Sitting Bull Falls NM

Sitting Bull Falls is on your NM map, between Carlsbad and Artesia, It is 35 miles off the main road, but the road is paved and in very good condition. The scenery on the way there ranges from high rocky cliffs to wide open grazing fields to smelly natural gas rigs. ( Chuck called the smell Dinosaur Farts!) Actually, that was prolly a pretty accurate description! :-)

When we got to the Falls area, after meeting almost no traffic on this road, imagine our surprise to find 4 very large school buses there full of Indian children. They were having a great time!

We managed to get the 'Burb and trailer parked when one of the buses left after dropping off a load of kids.
The C.C.C. built the picnic areas there in the 40's. I really appreciate how these 15 or so shelters blend into the area background so nicely.

The falls were only dripping when we were there. nothing too spectacular, but still worth seeing! It was just a short walk from the parking lot to the falls. Folks with a Geezer pass get in free. everyone else is $5.

The falls are really quite tall! It's just very hard to see the falling water in the photos, but the kids below are enjoying the water!

You can see the falling water better in this close up image!

Kids swimming!

We left here and spent the night at the Escapee Park in Lakewood NM, just south of Artesia. Artesia was quite interesting. We want to head back there and see more. There were huge bronze sculptures on the streets depicting lives of the old west cowboy! Just unexpected art everywhere. We ate lunch in Cloudcroft and headed down the mountain. We then headed north to Three Rivers NM to visit the petroglyph site and that will be my next blog! See you then! Happy Trails! Geri and Chuck

Carlsbad Caverns

Well, phooey, the photos ended up on top of the text. Well, I'll describe the photos and then you can go down and read the blog.

This is our meeting with our fellow Oliver Travelers, Chris, Cherie, KiKi and Chuck!

I shot all of the Carlsbad Cavern photos with no flash, just using available light to enhance each shot. So that meant having to use my monopod, but I am pleased with the results!

OMG! Look at those old folks! Hahaha! Wrinkles and grey hair make for a real pair! But we love wach other and we are happy, wrinkles and all! GRIN!!!

The park ranger took this photo of us! Hard to get photos of the 2 of us together, but so many of you asked, we just had to comply! We hope you enjoyed the looksee! LOL, ok, now go down and read the blog news!

We spent 3 nights at Carlsbad RV Park Campground, we arrived Tuesday 4-21-09 about 3 pm. We did laundry, didhes and went out to eat and went to bed early. Then we got up early and went to The Pecos River Cafe for breakfast! If any of you ever find yourself in the town f Carlsbad NM, do not miss this eatery! Plenty of room for parking RV's! They only serve breakfast and lunch and it was so good, Chuck and I went there for all 3 breakfast meals! We did Carlsbad in 2 days instead of the one it took in my younger days. We did the natural entrance first which is not to be missed, the wonderful aroma of bat guano will fill your nostrils for the first 30 minutes! I am going to put the Carlsbad photos on my flickr website link because you can access them easier, use the slide show feature etc, etc, etc. I can only upload 3-4 photos at a time on the blog and they ae so small 7you can't see the details very well. So this is the link to my flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/earthdancerimages/

Let me explain, I did not use a flash. There is plenty of available light down there, but I did have to use my monopod to keep the camera stable during the longer exposures. There might be a bit of camera shake here and there, but not too bad. Also, I will be adding more photos to that flickr site later tonight and in the next few days so if you are interested, you might want to go back and check in a few days. I have about 7 posted there now. You will also be able to enlarge them on that website for better viewing, which you can't on the blog.

Tonight we are at Three Rivers Petroglyph site..... camping here with our Geezer pass for $5 a night and that includes water and electric! Tomorrow we head out to River Bend Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences for our summer jobs! See ya'll later! Happy Trails!

On our last day there, we met up with Cherie and Chris, Oliver Travel Trailer owners like who live in theirs full time. We went out to eat and had a fun time. Now on this post I will finally respond to all of you who want more photos of Chuck and I !!! So you asked for it, here we come!

Quartz Mountain Nature Park

The Lake at Quartz Mountain is thanks to the dam over the Red River. It is a huge lake, full of these interesting rock formations. The rock is actually granite, with a lot of quartz sparkling in it!

This is Baldy Rock, the only rock in the park that rock climbers can climb! You can't see them from here, but in the next image with my zoom lens you will be able to see two of the climbers.

They look so small against the huge rock that I circled them in red so you could see them!

Chuck and I left Lake Greeson Arkansas on State Road 70West and followed it for 2 days! It brought us within a few miles of Quartz Mountain! It was a wonderful road, mostly single-laned but with wide shoulders and almost no traffic at all. There is some construction around the larger communities where they are widening the road to 4 lanes, but for the majority of the ride on 70 we were doing 65+ miles per hour. Great country views, great small towns with quaint old buildings and good restaurants! We only passed 2 other RV travel trailers the whole road! I was reminded of the saying ScubaRX has on the back of his Oliver, "Not all who wander are lost" and that is how I felt along highway 70 !!! We had a great time! We spent 2 nights at Quartz Mountain and left early this morning. We are now in a FREE campground in the small town of Flordada TX. There is a park that the city provides with free water and electric hookups and a free dump station. It's nothing fancy, but it is free. Tomorrow we head to Carlsbad NM and the KOA campground there. Tomorrow night we will go watch the bats as they exit the cave and then Wed. we will tour Carlsbad Caverns. Chuck has never been there, a first for him and the 3rd time for me. I'm looking forward to it. I'll keep ya'll posted!

Chuck was caught peeking at me from behind a tree! Grin! Ain't he handsome ???

Last catfish supper!

Betty aka "Butcherknife" and Rachel work hard to prepare the last catfish supper that Chuck and I would have a chance to enjoy! There is nothing better than fresh caught catfish cooked in Butcherknife's camp kitchen! YUM! Thanks for all your hard work Betty, feeding all these hungry "city" folk! hahahaha!

Chuck, aka "Tumbleweed", David and Larry aka "Mountainborn"worked hard everyday coming up with solutions to solve the worlds problems!

We left Lake Greeson early Friday morning. (April 17th) We ran into rough winds and torrential rains that cut our planned day of driving short. We pulled into Lake Texohoma OK about 2:30 pm. The strong winds nearly tore the door off the "Burb" when I tried to get out. The rain was cold hard pellets that hit hard and hurt! Chuck still managed to get us all set up at Lake Texohoma State Park on Highway 70. Great campground by the way! Not sure if you can tell from the above photo that Chuck took, but those are huge whitecaps rolling across the lake.!!

Thursday Evening

Betty and Larry getting their day started!

Camp clothesline, cammo wear

Steam rising off the early morning water

Lake Greeson

The Midget is responding very well to her meds. Busy getting back to her grumpy old self!
We leave tomorrow, and I am so glad I found this spot. It is so beautiful and peaceful here!
Having fresh caught catfish everyday ain't bad either! I just never realized you have to start filleting catfish whole they are still alive! YIKES! When I saw Larry take that knife and slicing into the side of the catfish while it was still flopping around........ freaked me right out! But to be honest, the catfish never acted like he felt the knife, I think being out of water was his main concern. He didn't even fight the knife, just sorta lay down and quit fighting. Guess it's no different than throwing a live lobster or crab into a pot of boiling water.
Larry says it's so the blood doesn't go into the meat of the fish, once the blood gets into the meat, the fish is not edible, tastes very bad. That's also why you hand chickens and pigs and deer upside down when you slaughter them. Let's 'em bleed out! I don't care, it just really freaked me out watching it, I had to turn around and leave! But dang it, they taste so good fried! :-)

Tomorrow we leave here and head onwards to our summer job in NM! We hope to make it to Ardmore OK tomorrow night. As usual, I'll keep ya'll posted! Leaving here will be hard. Met so many new friends, watched people leave everyday and new people arrive. Today Aubrey left (aka Junior Birdman) and a new couple arrived from Missouri with their Casita. Life goes on, I'm sure someone will be here tomorrow to take our place! And dang it, we never did get to play dominoes! :-) But we ate a lot of good catfish!

Bye for now and Happy Trails from The PhunnyPharm!

Thursday Morning

Tuesday started out wonderful! but by late afternoon, it was apparent that not all was well with The Midget. She became dazed, could hardly walk, she was burning up with fever. She had been having some discharge ever since her last heat and it had gotten worse and worse this past week. Of course all this happened after 5 pm! So yesterday morning Chuck and I went to town and visited Wright Animal Clinic. She still had a fever of 104 degrees. So it must have been a lot higher than that the night before! Seems she is going through doggie menopause and this is not that unusual. She has an infection in her uterus. He gave her two kinds of antibiotics and this morning she is feeling better. Still not quite The Midget, but you can tell she is feeling better.

This morning arrived with a few clouds and raindrops, but it should clear off. Chuck and I were going to leave today but because of The Midget, we decided to stay one more day. This was a very good veterinarian and I want to have him near in case these meds do not work. So we will leave Friday to head for Ardmore OK and then up to Anadarko OK so I can browse thru some of the Native American art galleries and beading supply stores! Next stop will be Quartz Mountain State Park in SW OK. We spent one night there last September and decided we had to go back and visit again when we could stay longer, it is a beautiful park! I'll post some more photo's later. I mainly wanted to tell you about The Midget.

Tues AM mid Morning

I got to go out on the boat! Chuck was in charge of pulling in Al's bait trap. Al and Fran decided to leave. Their hometown of Mena was destroyed by tornados a few days ago. Easter, they left camp and went to their church to help feed folks and survey the damage. They came back and stayed yesterday, but felt they needed to be back in Mena, helping where they could.


Captain Mountainborn! A great boat captain!

A group photo! People keep coming and leaving. We decided to try for a group shot. Today Tom and Karen left, as did Fran and Al. From left to right... Geri, Chuck, Karen, Tom, David, Rachel, Larry, Betty and Aubrey.

Goodbye to Fran and Al, it was great to have met you!

Goodbye to Tom and Karen! (and Susie!) It was great seeing you again! Happy Trails!