Date:                           April 29, 2007           

Location:                    Watsonville, CA                   

0750:

            We have finally found the reason that we were called to Santa Cruz and this KOA, we had our first day of work.  It started just before 7:30 in the morning and it was past 5:30 in the evening before we managed to get back to our home, nestled in the back of the campground among the plum and eucalyptus trees.  To most people that would be a pretty harsh and full day of work.  Connie and I returned home tired and a bit sore, but I am not sure we would have characterized the day as work.

            Our first experience was helping to set up and serve a pancake breakfast.  The KOA has quite a large crew and as we all know, “many hands make light work.”  It offered Connie and me a chance to meet some more of our fellow work kampers and to try and get into the flow of things around here.  The camping crowd, this weekend, is augmented by a large class of 3^rd graders and their families.  They have the use of our large Monterey Hall and were most of the people standing in line a half hour before we were ready to start serving breakfast.  The kids were fun, if not totally awake, and the mom’s and dad’s were just glad to not have to cook.  If our pancake breakfast did not go off quite a well oiled as a catering service it did not seem to bother too many people and we were all having a good time interacting and greeting, what was to be a beautiful California day.  The temperature in the morning was in the 50’s and reached way up to the high 70’s by afternoon.  All of this was under a deep blue sky and bright sun, talk about “California Dreaming.”

            After breakfast, which lasted over 2 hours, it was time to actually work.  Connie went to “The Hub” to learn the routine of managing the sales and registration of the campers for all of the activities available, like the mechanical bull, the climbing wall, the inflated jumping pillow, mini-golf and of course the banana bikes.  I was volunteered to help in the kitchen on clean up.  I am not sure either of us really worked that hard.  By 11:00 it was time to get ready for our afternoon of fun and frolicking.  Our first day on the job was, as we found out, the day that Sally had scheduled a professional photographer, models and a movie crew to run around the campground and take promotional videos and photos for KOA.  Yes, I have been in Santa Cruz for less then a week and Connie and I may soon be movie stars.  We have been posed, prodded, directed and filmed.  We have learned how to not blink when the photographer says smile and we have learned how to not look at the camera while they taking our picture.  We also learned how to look like it is the first time we have met a camper, only it is really the second or third time we have taken that pose because the light filter was not positioned exactly right.  It was an interesting day.

            Most of the day, when I was supposed to be working, I spent playing with kids, either helping them climb hundreds of feet up a ten foot wall or bucking them off a mechanical bull.  Connie seemed to spend a lot of time laughing at me as I boarded my 4 car train and blew the whistle and clanged my bell as I choo-chooed around the campground with a load of screaming and waving kids of all ages.  Some of this was done chasing a golf cart with a guy on the back with a very large movie camera.  I just waved and clanged my bell as the passengers yelled and waved at the campers at their sites as we rolled on by.

            As I stated at the beginning, it was a long day and could have been a tiring day at work, if one was of such a mind.  Connie and I came home a bit tired, a bit sore and very satisfied.  It may have been our first day at the Santa Cruz KOA as work kampers, but I do not seriously feel it was a day of work.  I might even feel a bit guilty, we get a camp site near the ocean and just down the road from Santa Cruz, we get to spend the summer in California, we actually get a few dollars in pay and so far, all I have done is play and have fun. We spent a whole day playing with kids, being a kid, watching families enjoy the pleasure of being with each other, and interacting with our fellow work kamper playmates.  All of this was among the plum trees, California poppies, and under towering eucalyptus trees under a bright sunny, blue skied, California spring day.  To call it work would be a lie, to call it heaven would be an exaggeration, but a lot more accurate.  Day one was a ball and a day that has left us yearning to enjoy each and every day of fun and play in our immediate future.

Date:                           April 26, 2007

Location:                    Watsonville, CA       

0900:

            The birds are singing and the sun is breaking through the “marine layer” as I begin my blog for this morning.  Out my soon to be cleaned window there are green lush rolling hills and a multitude of west coast trees that I am not fully familiar with yet.  Add to this that we are just a very few moments away from the Santa Cruz boardwalk and pier and you might think that we are near heaven.  You might be right.

            Connie and I met our new boss yesterday and she is as energetic and personable as we thought she might be after having our initial conversations with her on the phone.  We are still not totally sure why this opportunity has presented itself to us, but Connie and I are very thankful that is has. Our new boss seems to think that she has received the best of this situation and is very open and appreciative of our energy and desires to become part of her team.  All of which makes our new adventure seem to be all the more ideal and exciting.  Connie and I are under no misconception, and we expect to be working very hard as the season begins to unfold.  We are going to be placing most of our efforts in the activity area of the campground and working with a cadre of young college students that are going to be here for the summer.  As I told Sally, our new boss, “It seems like we are going to be playing all summer.”  That attitude seem to be very encouraging to her, because this should not be work, it should be fun.

            Our strenuous work schedule left Connie and I with nothing to do in the afternoon. We had filled out all of our paper work, met the managers of the park and even met the district vice president, the past manager of this park.  We had had our initial orientation discussion with Sally and we even had our new KOA yellow shirts and name tags.  It was a pretty full morning and we had a whole afternoon of exploring to do.  We hopped in our car and within a half hour we were parked next to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz and the Pacific Ocean was waving a greeting of hello to us.  We have been here before, but it was with 3 teenagers and nearly 14 years ago.  Somehow it has lost none of its charm and is still as beautiful as we remembered.  I think that even some of the same sea lions were barking hello to us as we walked out the pier and settled in to our favorite Santa Cruz restaurant on the pier.  Actually it is the only restaurant on the pier that we have eaten at, but it is now our favorite.  I can still remember the fish sandwich that we had 14 years ago setting at the picnic tables over the ocean. This time we opted for an inside table and a slightly more substantial meal.

            If you have never been on the pier at Santa Cruz, I am sure that you have seen or read about it.  As the sun slides towards the ocean’s horizon the amusement park on the boardwalk comes alive with bright colors and young bodies enjoying the atmosphere of California.  The sea lions sing a cacophony of barking choruses as the seagulls screech accompaniment and we experienced all of this as the evening parade of sailboats left the marina and ventured froth for a sunset sail.  I am not sure you can appreciate the wonder of a white sails set against a blue ocean with rolling surf breaking into turbulent waves dotted with the collection of surfers all packaged in the warm gentle breeze of an evening sunset.  You must add to this the smell of fish and the wafting hint of salt water all being serenaded by barking sea lions and frolicking sea otters under a crystal clear blue heaven.  It is the place on earth that most people long to visit and it is the place on earth that Connie and I going to be calling home for the next 6 months or maybe even longer.

            It took me a life time to visit this pier the first time and it was at the request of my son and daughter.  It seems that, even 14 years ago, this was a destination of adventurous teens.  This day it took Connie and I just moments to get here and as we sat enjoying a very excellent fish dinner we were beginning to realize that this was to become our home.  Instead of driving to Hammondsport for our water fix and an over priced fish dinner we could be walking on a pier over the Pacific Ocean, enjoying a fresh dinner of gourmet fish and the pure enjoyment of a fantastic setting sun as it bid adieu to yet another day in paradise.  All of this to a backdrop of breaking surf, soaring sea birds, a flotilla of sailboats and, of course, the chorus of barking, large, and lazy sea lions.  I think we can handle this, and the fish was not that expensive.

Date:                           April 25, 2007           

Location:                    Watsonville, CA

0850:

            Aurora is working again and Connie and I are a stones throw from the Pacific Ocean         at our home for the summer, The Monterey/Santa Cruz KOA.  The drive from Mojave to Watsonville was a lot more uneventful than the last week and a half.  The repair shop finally received all of the parts that were needed to get  Aurora back up and running and Connie and I left a lot of our money behind as we bid a final and fond farewell to the people at the Desert Truck Repair shop.

            It was just about 12:00 noon when I was able to put my fingers on the ignition key and turn over the big noisy diesel engine.  It is a wonderful sound to hear after 9 plus days of injured silence.  We had been waiting for one small fitting for our turbo oil line and it arrived at 10:00, just on schedule.  Someday I will expound on the value of having so many different parts needed to fix a simple diesel engine, and I will explain the wonder of metric fittings as opposed to what ever the normal American fittings are called. I may even find a reason for all of the confusion, but for now I am in Santa Cruz, or almost, and Aurora is behaving very nicely and we are out a lot of money.  The people at the truck shop could not have been nicer, but it is located in Mojave, CA and there is not a lot else there to enjoy, except the constant 30 or 40 mile an hour wind.

            Setting here, the first morning in our new home, I can not help but enjoy the lush beauty of vegetation and over abundance of green. If you are from the northeast, I am sure you are wondering why that is so great.  This time of year the white is leaving and the pleasures of spring is “budding” all around you. We have missed that feeling and essence of rebirth while we meander through the desert.  It is not that the desert does not have that cycle, it is more that it does not have the green.  Any green that we found present in the desert, and there is a lot this year, is harsh and dark, as it must be to survive.  We are used to the gentle light and pale green of new birth which will transform into the robust lush velvet of green as the plants mature.  We are spoiled and a bit homesick.  Yesterday we drove through our new home, all be it a country’s breadth away from our family.

            As we left the wind of Mojave and desolate confines of the open and ever reaching brown of desert life we climbed into the mountains of coastal California.  We began a subtle but drastic metamorphosis of our wonderful countries topography and vegetation.  We drove form the desert floor of the Mojave basin to the lush valley produce center of America in California.  From flat open expanses of brown desert floors that reach from horizon to horizon we crossed the mountain passes and descended into lush green valleys of produce and beautiful flowers.  As a simple example of just how beautiful and somewhat extreme this area is, we drove along fields of growing produce that stretched as far as the eye could see and these fields were lined with hedges or bushes to mark the property line.  You might think that this is not so extreme and much like is seen any where in the country.  The noticeable difference is that these hedges and bushes of property delineation were all flowering rose bushes.  There were large exquisite blossoms of roses lining the road as a barrier hedge.  To say it was beautiful would be an injustice; to say we thoroughly enjoyed the beauty would be an understatement.  We are in California, the lush beautiful part of California, and we are beginning to really enjoy that pleasure.

            We arrived at the KOA near 7:00pm and barely had enough time to get our rig positioned before the sun settled behind the coastal ridge of mountains that stretched out into the Monterey Bay.  Our parking experience is a story in itself, but it will suffice just to say we managed to get the beast positioned on her new home and it was still not quite dark.  As soon as I turned of the engine my lovely wife told me we had a very important chore to get done and we must leave the rest of the “set up” until later. We immediately jumped in our car and drove the less than a mile to the Manresa State Park and walked down to the sandy beach of the Pacific Ocean.  We were on the Pacific Coast watching our first of what will I assume be many sunsets.  It was a bit cool, about 65 degrees, and a bit hazy, I guessing quite normal, but it was beautiful and it felt like it was all ours.   There were very few other enjoyers near us; a young girl running up and down the 5 or 6 story stairway that led from the parking lot to the beach; 3 or 4 fishermen a bit up the beach casting their lines into a rather active surf; and of course the obligatory surfer riding the breaking waves in the red evening hues of a setting sun.  It was cool, and a very nice ending to a sometimes less than fun excursion from Arizona to California by way of New Mexico.

            We are here, we are safe and we have a nearly new engine, or at least my wallet think so.  I guess in the scheme of things, life is good and we can only pray that it will continue to get better.  It is foggy this morning, I think that is normal; it is cool this morning and I think that is normal; my wife is working around the RV as I set here and pound on my keyboard and I know that is normal; I think I am going to like normal here.

Date:                                       April 22, 2007

Location:                                Mojave, CA

1000:

            The sun rose over the Mojave Desert this morning and Aurora was still snuggled up next to the Desert Truck Repair building in Mojave, CA.  There are peaces of our engine missing and Connie and I are not going anywhere real soon.  At least we are not going anywhere in our buss real soon.  The motorhome that was just in front of us left midmorning yesterday and I hope that will translate to us moving up a step on the priority list here come Monday morning.  I do not want to infer that the people here have not been kind and pleasant to us, they have been very hospitable. It is just that we have places to be and things to do and none of that revolves around the lovely desert town of Mojave, CA.

            We have been working at the practice of making lemonade from lemons and trying not to be too very depressed.  I think that we have accomplished most of that chore, all though it has not been the most fun experience that we have ever had.  We have managed to explore a lot of this small desert bump in the road and we have driven into Los Angeles twice to visit two presidential libraries.  It is a strange experience to wake up and look out our window and see the curvature of the earth on the horizon and little between us and the edge of humanity. Yet, if we point our car south on route 14 we climb over a few mountains and are soon deposited in the hustling and bustling traffic of Los Angeles. It is less than 100 miles from here and yet so many life times away.  The road seems to meander through passes and over desert and there is little to peak your imagination or interest.  Yet, as you precede a70 or 75 miles and hour you notice that the amount of traffic keeps increasing and soon you are in 10 or 12 lane road with half of the know world all trying to get to an appointment that they are 36 minutes late in attending.  They are still traveling 70 miles and hour only now they are bumper to bumper and door handle to door handle.  Connie is usually white knuckled and praying.  I just close my eyes and listen for horns or scraping car bodies.  That may be a slight exaggeration, but only very slight.

            The visit to the two libraries has been a very well worth while adventure.  I must admit that Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon are not two of my favorite presidents, but the history and experience of visiting their libraries has been well worth the drive and suffering of personal pride.  The Reagan library was much more fluff and show than was Nixon’s, but then Reagan was an Alzheimer suffering figure head for most of his second tern if not his whole eight years.  Nixon was much more of a statesman and had a major effect on history, be it for the better or not I will leave to much wiser historians than I will ever be.  Both libraries were interesting examples of how history can have multiple interpretations, all depending on who gets to write the prose.  If it is your library, I guess, you get to write your perspective of it as if it were the total truth.  It will then be up to the readers and historians to weed through the chaff and find the truth.

            Our second trip into Los Angeles and a visit to Nixon’s library and birth place caused us to drive from the northeast corner of the city to the southwestern corner.  That means that we drove through the whole city on the infamous California freeways.  The drive trough the city in the morning offered a challenge beyond my desires as it was through a torrential down pour.  Not only did I not see much of the city, I could barely see the wall of cars in front of me.  That is 4 to 6 lanes of cars all parked on the same freeway as I was, still 36 minutes late to an appointment that they were trying to attend on time.  The traffic actually behaved quite well and drove with some sort of courtesy.  At least what I could see of it, which was a scary small amount.  The expressways were anything but express, but they did deposit us in the Yorba Linda area of LA and near the destination.  Again we owe a major thank you to our navigator Sackee.  Our little GPS got us there and back with little trouble.  She even handled a wrong lane situation by her friendly driver that allowed Connie and me to explore a small neighborhood in southern LA.  It seems I was in the right lane only I was in it just one exit too soon.  Oh well, Sackee just went through her, “Off route, Recalculating” shtick and soon we were again on the I-10 parking lot and headed home.

             Home is truly where the heart is and now our heat is parked under the repair sign of the Desert Truck Repair shop in Mojave, CA.  Things could always be worse and there is always a silver lining in most clouds, yet I must be honest and admit that I wish that this cloud would pass and we could get on to our destination in Santa Cruz.  I am not sure that this experience will be the source of a lot of fond memories, but it will be a source of memories and that is why we walk this earth, to build a cache of memories in our souls.  We have been as fortunate as could be expected under the circumstances and we are squeezing out some lemonade from our supply of un-requested lemons.  Still I await the lovely sound of a noisy diesel as I crank up the engine on our bus and venture into the mountains one more time toward our new home for the summer just a hop, skip and a jump from the Pacific Ocean coast line.

Date:                                       April 20, 2007

Location:                                Mojave, CA

0700:

            Welcome to my lemonade stand and a return to my endless diatribes.  Connie and I are now parked next to a very large building that is attempting to block the constant 30 to 40 mile an hour winds of the Mojave Desert.  The building has, in large letters, the phrase “Truck Repair” written on its peak and that is what we are attempting to have accomplished. We pulled into the over sized parking lot on Sunday of this week and we are still “sick, lame and disabled.  Yes, Aurora is having yet another problem, and we are captive to her snits and foibles; but, as I was told by a much smarter traveler than I, “If we did not use them they would not break.”  And, we certainly are using Aurora and it is that use that caused our dilemma.

            To make a very sad and horrible story short and not so sweet, Connie and I were heading through the Mojave Desert on Sunday heading toward the peaks of the Rockies when Aurora lost her power to propel us down the road.  The hills were slowing us down to nearly nothing and on the flat stretch I could get her to go just a bit over 30 miles and hour.  There was definitely a problem.  My lovely wife advised I find an exit, and look for a repair shop to investigate the problem. I, uncharacteristically, listened and pulled off at the very next exit ramp and limped into this truck repair facility.  We spent the night in their parking lot and I was at the door the very first thing Monday morning.

            After being told that it would be at least 2 days before they could get to our problem we were pulled into the bay for a diagnosis. It pays to be nice and patient, as we were placed at the head of the line for some reason.  It seems that our fuel filter, that I thought had been changed and serviced at Wilkins before we left home, was old and did not look like it had been changed in a long while. It now was clogged and was going to cost me nearly 400 dollars to fix.  It was now that the bad things went south and got terrible.  While looking for our power problem the mechanic, at my request, started looking for a small oil leak; as I was noticing more oil than I should on the engine.  It seems that I have a cracked exhaust manifold.  This is not a good thing but not a disaster. The exhaust crack is right near an oil line to my turbo, now things are getting sad.  The oil line is now showing signs of deterioration from constant heated exhaust gasses and is about ready to explode, which would allow the engine to pump itself dry of oil in minutes.  We are now in a major bummer and due for some very expensive repairs.

            To put a shiny face on this event, if that is even a possibility.  If our fuel filter had not been clogged, and if I had been my normal arrogant self and not listened to my wife we could have been half way up a rocky mountain road with a seized up engine and a very expensive paper weight for a home.  So, in this trauma there is a lining of something other than ca-ca.  It may not be silver, but it is a “best of a bad situation” kind of lining.  We are safe, we are getting the needed repairs, and we will soon have a bus to again to roll down the high-ways.  We will, however, be much lighter of wallet once the final bill does come due.

            While we are suffering in a pit of self pity crying over the lemons we have been delivered, we are attempting to find some means to make lemonade.  We have visited the Reagan Presidential Library; we have driven through a very large field of enormous wind turbines that are helping provide electricity for southern California and we have explored just the smallest section of the San Joaquin Valley.  We have also discovered that the wind blows constantly in Mojave at nearly 30 miles an hour on a calm day, and that there is little reason to ever think we would want to return.  The people are friendly and wonderful, we have found a rather pleasant and good place to eat, but this is the real desert and there is nothing here but sand, sage brush and flat nothingness from here to eternity.

            On a better day I might be able to expound on the beauty that is hidden in this God forsaken section of our country.  It is there and it can be breath taking.  As desolate as the desert floor can be, it can take your heart in a split second as you round a curve in a canyon and see the lush velvet of a fertile valley stretched before your eyes.  It is not just like turning a page, it is like finding a whole new chapter.  We are stuck in the middle of  a desolate nothing and yet in a few moments we can be in Los Angeles or the lush vegetation of the San Joaquin farm belt area.  It all depends on which side of the mountain you happen to be.  We are trying to find a means to make lemonade from our delivery of lemons.  This may be a wonderful anecdotal story at sometime in the future, but for now we just want to get on the road and start living the rest of our lives.

            Oh well, I must go search for some sugar today to add to our ton of lemons and attempt to manufacture some lemonade,  prayers would be greatly appreciated.

Date:                                       April 12, 2007

Location:                                Picacho Peak State Park, AZ

0900:

            Day one of our new life starts below Picacho Peak in the middle of the desert between Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona. I know that every day is the first day of a new life, but Connie and I are truly venturing into some rather new experiences.  I am sure that there will be many blogs to extol either our ecstatic pleasures or our second guessing apprehensions as time unfolds.  I am also sure that each day that unfolds on the west coast as we are nestled near the Pacific Ocean of Monterey Bay will offer us opportunities that we have yet to understand or prepare to enjoy. Stay tuned for what I hope is a wonderful summer season at the Santa Cruz/Monterey KOA. By the way, if you are interested in what and where we are going to be this summer, take a walk through your “Googled” search window and do some investigation and then you can cry in envoy.

            For now, Connie and I are pleasantly parked in a very pretty garden in the desert.  The cactus is just entering its blooming phase and we are entering our “going nuts with a new camera” phase.  My birthday present, a Cannon S3 IS is an awesome instrument of magic.  It does things that I do not even understand, and it takes wonderful pictures.  The clarity is almost unbelievable and I just found out that I did not have it on its highest resolution settings.  We have zoomed in and zoomed out on everything from birds on a cactus to sunset auroras.  We have pictures of things that are close up and pictures of things that are far away.  We, also have pictures of things that I will probably not remember what they are the next time I view them on my PC screen.  And we are just beginning to appreciate the magic of this small fantastic computer that just happens to take pictures.

            I have often mused at the typical traveler’s penchant to view his travels through a small window on a little box.  It is a tiny view finder that the nomadic buffoon must squint through to almost see what is so beautifully displayed before him and he is purposely avoiding the pleasures of fully taking in its majesty.  Why would a relatively intelligent person do something so stupid.  Not only are they taking the panoramic view that is so easily and beautifully displayed for their stereo vision eyes and compressing it into a 1 or 2 inch square of flat two dimension screen.  They are trying to view this art work of nature with one eye closed and one eye squinting, they are pressing their noses up against a cold metal body that will now have to be polished and cleaned to remove the greasy splotch left on the tiny view screen.  Somehow this does not make a lot of sense, and yet here I am, nose pressed, eye squinted, and image shrunk pressing the capture button so often that I might get carpal tunnel index finger.  And, I love it.

            The real mystery is that after I have practiced this ritual of question I hurry home so that I can download all of the pictures I have captured and display them on my computer screen.  I then wonder at the beauty that I have just seen, or at least that my camera has just seen.  Some how there seems to be an intellectual disconnect in this process, but I still anxiously await my next chance to venture forth, camera slung around my next, attempting to capture just some of the wonders that we see every day.  The answers to this paradoxical question of life’s habits may me captured in one of the last things my dad told me as he approached the end of his life on this earth.  He said, “If I did not have my memories I think that I would go crazy just setting here waiting to die.”

            “Dad, I am trying to record some of my memories, just in case my memory is not as strong as yours.  Thank you for the advice.”

PS

I would be remiss and untrue to my emotions if I did not wish a Happy Birthday to Robby. He would have been 38 years old today if the Lord had not taken him away from me when he was a very early 4 and a half months of age.

Date:                           April 10, 2007           

Location:                    White Sands National Monument, NM      

0845:

            Play time in the sands of Alamogordo, NM are soon to come to an end and Connie and I must point our bus to the west and a very new experience of playing at the Santa Cruz KOA.  Our trek home to the east coast has taken a rather abrupt alteration and is now calling us west to the Pacific coast line and a summer on the beach at Monterey Bay in California.  I know that this sounds like a terrible thing to happen to anyone, NOT.  But if it will dissuade some of your envoy, we are going to be “working” at the KOA.  So, it is not all fun and play, but I think that it will be very close to awesome.

            Our stay in Alamogordo has been all that we had hoped and a lot more.  We wanted to attend a single church for the full Holy season and we choose the Grace Methodist Church in Alamogordo because it is close to our friends John and Eileen and we could thusly share the religious value of the season with like minded and spiritually valuable people.  There are too many secular souls that postulate a celebration of most sacred holidays and Connie and I do not choose to subscribe to that materialistic genre.  We, instead, fully enjoy and appreciate the truer meaning of the Holy-day.  Choosing the church here was a very good decision.

            Easter and the story of the Passion was approached much like most churches, with just enough off center perspective to cause us to think and more appreciate the meaning of the season.   The final experience of Easter, the Sunday morning service, was the type of experience that will remain harbored in our souls as the music and spiritual presentation keeps replaying in our minds. The fact that Connie was allowed to join the choir and be a part of the service was a major element in our ability to completely become a part of the celebration.  I, with my “oh so bad” singing voice, was relegated to a pew and was allowed to enjoy and experience the event from the congregations perspective.  I may not have produced the music but I certainly did not feel the spine tingling shiver of spirituality as the choir hit the high note of the opening prelude and the darkened church immediately filled with light as the windows were uncovered and the lights were turned to full brightness.  As the tingling of this moment was filling the hearts and souls of the collected congregation the front cross covering was lowered and a cross of white lilies surrounded by colorful butterflies emerged.  If this is not enough to touch your soul, you deserve to stay at home and hunker down in your bed.  You must be spiritually dead any ways.

            If this experience is not enough to fill our memory banks with everlasting wonder we were taken on a bike ride to a lesser visited section of the White Sands National Monument Last evening.  It is getting close to our last night in this area and Eileen needed to share with Connie and me her favorite bike ride at White Sands.  I packed up my new camera, a birthday gift from my wife, and Connie and I followed Eileen and John to the secluded dunes.  The ride was about 2 miles one way and it was taken on a very pleasant evening of slight breezes and a slightly cloudy sky preparing to display the last vestiges of the day’s sun.

            Standing alone in a dune field of white gypsum is an experience that can only be felt with your feet firmly planted in that gypsum.  In a picture, you look like a wondering waif lost in a Buffalo, NY snow storm.  White drifts of glistening snow with harsh examples of struggling plants seem to be all that exists on this earth.  In the picture you can not feel the razor sharp winds of a Buffalo winter and standing on the dunes of White Sands you can not feel these knife cutting chills either.  At White Sands you can enjoy the contrast of the white against an ever changing display of warm shadows as the sun slowly moves across the sky.  As evening approaches these shadows take on multiple, muted colors of pink, grey or egg shell white depending on the moisture make up of the air.  Nature paints a new sculpture in the sand almost every moment that you are treasured enough to enjoy.  As the sun proceeds to its resting place for the evening the lights and shadows change and as the winds blow across the dunes the landscape changes.  You are truly standing in a living sculpture garden of beauty.

            On one of our last evenings to enjoy this most treasured display of beauty Connie and I were to be presented with another gift.  The day had been somewhat cloudy and we even had a few rain drops dance off the roof of our vehicle.  This caused the Tularosa Basin to be accentuated with a covering of evening mist and clouds. The sun decided to take this atmospheric moisture and enliven its evening display of beauty as it slowly slid behind the San Andres Mountains.  The last few moments of light on this day were explosions of fire and beauty silhouetted against the purple mountains on the horizon and the white sand of the dunes.  It gave me a wonderful chance to play with my new toy and to attempt to capture, in a digital file, some of the breath taking beauty that was being displayed before us.

            Sunsets can be, and often are, a natural beauty that can be only appreciated in your soul through personal experience.  You must see the majesty of Mother Nature in all her efforts in person to fully understand the soulful joy it can provide.  The breezes, the smells, the almost personally contacting feel of nature enhances the experience so very much, and yet we armatures must attempt to capture this beauty with our little boxes of photo recording devises.  I am not above feeling this compulsion and me with a new toy, how could I refuse the urge?  I will attempt to post some of my experiments on the picture section of my blog.  I will, I am sure, be more than willing to bore the hell out of you with picture after picture of our adventures if we ever manage to return to our home area. 

            Until then, I must go play now and prepare to venture forth into a new life along the coast line of California.  Life should never be boring.  If you should ever think it is, go and slap yourself, you have just made a very stupid mistake.  Go and sit in a field, white sand or not, and talk to nature, she has a wonderful world to put on display just for you.

Date:                                       April 5, 2007

Location:                                Alamogordo, NM

0930:

            The friend of our friends was the impetus for our exploration of the Alamogordo area yesterday.  John and Eileen were blessed with the visits of not only Connie and me but also with the visit of there friend and past boss from Maryland.  Of course that must mean it is time to pack the family truck and explore the hidden treasures in the area. That is exactly what we had planned for us and exactly what we accomplished.

            Connie and I were picked up at our door by just a bit after 8:00 in the morning and we were whisked away on an adventure that would take us from the site of space observation and study to the Space Hall of Fame with a stop off at the top of the world for lunch and a slight detour through a family pistachio farm.  To say the least, it was a very full day, and my lovely wife topped it off with a visit with and chance to sing in the local Methodist Church choir.  For one day I would say that we accomplished quite a bit.

            Our first stop on our tour was at Sun Spot, a National Observatory situated atop the Sacramento Mountains.  This a sister site to the observatory we visited near Tucson and is dedicated to solar observations.  We actually got to go into one of the observation scope buildings and watch the technicians look deeply into the workings of our sun.  I am not sure exactly what they were doing, but it looked quite involved.  You would be surprised how dark a solar telescope room is while it is being used. It is also amazing how little human observation is actually being accomplished and how much it is all computerized and electrically recorded on a myriad of highly technical instruments. It was very interesting, although I felt like I was in the dark on many levels.

            Our afternoon repast was to be enjoyed in Cloudcroft, a mountain top village of refuge from the hot summer basin of New Mexico.  It is reported that Rebecca is still roaming the halls and rooms of this elegant retreat hotel.  We did not happen to meet her, but we did have an elegant lunch and enjoyed the picturesque view from the cupola atop the 19^th century resort.  We could see the full Tularosa Basin and the outline of the White Sands Monument.  It is quite a spectacular sight to see the desert basin just becoming alive with the new growth of spring and to have this picture punctuated with a dramatic white jewel of glistening sand accentuating the contrasting colors.  Even without the food, this restaurant is worth the visit just to take in the view.

            Our afternoon was comprised of a walk through the exhibit of early missile and space vehicles on display in the park in front of the Space Hall of Fame.  White Sands Missile Range is part of this area and is part of the birth of the American space and missile technology and research.  I think that the exhibit was more of big boy enjoyment than a female exercise in excitement, but was, seemingly, enjoyed by all.  I did notice that the women seemed to be a bit more eager to leave and explore more, while the male contingent appeared to be a bit more content to look at and touch the remnants of our early missile and space technology.  It was a sunny, beautiful day and the scenery was pretty and the women were patiently tolerant.  I guess we all had a qualified good time returning to our youth and toy box of Nike launchers and V2 rockets.

            Our most interesting and educational excursion of the day was a guided tour thorough a pistachio farm.  The fact that our tour guide was a young black haired girl with the beautiful bright blue eyes did not go unappreciated.  We did learn a lot more about the simple nut that we all take too much for granted.  We also got to sample, maybe too much, a lot of different pistachio nut concoctions.  We sampled nuts from the simple dry roasted variety to the hot green chili flavored type.  We learned that there is a big difference between male and female nut bushes, they are not really trees.  We were told that the male just pollinates the female tree blossoms and then just hangs around and enjoys the rest of the summer in quiet solitude while the female must nurture and provide the media for the nuts growth and maturation.  It seemed our female guide enjoyed this contrasting example of the nut tree sexes.  Do you suppose she was trying to draw a comparison to some other species of animal?

            We had a very full day of New Mexico exploration and I ended up with a very full tummy of New Mexican food and pistachio nuts. Some how my wife found it with in her self to attend choir practice and prepare to join the Methodist Church choir for Easter services.  One of the reasons we came to Alamogordo was to enjoy the Easter week celebration with friends and a local church family.  I would guess we are right on track to have a very successful experience.

Date:                                       April 2, 2007

Location:                                Alamogordo, NM

0900:

            I am back!!  I am not sure if that is a good thing or just a real thing, but it is a fact.  A few things have happened since my last verbal meandering and I have learned a few lessons in life.  The first and foremost lesson was that I should have listened to my wife a little more closely.

            Shortly after my last entry to my blog we downloaded a normal routine Windows update.  During the soon to follow evening our computer started to act very strangely and by late in the evening it had managed to freeze completely and become totally inoperative.  I have learned that this malfunction was probably caused by a glitch in the downloaded security update.  To make a very sad and long story short, our PC died and I had to go through a complete recovery process.  To the simple minded, and I am certainly one of those, we lost every thing on our computer.  We lost all of our records, all of our photos and all access to the internet.  This is when my hearing problem reared its ugly head.  I had no back-up for any of our files.  When I say they were gone, I mean like in a fire gone.  I had failed the first lesson of marriage; “Listen to your wife when she says you need to back-up your computer files.”

            After nearly two weeks of tears, frustration and magic I have managed to recover our computer, re-install most of our programs, and magically recover some of our records, but we are still lacking nearly 20 percent of our files.  We are also the new owners of a large external storage device that automatically backs-up my PC every week.  I may be stupid and stubborn, but I can learn if placed under extremely traumatic circumstances.

            While this trauma was going on, Connie and I still had a life to live and a lot of rather life altering decisions to make.  We followed my philosophical sage’s advice.  As Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”   Our major fork in the road came when I received a notification that we were to be offered an activity position at a KOA in Santa Cruz, CA for the coming summer.  Our position would be at a very large campground in Watsonville, Ca that is less than a half mile from the beach on Monterey Bay.  It took me a lot longer to type that then it took me to decide if I wanted to spend the summer in California.  After a week of deep soul searching and traumatic decision making, we both finally decided that we could not turn down this opportunity and we will be spending the summer in heaven enjoying the heck out of being involved in a very active campground.  I am sure that many more blogs will emanate from our experiences in Santa Cruz.  I am sure we will deeply miss our family, but there are airplanes that cross this country on a regular basis and we are already planning our first of at least two trips to the airport in San Francisco and our transcontinental flights.

            While this rather emotional and actually difficult decision was facing Connie and me we were attending a full timers rally in Benson, Arizona and, we thought, we were preparing to head east.  The rally was fantastic and a chance to see many old friends and meet some new to be friends. Our plans to head east are now a bit modified as we are pulling our all of our western maps and books to figure out how we want to travel from Benson, AZ to California.  If you are paying attention to my blog you have noticed that we are in New Mexico and most normal people would realize that New Mexico is not west of Arizona.  If you are a full time Rver, you realize that this is not necessarily a problem.  Connie and I left a great rally in Benson, Arizona heading to another Escapee Rally in Stockton, CA by way of a visit with our friends in Alamogordo, New Mexico.  If you do not have you maps out yet, that means that we headed west by turning east for a just a little bit.  That might even confuse Yogi Berra.

            For the next week or so Connie and I will be visiting and enjoying the beauty of the White Sands National Monument and we will be spending sometime with John and Eileen as we celebrate the Easter week with them and at their church.  The beauty of the largest Gypsum Desert in the world is truly awe inspiring and I will try to post some of our pictures as we attempt to capture the exquisite thrill of this area of New Mexico.  John and Eileen are park rangers at the National Monument and we are enjoying the energy and love that they are exuding about an area of this country that the truly do treasure.  We have taken one sunset stroll though the white dunes and a drive through the park. To say it is beautiful and breath taking is so mundane and fails by a ton to describe this area.  It is, however a true statement, all be it ineffectual.

            Our sunset stroll, led by Eileen, was educational and an experience of beauty.  Eileen, through her love and knowledge of this park, taught us about the history and creation of this large ever changing display of white sand and the life cycles that have adapted to live within its confines.  At the end of her hour or so talk we were atop a 60 foot high dune of the purest white sand and watched as the bright sun of the day slid below the ring of jagged mountains that surrounds the Tularosa Basin.  As we have learned in the southwest, at sunset to observe the first beauty of the days entrance into sleep we turn to the east and watched the mountains explode in flames of pink and red as the last vestiges of the sun illuminate them.  As we slowly turn toward the west we then are treated to the oranges and hues of dying light as the sun says its final good night and proceeds to the other side of the earth.  If this is not enough to take your breath away you are probably not breathing anyways, but this is not the last explosion of Mother Nature’s evening show of beauty.  Just prior to the nights conquering of the bright days light the sun has one more display of beauty.  As we were standing on the peak of this white dune surrounded by the deep purple and mellowing shades of mauve reflected from the Sacramento and San Andres mountains we watched the sky surround us with a ring of fire.  The sun bid us a final farewell as it engulfed us in a ring of pink and muted red evening light and then turned the evening over to a rising full moon brightly reflecting off the white sands of New Mexico.  It was a moment to enjoy and simple reason why our trek west from Arizona had to be though New Mexico.

            Our life for the coming summer is starting to take shape and is, I am sure, going to offer us many adventures.  We are going to miss the east coast this summer, but I feel that an opportunity to spend a summer on Monterey Bay is just too much to refuse.  The big question is going to be next fall when we have to decide if we are going to become “Left Coast” inhabitants or head toward the east.  But those decisions are all in the future we have a fantastic present to live and it is going to take nearly all of our energy to live it to its fullest and that is exactly what we are going to try to accomplish.  Come back and visit my blog and see if we are successful.