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Tonight we will be in Florida! I think we are going to spend a night at the state park in Port St. Joe at Cape San Blas. The plumber won't be able to fix our water problem until Tuesday, so no sense going home until we have water to wash and flush with! The trip has been great. We left Truth or Consequences 2 weeks ago today! We got to spend time with Pete and Oscar and with John both in Texas. We might go straight home too, and just stay in our camper until plumbing gets fixed, but one more adventure sounds tempting at St. Joseph Penisular State Park!


ewwwwwwwwww ugly perm, but it has loosened up some now.... not quite the brillo pad it was!
Happy Trails!

Pete and Oscar the smiley dog!

While we were in Texas, we got to visit with Pete and his furkid Oscar! Pete barbequed us some bodacious, delicious baby back ribs! WOW! They were good! Thanks Pete!

San Antonio's Riverwalk

Yesterday John took us to downtown San Antonio's famous riverwalk. It really was beautiful! A lot of the old buildings have been restored and some are undergoing renovation now. I would love to show you photo's but as I was about to take a photo of John feeding the duck's, a passing gentleman (whom I love with all my heart) accidentally hit my hand at the same time the camera was coming out of my jeans pocket..... we stood there dumbfounded as the camera clattered to the ground and gracefully slid into the water. :-( Nobody's fault and sh** happens.

The riverwalk is lined with some of the largest cypress trees I have ever seen! There are flowers everywhere! The area reminds me of St. Augustine with all the old same style buildings.
We ate lunch on the waterfront and walked for quite a distance before I pooped out and we headed back. The restaurants were amazing! They all smelled delicious! I was a bit disappointed in the shops along the riverfront, not one of them was even interesting. Saved me some $$$. Well, for a few hours anyway, because after riverwalk, John took me to Best Buy where I bought a new camera.
A smaller camera, an Olympus Stylus 7010 with 12 megapixels and 7x zoom. Sheeeeesh! My big Nikon is only 5-something megapixels! So I promise more photos on my next post! I just gotta learn this new fangled camera! Grin!
Happy Trails!

Ghost town of Chloride NM

This is one of the hardest blogs I have tried to put together thus far! When we first went to visit Chloride, we had Maho (our Japanese work exchange student and friend) along. Somehow, I got away without bringing my camera! Imagine that! Mid-October Chuck's friend and former neighbor, Jim, came to visit us from California. We took him to Chloride! (And my camera too!) We absolutely have fallen in love with this quaint little town, formerly known as a rowdy silver mining town from the late 1900's to the mid 1920's. Currently Chloride has 10 residents. So it's not quite a ghost town. I ended up taking 180 photographs! The hard part was choosing the few I could post here without boring you to death! a husband and wife team came here from cold country to retire out of the snow belt, Don and Donna. Their daughter, Linda joined them later. Together they have bought up several of the old buildings around town and started restoring them! The Monte Christo has become the gift shop and art gallery They tried for several years to contact the owner of the general store. Finally locating a relative they bought the general store. It had been opened up in the 1870's as a supply store for the silver miners. Later it was sold to the mining company and finally closed and boarded up in 1922. When Don and Donna finally pulled away the boards over the windows and doors, they found a fully intact 1922 general store! Fully stocked shelves complete with resident bats and an accumulation of years of bat guano! It took several years to clear all the bat poop out but they tried to put everything back the way they found it! They now present it as a museum and we would like to share it with all of you!


The town of Chloride under the museum sign. To the right is the old bank and further down the street is the saloon on the left. Chloride became so wild and wooley that people moved away and formed the town of Winston, about 6 miles away.

Above is the full view of the general store museum.

http://www.pioneerstoremuseum.com/

You can click onto these photos (above and below) to get the history of the town and of the general store in a readable size.

Below is a pair of ladies shoes/boots, complete with button hook!

Below is the guest book with my signature, along with Maho's and Chuck's on Sept 20th 2009.

One month later, we were there with Jim!

Below, you can see how well the old hand hewn logs fit in together to create the general store.
Even the old wrought-iron fence was totally forged by hand!

Thomas Edison was good friends of the original owner of the general store. Edison visited Chloride several times, once bringing his friend one of his new magic lamps! One of Edison's original light bulbs resides in Chloride instead of the Smithsonian!

Below is an original dynamite blaster! Useful tool if you are a silver miner!

Unfortunately, death came too often. Here is a child's coffin made in nearby Winston in 1919.

A wall full of tools to select from. Everything from well pulleys to oxen yokes to drill bits!

Axes of all kinds, shapes and sizes! Adjustable wrenches, pliers and tools I don't recognise!

Unfortunately, this tool I do recognise.... a washing machine! I prefer my modern version!

More well pulleys!

A view from the front of the store looking back.

A travelling forge. A man supported his family of 8 by travelling between Texas and New Mexico repairing old tools and making new ones.

The essayer was also a chemist... he had to determine the purity of the silver and gold and below you see some of his tools.

Cassie Hobbs is one of the icons of Chloride. She never had a single day of schoolin' yet she was one of the most creative people I have heard about in a very long time! She made everything by hand. If she didn't know how to make it, she'd work at it until she figured it out! Below you see a
dress she made and embroidered, a doll, a lace purse with gloves and shoes to match! Lace shoes in Chloride no less! Cassie Hobbs made the beautiful stool the doll sits on, the embroidered wall hanging in the background. Everything you see in this photograph, Cassie made!

More of Cassie's handiwork! She was primarily known as a furniture maker. Below you can see an outdoor table and chair she made for a child. On the table is a rasp and behind the table and chair is an axe and a saw.... the 3 tools she used in her furniture making. Also on the table is a sun hat that looked like a combination of weaving and macrame, it was beautiful! Also, another of Cassie's dolls.

 

A collection of children's toys found not only as new in the store, but used ones that got played with found in and around Chloride. The model ship is still new in the box!

Some fancy ladies hats, shoes and blouses on display.

Fully stocked store shelves awaited discovery when the boards were finally pulled off the windows and doors! Cans of coffee, tins of corned beef, kayo syrup and tins of spices.

The front of the pioneer store just recently added a new porch to make it look like the original store in the old photographs.

Sitting in front of the Monte Christo (now a gift shop and art gallery) is Jim Sanchez, visiting from California and my sweetie Chuck. A couple of Chloride hombres for sure!

That is a visit to just the general store!

http://www.pioneerstoremuseum.com/

If you want to see more of Chloride, you will just have to go yourself what wonders await! It is a beautiful drive less than 40 miles from Truth or Consequences NM and well worth your time. I will try to add more later. We are currently in Texas waiting to Tropical Storm Ida to get out of the way so we can get home to Florida and to get our wedding on the road! Ya'll keep smilin' and keep in touch!

Happy Trails!

Geri and Chuck

John's going away party BYE JOHN!

First I want to apologise for getting so far behind in the blog! Seems like after we bought our new home in T or C, we were so busy fixing it up and moving in that there was never any time left over for blogging! Plus dammit, I'M OLD! hahaha! After 5 pm I don't seem to have much energy for blogging! That's why I sit here now at 6:30 am trying to blog while Chuck still sleeps!

We actually left T or C (Truth or Consequences, NM) yesterday about 10 am! We stopped by Three Rivers Trading post again trying to find a ring for my best friend Ben! Nothing in his size! :-( BUT!!! I found a ring that matched Chucks wedding band! I liked my opal ring as a wedding band, but it just didn't match Chucks at all. So, Glorianne, Chuck's daughter will receive the opal ring since she loves opals so much! Now Chuck and I have matching wedding bands! If you have never been to Three Rivers Trading Post, you gotta go! Sue is still there working her butt off with a big happy smile and she is so much fun to talk to! It is between Alamorgodo and
Corrizozo NM, a 3 hour drive from T or C and it's right next to the famous three River petroglyphs that I blogged about earlier in the blog. Go back and look! It is one of our favorite places! There is a small campground there and everything! Well worth the visit, just make sure you visit both places, Sue at the Trading Post and the Petroglyph rocks! We took the beautiful ride over the snow capped mountains from Three Rivers to Roswell NM, headed south and landed in the Escapee RV park just north of Carlsbad NM. Warmer daytime hours here at the lower altitude but down in the 30's at 4 am this morning! Brrrrrr! So here we are and now let me catch you up on John's going away party!



John is the cankerous one of the bunch! A rebel without a clue! :-) ! It took John a long time to warm up to us but when he did, he became a great friend! He is a full timer! Meaning he lives in his 4th wheel travel trailer full time and he travels from workamper job to workamper job.
When he left Riverbend last month (October) he went to San Antonio Texas to work at an RV park there as "poolboy"! Grin........... nothing John likes better than oogling 70 year old women in bikini's huh John ???


I keep trying to tell ya'll, tie dye is king in T or C !!! Here are the 3 guys to prove it! Left to right: John, Chuck, and Jeff. Jeff Dukatt owns THE BEST TIE DYE SHOP EVER !!! He can tie dye the socks off your feet! Chuck and I now own so much tie dye thanks to Jeff's undeniable sales ability and natural talent :-) that we will bedazzle and blind ya'll when you see us! These 3 men are the goofiest bunch of critters when you get them together! LAUGH is all you can do! They are so funny together! Good guys to hang out with!

To the left is Lee, then John, Jeff is kinda hanging behind Chuck. Lee is the owner of Riverbend
his son Jake Runs it, manages it and is our main boss. Lee and his wife Sylvia come over often to visit or soak in the hot mineral springs or to help out when we get busy. Lee and Sylvia are good people! However this conversation looks like one of Lee's great BS stories! Hahahaha!

Jeff Dukatt and Lee with Dale Cosby in the background. Dale is another permanent workamper at Riverbend and he is a massage therapist as well.

This is Jake and his ladylove Becka! Jake is/was our boss and mentor at Riverbend! Good man to work with and to work for. He is the miracle worker of Riverbend, bringing beauty and class to the most amazing hot springs in Truth or Consequences, maybe in all of NM if we listen to our visitors!

Jeff and Chuck in deep conversation. Jeff will be keeping an eye on our home on NM. His business is nearby, so he will go make sure water is dripping thru the pipes on nights that it freezes and even stay there a few nights to make it look occupied. We live in a good neighborhood with two cops a few doors down, but we feel better knowing Jeff is keeping an eye on things!

Meet Dale Cosby! Dale is another man hard to get to know............at first! But when he warmed up to ya....... he is a good man! Funny! Loves to trapse thru the woods looking for rocks or pictures waiting to be taken! We missed taking a goodbye trip with him because of all the cold weather that blew in a month too early! Maybe when we get back next year we can meet at Cloride and take that jeep trail through the woods!

John, I hope you enjoyed your going away party as much as we all did! Thanks for helping us move Oliver to our new location!

Look often for more posts..... I'm really gonna try to get caught up!

Mountainborn and Butcherknife, I love your blog...... I read it all the time! NomadWoman I read your blog all the time too and I wish I could be as good at posting as you are! Pete, I know Oscar makes you post on your blog all the time! I read your blog often and we will be seeing you in a few days!

Our love to all of you! Know that we are all well, happy and on our way to FL! Believe it or not, we still have The Midget and Bobbie with us. The NM Vet is amazed that they both made it thru the summer! Bobbie has an enlarged heart and The Midget has liver cancer, but they are both doing ok and headed home with us! See you soon!

Geri, Chuck, Bobbie, The Midget and Scotty