Placitas, New Mexico

Mom's very good friend, Wendy

Next stop: Placitas, New Mexico. What's in Placitas, New Mexico, you ask? Well, not much. Some scrub brush, a few low cacti, quite a few mesquite trees, rattlesnakes in the warmer months. The reason we came here, though, is because it's about a 1/2 hour above Albuquerque. To get here from Shamrock, TX, we came through Albuquerque and took a right, not a left. (Only Bugs Bunny fans will get this.) And why did we want to be near Albuquerque? Well, I'm glad you asked. Because a very good friend of Mom's lives in Albuquerque. And they invited us to join them for Thanksgiving dinner. 

Wendy works at nursing homes and she was telling us about the various protocols that are in place to keep residents that have Covid isolated from the ones that don't. It's a very complicated procedure to keep everyone separate - those that are negative, those that test positive but have no symptoms, those that have symptoms but still test negative as they might be sick from something else, and those that both have symptoms and test positive. It all sounds very stressful. These health care workers put themselves and their families at risk to care for patients during this pandemic and deserve our utmost respect and admiration. Maybe they hear everyone's thanks a lot, or maybe they don't hear it enough, but thank you to all those front line workers that care for others. You are true heroes.

Wendy's house has a walled in patio and Dora and I had fun roaming free, sniffing and investigating everywhere, and watering the plants - well, that was me. Dora just squats anywhere without aiming. It was nice to be off leash to roam as we pleased. There were grass burrs in Shamrock and low cacti in Placitas so we had to be on leash all the time to avoid getting tangled up with them. We were only in Placitas for a few days, just a brief stop over, really, on our way to Hurricane, UT, where we'll be for the month of December. So I'll just post a few pictures and call it good. 

--Sammy

Snow on the mountains

View from our RV spot

Cactus plant - wouldn't want to step on those spines!

Mesquite tree

Shamrock, TX

Our next stop was in Shamrock, TX. On a working cattle ranch. In the middle of nowhere. Mom said it was not only peaceful, but extremely interesting. They have about 750 "mama" cows, and 30 or 35 bulls, the man couldn't remember exactly. I suppose when you get that many it's hard to keep track. The cows are separated into separate pastures with whatever bull they want them bred to. While we were there some cowboys were supposed to come in with their horses and separate the calves from their moms so they could be vaccinated, tagged and eventually shipped off to finishing lots to mature for market. But the night before they were supposed to arrive some cows broke through a fence and the cowboys had to arrive in the wee hours of the morning to herd them back in. We didn't get to see them work.

Since Mom couldn't get a picture of the cowboys, she wanted me to include a picture of the cow without the boy. RITGL (rolling in the grass laughing).

Apparently these cowboys are day laborers who travel to various ranches with their horses to accomplish whatever tasks need to be done at that time. Then on to the next ranch.

The ranch owns about 25 acres, but leases surrounding land about a mile in all directions, and some in other areas as well. We learned that the green fields are planted with wheat that the cows will soon graze on, but currently they're on fields of brown prairie grass. There are acres and acres of hay, sorghum, alfalfa and wheat baled in long tubes for feed this winter, and to supplement when the pastures have been grazed down.

There are acres and acres of these feed tubes

There was lots of equipment from tractors to balers to equipment to make compost and liquid fertilizer from all the manure. As you can imagine there's lots of it to work from! One tractor had a tire that was over 6' tall.

The back tire is over 6' high.

You can see how much taller the tire is than mom!

Road less traveled

Images of Shamrock, TX and other places along Route 66 were used in the movie "Cars". The rocks in the background were inspired by Cadillac Ranch from nearby Amarillo, TX, which are old cars with their front ends buried in the ground. Ramone's body-art shop in the film is directly inspired by the U-Drop Inn, a restored Art Deco gasoline station and restaurant complex in Shamrock, which now serves as a tourism and chamber of commerce office.

If you'd like to know more about inspirations for the movie, check out this link. https://www.route66news.com/2006/06/09/a-route-66-guide-to-cars-movie/

As we left Shamrock we headed west to Placitas. NM, which is about 1/2 hour north of Albuquerque. We'll be taking a right there, not a left.

--Sammy

 

Pretty Prairie

When we're not in an RV park we stay at individual people's homes that we find through boondockers.com. It's a network of people, mostly RVers, across the country that allow other RVers to stay in their driveways, fields, or yards for 1 to 5 days. Most have electric hookups, water and wifi. A few have RV dumps, which are basically septic tanks to dumps our waste tanks. Our hosts near Kansas City, MO were very welcoming and we really enjoyed our 5 day stay there. We left on Tuesday morning and arrived at our next stop in Pretty Prairie, KS. I know, right? Great name for a town!

Our hosts were Rod and Chris. They were wonderful people, very welcoming and friendly. They visited with us, we visited with them, and they even took Mom and Dad out to breakfast at a place called Carriage Crossing Restaurant in Yoder, KS. There were lots of farm tractors in the parking lot. Apparently, many Amish families drive around in their farm tractors instead of horse and buggy. 

Our RV was parked out in their back 40 (I think there was more land than that though) by the pond and had the whole area to ourselves. It was very quiet and peaceful. Every once in a while we could hear the screech of a hawk that liked to perch on the power pole at the back of the RV. Mom was in awe at the beauty of the landscape. She took a video of what she saw.

Quite honestly, though, I don't know what she was going on about because this is all I could see. Just looked like dry grass in a field to me. Of course I'm short so I'm sure she had a different vantage point.

But the area did have it's unique beauty. Mom took pictures of some of the farm stuff on the prairie, as well as making friends with their pony, My Sugar.

Swing from a broken tree limb, supported on the left by a stump.

A "hobbit" tree. The ladder inside goes up to another ladder and you can climb way up.

While we were in the area we visited the Strataca salt mine museum in Hutchinson, KS. The mine is 650 underground. It takes about 90 seconds to descend on the lift, which is done in total darkness to honor the minors who used to turn out their flame lanterns while they were in the lift. Today, of course, all the hard hats have modern light bulbs, but the early lanterns posed a fire risk in a crowded elevator lift. Besides mining salt, the underground area is used by other companies to store records and historical artifacts because of the year round 68 degree climate. Plus being that far underground it's pretty secure from theft or natural disasters. It was a very fascinating and educational tour.

Supports like this keep the floor from rising up from the pressure of the earth underneath.

This large salt block weighs about 6,000 lbs.

If you'd like to learn more about the Carey Salt Mine or Strataca Salt Museum please visit their websites. There's so much information it would be impossible to tell it all here.

http://www.careysalt.com/history/

https://www.underkansas.org/explore

We left Pretty Prairie Saturday morning and arrived in Shamrock, TX. That's another story for another post.

--Sammy

We're Off Again!

 After a long spring, summer and fall stay at home, we finally left on November 7th for our winter excursion. Mom had spent the summer redecorating and renovating our house on wheels. She spent several days moving stuff from out from the house and packing up for our long trip - dog food, human food, clothes, toiletries, dog food, dog toys (which I don't play with any more but Dora does), bedding, dog food, drinking water, canned goods - all the things you can imagine that humans would use in the course of daily life. Over the past year she has outfitted the RV with its own set of cookware, dishes, utensils, etc., so she didn't have to move those. Oh, and did I mention she packed dog food?

Our first stop (#2 on the map) was Clayton, NY to visit Dad's cousin that he hasn't seen in 20 years. They have 2 dogs, 1 of which became Dora's best friend. They wrestled and chased each other till they both passed out from exhaustion. And they have geese which Dora immediately decided didn't belong in the yard and chased them till they fled in terror across the pond. The other dog, well, sort of got upset with me and bit me on my back. Ouch! That was rude! I'm OK, thanks for asking, although I have quite a bruise. Fortunately the people got hold of the dog right away or an old guy like me might have been severely injured. And speaking of being an old dog, I hadn't been feeling very well for a bit but my people have started giving me Rimadyl every day. I feel a lot better and even have my appetite back.

We really enjoyed our visit and after a few days we headed out toward Kansas City, MO to visit Mom's son. We stopped a few nights on the way (#3 and 4) just to rest up and get back on the road the next day.

When we got to Mom's son, Chris's house in Kansas City, MO (#5 on the map), he and his fiancé had a wonderful announcement. They were getting married that day! Not only did Mom gain a new daughter-in-law, but she gained 2 new grandsons. I think the whole family is pretty cool! 

Again, Dora made fast friends with one of their dogs, and I got to sleep undisturbed in my favorite spot - curled up between Dad's legs on the recliner. I love it when she's occupied with other dogs because she leaves me alone! And Mom thought it was ironic that Dora came from KC Pet Rescue, and here she was back in KC.

We took a trip out to some land in the Ozarks that Chris owns to see his campsite set-up. It was a long, but fun day. The road in was 2 1/2 miles of bumps and ruts but once we got there we got to run around through all the fallen leaves. Mom loves scuffing through dry leaves on the ground. She says it reminds her of being a kid and running through leaves as her dad raked them up.

Since we won't be home on Thanksgiving we tried to find a turkey before we left Colebrook last week so we could roast it up and bring the meat with us. Dad couldn't find any turkeys in the stores. So on Sunday Chris and Kim served us a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. Mom was in heaven. She said that although she usually only has turkey at Thanksgiving she didn't want to miss out on the wonderful taste this year. Dora and I had leftovers. We approved.

They also made Mom a new sweatshirt. Pretty cool, huh?

Monday is preparation day. Laundry, shopping, straightening things out, and preparing the trailer for travel on Tues. We go to Pretty Prairie, KS for 4 days, then to a cattle farm in Shamrock, TX for 4 days, on to Placitas, NM for 2 days, and finally to Shiprock, NM for 4 days, which brings us to Dec. 1 when we check in to an RV park in Hurricane, UT for the month of December. Not sure what we're doing after that but I'll definitely keep you posted.

Dora and I "helping" with breakfast.

---Sammy