trips.kinnamans.net

Managed to do some internet stuff earlier in the day. Looked at the new s for North West Oregon. WOW, snow, and it look like it was at my place too. We went back to the trailer and decided to take a “gloat” picture, a toast to those still in the snow. The temperature at 6:00 pm was 73 with a gentle breeze. Very comfortable, sun glasses and shorts weather.
The blimp actually came over yesterday. It came right over us then made a sharp left turn before changing back to the his original direction. I would like to think he turned just so I could get a good picture of the side.
I hope all you Oregonians are enjoying your weather, we’re enjoying ours.

The latch on the trailer door seems to be worn out. I had to use bungee cords to hold the door closed while traveling through the various storms of the past few days. Now in the RV capitol of the world I hunted for a new door latch. No luck after going to every RV parts store in Quartzsite. After I reinstalled the latch it seemed to work better. I think I’ll wait until we get home to order a new one from Scamp.
Quartzsite is getting pretty deserted. Many of the snow birds and temporary vendors have packed up and headed north. Our plans from here are to head back into Joshua Tree NP for a couple weeks, then on Bullhead City area for a couple more. We’ll see what the weather is doing after that, then decide where to next.

Winds were much calmer and visibility back to normal. So off we went. We only to be met with cold and rain, then snow. Yes Snow. We left Oregon to get away from winter weather. Should be short lived. We abandoned plans to stop in New Mexico and headed for Quartzsite, AZ. It was almost dark by the time we got to Quartzsite but it was well above freezing and no dust storms or snow storms or rain storms, just clear skys. We noticed as we were coming into town that appeared to be less RVs in the desert than earlier. It looks like the winter swap meet is about over.

Continued on west on I-20 then I-10. Finally got out of Texas, but not far. The winds had come up and we were in the middle of a dust storm. We stopped at the first New Mexico rest area, just across the border from Texas. There we discovered that I-10 was closed about 5 miles from the rest area. On advice of the visitor center operator we stayed the night there. Dust got into everything. At around 9pm the wind died down a bit and the road was reopened, but from where were visibility was still greatly reduced. Not worth the risk of driving into it.

Look at the brown background is these pictures. That’s air filled with dust. There’s bushes, city, and mountains behind the brown. Visibility was less than 1/4 mile. Yuck Yuck Yuck.

Happy Green Day.
We left and headed west. Pleasant drive through wooded areas of Louisiana and east Texas. Continued on past Dallas-Fort Worth. Spent the night is a rest area. Free is a very price.

Left New Orleans. I was determined to NOT cross the Huey P Long bridge again. It’s very narrow with heavy traffic. My GPS seemed to have other ideas, every time I thought I had tricked it I found myself back at THAT bridge. We make it across safely and headed north to Stuart Lake. There’s a small campground with about 10 sites of which two were occupied when we arrived. We stayed two nights and decided the mosquitoes and high humidity were just too much. Night time temps dropped all the way down to 66 degrees F and daytime up into the high 80s-low 90s.

We wanted to experience the French Quarter at night. We loafed around during the day and headed into New Orleans early evening. Thought we would tour Royal Ave first since it had seemed the most active street during the afternoon. Nothing but traffic of the automobile type. We then walked the block to Bourbon Street. This was more was we expected. The street was blocked off and filled with people including street entertainers. It seemed like there was loud music coming out of every other door, there was people in the streets with placards trying to entice people into one establishment or another. I really have a hard time imagining what it would be like during Marti Gras, it was crazy enough on a Wednesday evening.

Wow, sorry guys for being so lax in getting this updated. Time has slipped by much faster than expected. Here we are in early March already.
We left Deming and headed for Big Bend National Park.
While at Big Bend we met a neat couple from Saskatchewan. One guy plays a guitar and we’ve almost managed to make some nice music with me playing the dulcimer. Maybe next time we’ll be able to do better. A couple from PA camped next to the couple for Saskatchewan, all of us kind of got together and compared notes. That means we sat around and jawed a bit.
We’ve walked a bit and drove some of the rough gravel roads. I was little apprehensive after breaking the truck at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, but the truck and driver did well, not so sure about the passenger.
We had a daily visit from a road runner. Very funny to watch bird. He was diving in the grass for bugs, every once in a while his beak would catch in the grass or ground. He almost do a flip, but managed to do a sideways thing and land on his feet. Very funny bird.
Cardinals were around. I think these are a subspecies since they’re smaller than what we usually consider a cardinal. Vermilion fly catchers were also present, these guys were quite brilliant.
Sometime towards the end of our first week the wind came up during the night and broke one of the poles for my Paha Que’. I hope I can get a replacement.
Near the end of the second week after a number of nice sunny warm days, the wind came up again. This time it was both day and night. The Saskatchewan couple left in the evening after the three couples had nice potluck meal. The next day the wind was still blowing and it was pretty cold so we took off too.
We drove well into the evening and spent the night in a rest area someplace in Texas. By then the rains were coming down and we drove the next day to New Orleans in the rain. We got out of the rain about 100 miles from New Orleans, boy were we glad to see it stop.
Right now we’re at Bayou Segnette State Campground. We spent yesterday in the New Orleans French Quarter, where we wandered around, bought a birthday present for daughter Liz and new Hard Rock Café t-shirt for Anne. Then the rains came down. I had left the roof vent open so a bit of water was on the table. I had to remove the inside molding and dry it out to stop the dripping.
Today we toured a plantation. The tour guide seemed quite knowledgeable with a pretty strong accent.
After all that we’re back a camp where there’s wifi so I should be able to catch up today.

Not to let any dry grass grow under our feet we took off for Deming, NM. The truck and trailer behaved quite nicely. It was really nice to have my good friend “cruise control” back. The Deming stop is at Rock Hound Campground.
Where we had to camp is a bit crowded, but since we expect to spend much of tomorrow in town doing laundry and catching up with internet stuff it’ll be ok for the two days we expect to be here.

Got up early and headed into Benson to get the truck fixed. Left the truck at the shop and walked the half block to get breakfast. WOW, was it ever good. In fact there was a lot of really good food served. I paid for the excess for all morning. About an hour after leaving the truck back we went to see how things were going. Almost done, in about another 10 minutes the work was completed and now for the bill. Again it was surprise, less than half of what I had expected.
I picked up a new safety chain and got that installed good enough for now.
Back toward camp with a stop at the “Discovery Center” to see what tours into the caverns were open. There was an opening in about an hour so took it. The tours are mostly walking and take about 2 hours. The guide was very good about explaining about the discovery and the attempts to keep the caverns pristine. No picture taking inside the caverns was allowed.