm eyepiece. 
 
I took this as the eclipse was just beginning using my Canon camera held up to the view finder with a filter on the telescope.  I think it turned out pretty well.

In the beginning

 

The ring of fire

This was taken when the eclipse was total also using the Canon camera.












.This was taken as the moon was across the sun and coming out the other side.

Moving off the other side

Fort Sumner and Bosque Redondo

We were up at 6:30 and had breakfast.  It is very sunny and clear in in the mid 70's. We went into town to the library which was closed and to do laundry which we put off doing.  This is the town where Billy the Kid was killed by Pat Garrett.  This happened in a house that had been converted from the barracks at Bosque Redondo. Unfortunately in my estimation, the town glorifies a thug when in essence the real tragedy was The Long Walk forced upon the Indians.

Bosque Redondo Visitor Center

This state monument is a beautiful building and grounds. The Long Walk to Bosque Redondo refers to the 1864 deportation and attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people by the U.S. Government. Navajos were forced to walk at gunpoint from their reservation in what is now Arizona to eastern New Mexico.  like some internment camps involving several tribes, the Bosque Redondo had serious problems.  About 400 Mescalero Apaches were placed there before the Navajos.  The Mescalero and Navejo had a long tradition of raiding each other; the two tribes had many disputes during their encampment. Furthermore, the initial plan was for around 5,000 people, certainly not 10,000 men, women and children. Water and firewood were major issues from the start; the water was brackish and the round grove of trees was quite small. Nature and humans both caused crop failures every year. The Pecos River flooded and washed out the head gates of the irrigation system. In 1865 Navajo began leaving. By 1867 the remaining Navajo refused to plant a crop.  General Sherman visited the Bosque Redondo and found the encampment deplorable and it was disbanded and the Indians were able to go back to their homelands in the Four Corners.

Pecos River

We took a nice walk along the Pecos River and listened to the interpretive given by Wes Studi, a local Native American who lives in Sante Fe.  There are a few areas of the old fort that can be seen and the old visitor center which was apparently an officer's quarters. The young park ranger was very sweet and quite knowledgeable and wants to travel like Hardy and I do.

Staked Plains

We had lunch at Fred's and I had the best chicken salad I have ever had.  We then took US 60 to Vaughn then US 54 back into Santa Rosa and 84 back to camp.  We saw loads of purple flowers along the highway and in the fields on the road to Vaughn.  We also say some antelope but it was mostly stretches of the "Staked Plain".  Yeso was interesting with old stone or adobe buildings going to ruin.

Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, NM

We drove to Puerto de Luna to visit the site of Cornado's Bridge.  We didn't see the bridge but it was a beautiful drive.  We stopped at the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa and ate at the Sante Fe Grill and we shared an Indian Taco...so good.

New Mexico - here we come

We left Palo Duro Canyon (Hard Wood) and headed to Fort Sumner, New Mexico to camp at Lake Sumner.  We stopped in Deaf Smith County to pick up the geocache at the historic marker.  We are traveling along US 60 again.

We stopped for lunch in Black and picked up the Men In Black cache in Palmer County.  We met "The Lady in Black" who thought we needed help as we were parked outside her house!  We stopped for gas in Fiona, Texas at a Valero and they had free water and air on their gas pumps.  We arrived at 3:30 and set up our site then drove into Fort Sumner for dinner.  Fort Sumner is about 10 miles from the lake so not too far to drive.  We found "Freds" restaurant on US 60.  It was nice with good food and friendly.  We chatted with two women from Houston who were on their way to Albuquerque.  Hardy had an X-Con (burrito) which was very good.  I had a chicken burrito with green chili and it was really good too.

We drove out to the old military air base where Hardy's dad took flight lessons during WWII.  There isn't much left out there but the hangar and two long metal building that were used as warehouses and red stone parts that looked like the front gate at the base.  We found out later at the town grocery store that most of the buildings had burned.  The grocer was a local man and very informative and even had a copy of the 1942 yearbook from that base and we found a picture of Hardy's dad in the book.  The grocer scanned Squadron 44B for us.  He had played in that area when he was young and played on the old junked aircraft left over after the war.  He was born about 1949 or 1950.

Sunset in the desert

We stayed up to watch the stars as it is very clear at our campground.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park

After a great night's sleep we watched the first quarter moon come up over the mountain outside our camp.  After a shower we had three hen and a tom turkey near our campsite.

After breakfast we went for a hike before it got too hot.  There are lots of birds around our camp and we have 25 boys and girls from the Duram School that are camped next door.  This is a field trip for them and I talked to their teacher who says she does this every year for her class.  They teach the kids about the environments, science, history, geology and even math.  They apparently have races and they have to measure the distances and do some calculations. 

The hike was uneventful.  We saw the Goodnight Dugout near camp along the Prairie Dog branch of the Red River.  This is a small stream about 5 or 6 feet wide, swift and red.  After lunch we drove up to the Visitor's Center and found a copy of Roadside Geology of Texas.

We then drove into Canyon to McDonalds for wi fi which was a bust.  We decided to drive to Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument. This was a great location. We met Warner Schmitz the ranger and chatted about the Harry Yount award for park rangers.  He was very familiar with this award. Harry Yount is a shirt tail cousin of Hardy and was the first park ranger in Yellowstone Park. This was prompted by Hardy's spotting "Blood and Thounder" on the shelf.  The ranger was very informative about the history of the quarry which has been a flint quarry for approximately 10,000 years.  The original "Clovis Point" is Alibates flint.  The quarry is named for Allie Bates, an area rancher.  Unfortunately the guided tour was closed so we could not go up to the site.

After we came back to Palo Duro we drove up the canyon and checked out the other campgrounds.  The Cow Camp Cabins were cute and a possibility if we come this way again.  We saw more turkey and four deer.  A man from Dallas stopped to talk to us and wait for the deer to cross the road and he had just seen another 4 foot Diamond Back crossing the road.

Caprock State Park

We took a very nice hike before we left Copper Breaks.  The park had prisoners from Quannah cleaning the trail so we stepped aside and let them do their trail blazing.  This was a very nice trail up into the breaks.  The lakes are really low in this area, as they are throughout Texas.

Hardy at rest.

Copper Breaks Lake

We hiked to the top of the trail which was about a one mile hike, round trip, and fairly steep.  At the top was a nice place to sit and view the lake area.  We left about 12 noon, filled up with gas in Quannah and headed to Caprock State Park, outside of Turkey, Texas. Turkey, Texas is the home of Bob Wills, country singer who had Bob Wills and the Country Playboys.  He was well known in early country music.

Caprock State Park

Home on the range

We arrived at Caprock and picked up the Caprock travel bug and dropped off the Sunshine travel bug. This is home to the last remaining vestige of the Northern Plains Bison Herd. 

Our campsite in Palo Duro

We arrived at Palo Duro State Park about 5:00 p.m  and set up camp and had dinner.  We went for a hike on the CCC Trail near the Visitors Center and picked up another geocache.  On the way back a nice approximately four foot Western Diamondback Rattlesnake was laying under a tree waiting for his dinner to walk by.  He was just far enough from us that he didn't bother us and we certainly didn't bother him.  I got excited just to see him and I forgot to take a picture and decided I wasn't going back looking for him.

At the Visitor's Center we met a family from Mission, Texas.

Copper Breaks State Park

We were off at 8:30 a.m. after a shower and breakfast.  We fed the ducks one more time and then took off.  It was a nice night except for a dog that barked and a train outside the park on Highway 51.  We decided to take a different route along 51 to Vici, OK then 34 to Highway 6.  We stopped in Stillwater, OK at a Walmart for new air caps and groceries and chatted with a clerk from Eugene, OR.  We took Oklahoma 44 to Altus and stopped  for ice cream  This was a scenic byway through limestone, granite weathered mountains.

Mountains near Altus, Oklahoma

The GPS lead us over a tiny country road in Texas, paved but narrow cut off on SR 91.  The land is flat.  They were harvesting wheat in Texas.We camped at Copper Breaks near Quannah and it was a very nice campground. We found the Quannah Rocket, a weather rocket, with a peak altitude of 240,000 feet, near the courthouse in Quannah, TX.  We also found Texas Ranger McDonald's tomb with his second wife, Pearl McDonald Williams buried beside him and  Joe Earl with his wife Bertie Shaw. Joe Earl was the first white man killed by Indians near Quannah  and they buried him where he lay.  These were all virtual caches. 

We were in bed by 10:00.  The stars were brilliant in a dark clear sky.  Venus was creating shadows.

The great eclipse hunt

We are off at 8:30 for the great eclipse hunt of 2012 and headed for Keystone Lake State Park near Tulsa, OK.  The eclipse is an annular on May 20.  We plan to stay at Sumner Lake State Park new Fort Sumner, OK and do some geocaching in Texas counties near Copper Breaks State Park and Palo Dura Canyon State Park.

We spied another camper outside of Rolla headed west and stopped on an on ramp and had a tow vehicle like ours.  We met up with them at Love's near Joplin.  He was a nice guy (Rich) from Indiana and had stopped because they had some problems with their cat.

Hardy realized that he had no way to play the I Pod through the radio and needs to move the FM transmitter to the truck.

We stopped for lunch of ham sandwiches at a Missouri rest area near mile post 51.  Everything looked ship shape except our air conditioner is filthy and we may also need to clean the back of the refrigerator. We stopped for ice cream at McDonalds and had Blue Bonnet ice cream cones.  They were very large and very good!  We went through the toll which has increased in price since a couple of weeks ago...must be summer.

We arrived at Site 68 on Lake Keystone State Park and got set up and then walked to the office to pay the $18 for water and electricity.  These were nice concrete pads overlooking the lake and there were only two or three campers that we can see.  We had dinner of chicken and noodles and Hardy had his Shiner Bock.  There is a high haze but otherwise it is clear and the temp is 77.  We picked up a Keystone Lake geocache in a five gallon bucket near the entrance to the park.

Resident Ducks

These two little guys (girl and guy) came to visit us while we were getting ready for dinner.  They were making their way from camper to camper and doing a little begging along the way.  The only thing I had to give them was some Cheerios and boy did they like them.  They hung around our camper for 15 minutes or so and then went on to the camper parked across from us to see what they could find to eat over there.  I don't think they got fed at that camp ground.

Mother's Day

A great start to my day with a text message from my son then breakfast with my BBF at IHop.  We filled up with gas, got an ice tea and headed to Fredricksburg for dinner at Riverside Restaurant.

We took a little side trip for a geocache called Elephant Walk.  This was up a gravel road into a very pretty valley back in the hills outside Fredricksburg.

Going to "jump" off that step

At dinner at Riverside

Four generations

Debbie, Salam, Sharayah, Junior and great grandson Tristan met us at the restaurant in Fredrickburg.. 
We had a very good dinner with Hardy and I splitting a prime rib dinner and Tristan eating most of my sweet potato.  We checked out the water and had a good visit.  We talked about our trip to Montana in June and they are all going too so we should really have a good time.  Debbie and Salam are going to renew their vows with family in attendance.

Getting the camper ready to roll

After the kids left today we pulled the camper out of its garage and started getting it ready for our trip on Monday.  Hardy cleaned out the winterizing fluid and I cleaned out the camper and started putting in groceries, clothes and supplies.  We will leave Monday morning for New Mexico to see the Annular Eclipse on May 20 and hopefully it will not be cloudy.  We have reservations for three days at Sumner State Park outside of Fort Sumner in New Mexico so that should be a pretty nice area.  We want to take our time going out there  and coming back and I would like to stop at some state parks in Texas, if we have the time.  We have park passes and Texas has some beautiful state parks.

Tomorrow we will meet up with Debbie and Salam, Sharayah, Junior and Tristan for dinner at the Riverside Restaurant on the Gasconade River.  We have been there several times for Mother's Day so it should be good and it will be good to see the kids and baby Tristan as i have not seen them since we got back from Texas.

Our little Gibby

 This is the weekend that Wade, Eileen and Gibby arrived from California and they came to Rolla and spent the day and night with us.  We met them at Maid Rite for lunch then went to Meramec Springs for play time and on to Alex's Pizza for dinner.  Wad had invited James Thorpe and his wife to join us.  They had just lost their little 5 year old boy to bacterial meningitis.  James and Wade have been good friends since high school.

Feeding the fish at Meramec Springs

Gibby posing for his picture.

Gibby and Grandpa

 We had fun with them at Meramec. Gibby liked feeding the fish, of course, but he just liked being able to get our and run around too.  Meramec Springs is part of the James Foundation and used to be an open pit iron ore mine back in the middle 1800's. The pit is still visible and some of the foundry and building foundations are still visible.  It is a beautiful place to go and the Meramec Springs is wonderful.  The fish hatchery is a great place to take kids and they can feed the fish from babies on up to full grown adults.

Ed Raney Memorial

We had memorial services for Ed Raney, our club caller for the Zig Zags, who passed away in February.  They were waiting for the Winter Texas square dancers to make it home before having this memorial and they also had just buried Ed's ashes on the weekend.  We had the service at the club house where Al and Jean Holt live and there were lots of friends there.  It was really a nice memorial and the food was very good.

Zig Zag Dancing

We spent the last two days in St Louis dancing to Tom and Joe and it was sure good to see Joe again.  We miss him through the summer and try to go to any dance where he is calling if he is in our area.  We got up this morning and drove to Laurie to dance with our own club and Tom Roper was calling there today.  Tom called a good dance and after the dance Hardy and I decided to go to Chance's R for dinner rather than the BBQ place.  We wanted to make sure that Diane, our favorite waitress, knew that Ed Raney had passed away.  We talked to her on the phone and gave her the news and she had been wondering why she had not seen him.

Dancing to Roper and Saltel

We went to St Louis and danced with Tom Roper and Joe Saltel for the weekend.  What a great weekend it has turned out to be.  We are staying at the Super 8 and decided to go to the end of St Charles Rock Road and see the river.  They have put in a nice walking park down there so we walked the trail before the dance.

We could hear this engine running and when we got to the river they were dredging the sand out of the river and lifting it to a hopper on the top of the bank.  There is a sand and gravel company up at the top.
 

 

 The beavers had done a number on the trees in the area.

Beautiful yellow flowers in the park.