Meandering south....

I have not posted in the last few weeks, mostly because I have not had much to post. I have been camping at the City of Lewisville/Lake Lewisville campground for about the past month. This has been a regrouping and reconnecting time for me. I met and dined (or lunched) with old friends, and I spent some time working on Tiny Trailer. I covered the vent with a vent cover, put vinyl flooring in the sleeping area, added an air conditioner, and began insulating the roof.

I'm currently making my way down thru mid-central Texas, stopping at state parks along the way. I left Lewisville on Sunday, April 12, and have stayed at Mineral Wells Lake State Park, Dinosaur Valley State Park, Meridan State Park, and am Currently staying at Blanco State Park. I plan to stay at a couple more state parks as I make my way to the Gulf Coast, where I will stay on Mustang Island for about a week. 
Pictures to follow:

Also, I was interviewed for a podcast by Men Seeking Tomahawks, Jack and Dan are former professional wrestlers, who have a weekly podcast the includes music and topics of interest on a wide variety of subjects. Look at menseekingtomahawks.com, number 38.
Men Seeking Tomahawks

Closing the Loop

I reluctantly moved on from Why, AZ on March 8^th, 2015. I will definitely come back next year!! I passed by some interesting things on the way back to Amarillo, to see my family

World's Largest Chile', Las Cruces, NM (about 45 feet long)

VW Bus parked at the Big Chile' Inn, home of the world's largest chile'

Big Chile Inn is a nice and inexpensive place to stay in Las Cruces, and I didn't have to unload Tiny Trailer!

World's Largest Pistachio, Alamgordo, NM. (about 35 feet tall)

I returned to the Lake Lewisville campground, where I started out, on 3/15/15,  but it has been cloudy and rainy since I arrived, so I have been grumpy- More to follow later...

Pima Air and Space Museum

Last Thursday, 2/26/15, I visited the Pima  Air and Space Museum. This is an AMAZING collection of aircraft, with both indoor and outdoor displays.  With 85 or so aircraft indoors, and over 150 outdoors, it makes for an all day delight for the aircraft enthusiast. You can also take a tour of the “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan  Air  Base. (I arrived too late in the day (noon) and all the spots for the day’s boneyard tours were filled.) I will have to go back next year, and spend  more time.  As it was, I spent  about 3 ½ hours, and took over 100 pictures. Here are a few:

B-17 (like Memphis Belle)

B-36 (a plane like this accidentally dropped a hydrogen bomb on Albuquerque in 1957, while I lived there...luckily, it didn't detonate)

Tri-tail "Connie" (I flew in one of these as a child, from Amarillo, TX to New York)

F-111 (there were a number of these at Cannon air Base in Clovis, NM, when I was a teenager. My dad was career Air Force, and we often went to Cannon to get groceries, both before, and after his retirement)

A-10 (We see these almost daily over the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range from here in Why...)

SR-71 "Blackbird", still the fastest manned airplane ever made. 

B-29, like the ones that dropped the atomic bombs over Japan

F-22 and vintage aircraft flying in formation.  I believe this is an F-22 , a P-51, a P-47, and an F-86.  It must be difficult to match speeds!

Arizona Roundup Coyote Howls Event

Last weekend, (Feb, 13^th, Feb 14^th, and Feb 15^th) the Arizona Round-Up group held their annual Coyote Howls Gathering. I don’t know the exact number of trailers that attended, but my guess is that there were about 12 – 15 teardrops, and maybe 6-7 vintage trailers. (Correction: 02/27/15 -- One of the even't organizers told me yesterday that there were a total of 29 participants this year, not counting me.)

 It was interesting looking at all of the different configurations. Most  of the trailers were beautiful and very well constructed. I saw the Camp-Inn teardrop that I took a picture of last month at Kitt Peak.

 I enjoyed meeting the participants, and appreciated how they welcomed us to see their rigs. 

Rainy Day Activities

On Monday it was rainy.  Rain is a bummer for me, because it rains in my living room. I did not want to stay in bed all day. (inside Tiny Trailer = being in bed), and I did not want to hang out the clubhouse all day (too much cordiality required).

I drove to Ajo for a breakfast of chilequiles and thought about my options.  I decided to check out the Tohono O’odham Cultural Center and museum in Topowa.  Topowa is is about 12 miles out of Sells, and Sell s is about 60 miles east of Why. After about 70 miles of driving ( and a little more due to a wrong turn in Sells),  I arrived at the museum.  I have no pictures of this portion of the day, because photography wasn’t allowed in the museum, and to be perfectly honest, there wasn’t a whole lot to photograph, even if it were allowed. The museum space is about 30-40 feet  in diameter, and has information about the tribe’s history, but very few artifacts or art. There were some very nice baskets, and a LOT of little blue cards that said, “This item has been removed from the collection”. I took my time, looked at everything that there was to see, and was still done in about 20 minutes.

As I drove back to Sells, off to the east, I could see the observatory domes of Kitt Peak, so I decided to go have a look. I was only 19 miles further, and it would help temper the disappointment I felt about driving so far to the museum.

Kitt Peak National Observatory is awesome!!  I will have to make another trip back, as I spent so long at one of the three telescopes that the public can tour, that I didn’t get to see the other two. . And the views of the desert floor from high on the mountain alone are worth the drive.

Obviously not my teardrop, but a lovely (and pricey) model from Camp-Inn

Kitt Peak Visitors' Center

One of the many scopes on the peak

Big radiotelescope, part of the VLBA (Very Large Baseline Array)

Solar telescope (Photo courtesy of Robert Harding Productions...because I forgot to take one from outside)

Interesting older equipment in the solar observation room

Looking up and out of the Solar Telescope tube

Looking down the Solar Telescope tube into the mountain

rainey Days

Reading...

I have been doing a lot of reading here in the desert. I am enjoying having time to read for pleasure in my retirement.  I’m currently reading:

Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying,  The Dalai Lama

Jung, and the Story of Our Time,     Laurens van der Post

Plague No More,     Michael Ferguson

The Blue Labyrinth,    Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I'm Back!

I have been remiss in posting for the last couple of weeks. I knew that this would happen. Most of the reason that I haven’t been posting is that there hasn’t been much to post. I have been walking some. Several days ago I took a hike about 2 miles into the desert (and 2 miles back), I saw a lot of burro hoofprints.

Little cave on the hill at the end of the 2 miles.

Across the desert looking south towards towards Mexico.