Alien Tour

The snow is melting and temperatures are rising again. At least the white stuff here doesn't stick around that long!

We spent some time bumming around the alien district of Roswell the other day. Here's some pix for those not faint of heart, LOL!

Christmas Cheer/Random Acts of Kindness

Yeah, it's still snowing here. Piling up pretty good, too. Had the highway out front closed last night going east to Texas. Apparently it is snowing clear down to El Paso and into Mexico. Oh, and they don't have snowplows here, either.

We went into town for groceries this morning and noticed a lot of vehicles don't have snow tires. Huge slush on the road due to no plowing. Natives here are all excited about white Christmas and can be seen building snowmen and having snowball fights everywhere.

There was a guy in a Santa suit with a big old Suburban parked on the side of the road in downtown Roswell. He was standing out in the 6" deep slush and driving snow with a big homemade sign that read "Free Toys."

We noticed this year that Walmart was promoting layaways for Christmas. Last Friday the owner of a small local oil company 30 miles south of here (little place called Artesia) came into town with a wad of cash and paid off a bunch of Walmart layaways for people he doesn't even know.

Hmm, Nope, You Ain't Shittin Me!

The old cemetery on the way into Lincoln

Up in Lincoln yesterday and the snow started. After we hung out there for few hours with our friends, Linda and Boyd from Montana, we headed up to Capitan and had a late lunch at the Smokey Bear Restaurant. I highly recommend the green chile stew. My bowl had at least 10 pounds of beef in it, and the fresh flour tortillas were awesome!

Capitan is a really small town between Lincoln and Ruidoso. While we were sitting in the restaurant, a working cowboy stumbled in for a quick bite before disappearing back out into the blowing snow. Other than that, we had the town pretty much to ourselves. Capitan is where the real Smokey Bear cub was found orphaned, clinging to a tree branch, a bit singed after a forest fire had passes through in the early '50s. When he died in the '70s, they buried him near the spot they had found him. They have a museum dedicated to him here, too. RIP, Smokey, a true national treasure!

So, it has been snowing here in Roswell since yesterday. It is minus 5 C., and we've got about 5 inches with more to come. Sheesh!

Welcome to where?

This boy is the only one happy about the weather!

Hey, Mike, recognize this pavilion -- sort of?

Truck is froze

RVs are froze

Birds are huddled in trees unhappily

Usually the sound of them merrily singing fills the campground, but not today :(

Indirect Redirection and Lincoln Revisited

Mike just sent us his blog link, Indirect Redirection. Check it: http://indirectredirection.com/

We took a road trip up to Lincoln today. We went there last year (check the separate blog page on the right for photos and write up on that visit). It was lightly snowing there today and just above freezing. I love visiting this area in the dead of winter because there are only maybe one or two other visitors there and only a couple of vehicles to be seen, so it was easy to put yourself back in time to the late 1800s and the Lincoln Wars era.

We visited the old Murphy Store/Courthouse where Billy Bonney (Kid) was held in an upstairs room in leg irons and made his famous escape by shooting two of his jailors.

Recent luminal tests show a huge amount of blood on the floor at the top of the inside staircase and trailing down the steps, marking the area where one of the jailers, JW Bell, was shot by Bonney and died a few steps out into the backyard.

On my first visit there I felt a huge wall of energy hit me, not at the top of the stairs, but actually farther down the upstairs hall, as soon as I started to enter into the room that was used as an armory during that time, and the room that, by some accounts, Kid apparently broke into and took the gun to shoot Bell with. The same thick and heavy energy was still present on this trip as well, and only in that room. This building was also used as a school in later years, so I don't know where this energy is emulating from, but the siolitary window looks directly down on the spot where Bell is said to have died. New Mexico is truly a most interesting state.

Above: View out the window of the armory room

The bench in the upstairs courtroom

Standing in the armory room, looking across hall into courtroom

An old adobe house with a billion windows

The safe downstairs in the old Murphy store/courthouse

Can't seem 'em, but there's caves up there

A couple of old rifles, Apache Winchester on the right

Shackles Kid escaped in, later cut off in Las Cruces, NM

Walls used to make a small room where the two windows are, and that's where Kid was being held in the courthouse

Above:  Top rifle is the 1878 Winchester that belonged to Bill Bonney (Kid). It was confiscated by Pat Garrett following Billy's death

Below that is Bob Olinger's 10-gauge Whitney shotgun (Serial #903) that Kid killed him with on April 28, 1881

Above: Looking straight out of armory room window

Above: Another shot of the upstairs area where Kid was held

Tippin' Hats

Everything is yes, ma'am and no, ma'am, as soon as we got into New Mexico, and it will stay that way throughout our trip 'til we get west of the Continental Divide again.

The other morning we came out of the Cowboy Cafe after breakfast.  I went across to the feed store to have a look around, and a couple of guys got to chatting with us about the hitch we have in our truck for the fifth wheel, which, as some of you know, is a special kind that you don't see too often.  One of the guys was dressed in cowboy-type duds, which isn't uncommon around here; as a matter of fact, you even hear spurs jingling on well-worn boots of working cowboys walking past you the odd time.
Anyway, when I walked up to these two guys who were standing by our truck, the guy actually tipped his hat to me!  Then, after chatting for about 10 minutes, we casually introduced ourselves, and he tipped his hat again!  Turns out he runs a chain gang for the local county jail!  My kind of man, ha ha!

Kind of weird, but Tunstall actually came from Vancouver Island, where his father had emigrated to from England, and opened a mercantile there.

Here's to Mike!

Some of us out here on the road are a little hardier than others. A guy pulled into the Roswell campground a few nights ago, just before the snow warning I posted a few entries back, riding a motorcycle and packing a tent. The temperatures have been dipping down around minus 3 Celcius, not including the wind chill. We noted that last night he was hanging out in the wash house until late into the night, which is nicely heated and has a table and chairs and magazines, plus pop and snack machines, to amuse oneself while doing the laundry.

Above: Mike's tent, which he moved into the adobe pavilion last night to try to keep out of the wind and cold a little better :)

We got to chatting with him this morning as he was breaking camp, and turns out he's from West Virginia. He sold his house and is on the road (sound familiar?), only he's traveling alone and hopes to be doing this for an entire year, making his way south, then eastwards, then north through BC to Alaska. He's been doing this for two months so far, and has had some wild shit happen, like being robbed at gunpoint outside a New Orleans blues joint, and having his bike almost stolen outside a Mississippi motel. He was headed west through Ruidoso to Alamagordo, NM, today, just before another huge snowstorm is supposed to hit here tomorrow. Via con dios, Mike! We are thinking about you and wish you happy trails. Maybe you'll be passing through our area of BC this fall, and we'll get the chance to meet up again!

Above: Mike heading out to Alamagordo White Sands this morning

Guns and Other New Mexico Pastimes

Here are a couple of links to a couple of videos that our friends from New Mexico took at one of their favourite past times.  I forget what they call these things, but basically they are shooting competitons with an Old West flair, where they dress in period and take their favourite pistols and rifles out to a range that is set up Western-style, and go through a series of timed shoots with them.  These guys have a blast (groan) doing this stuff, and they have some awesome guns and are impressive marksmen!

The first video is our amigo, Erin, from Roswell, New Mexico.  And here's Chuck, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, who just bought a pistol on an Internet auction the other night while we were sitting around Erin's adobe-fenced yard, huddled around a nice, warm chimeria burning pinon pine and cedar.  It's a collector's gun, worth $4,000, and he got it for $2,500.  Gun laws are a little different down here, you buy it on the Internet, pay for it, and it's shipped out the next day to you.

Here's the crew just coming out of the Cowboy Cafe in Roswell after a great breakfast of good stuff, such as ham and cheese omelets smothered in green chile sauce, hashbrowns, grits, home-made sausage and home-made salsa.  Oh, yeah!

Which reminds me, some of the fancier eateries in town try to keep things a little more civilized:



Are You Shitting Me?

Here's our weather forecast for tomorrow:

...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM MONDAY TO 5 AM MST TUESDAY ...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN ALBUQUERQUE HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW ...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM MONDAY TO 5 AM MST TUESDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS ...2 TO 6 INCHES.

* TIMING ...RAIN AND SNOW SHOWERS WILL DEVELOP OVER THE AREA LATE TONIGHT THEN TURN TO ALL SNOW FROM NORTH TO SOUTH EARLY MONDAY AFTERNOON. SNOW MAY BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES MONDAY AFTERNOON AND MONDAY NIGHT BEFORE TAPERING OFF TUESDAY.

* WINDS ...NORTH 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 35 MPH MONDAY AFTERNOON.

* LOCAL IMPACTS ...THE COMBINATION OF HEAVY SNOW ...AND BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW ...MAY REDUCE VISIBILITIES BELOW ONE MILE AT TIMES. TRAVEL MAY BECOME DANGEROUS IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE ACROSS THE REGION.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS ...

A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED OR OCCURRING. SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST THAT WILL MAKE TRAVEL DANGEROUS. STRONG WINDS ARE LIKELY. ONLY TRAVEL IN AN EMERGENCY. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL ...KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT ...FOOD ...AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

Roswell Honky Tonk

Friday night at a local honky tonk. Live music, and some of those cowboys can really dance!

Besides being the center for aliens, this is cattle and farming country. There were cowboys, millionaire dairy owners, and men who own local oil companies all up on the dance floor.