We were able to wrangle another appointment with a Cummins shop for Rosie’s yearly service, this time at the Odessa, TX shop. We buttoned up the casita and headed out on the road looking for, among other things, a little cooler temps. Our first stop was Odessa for said service. My buddy, Murphy, made his presence known once again. We got in bright and early at Cummins, hoping to be on the road to Lubbock after lunch. Those hopes got dashed quickly. Rosie’s service went swimmingly well. The generator’s service, not so. We had issues with the generator starting and immediately shutting down, I was thinking maybe a clogged fuel filter and the service should have resolved that. Oh, no, not according to Murphy. The culprit was a failed fuel pump on the generator but, hey, let not your heart be troubled, they had the part in stock. Yippee! But the tech found out to be able to access the fuel pump, the generator would have to be dropped from the chassis. It being the end of the day already, they were going to have to keep Rosie overnight and since she was partially dismantled, we would not be able to stay in her. #*&@%$!!! We loaded up Woody and headed out to look for a dog-friendly motel. We found a strip of motels nearby which I would later describe as “tweeker’s row”. We were overly maxed out tired/stressed from the long day and not real motivated to find a suitable motel, but on our third stop, we decided to stay at a Baymont/Wyndham motel. Reader’s Digest version, this was a dump like all the others, what I would classify as a “no-tell motel”. Our next door neighbor wasted no time stepping out on the balcony in front of our room and firing up his crank pipe. Cranksters racing in and out of the parking lot all night long made for a long night’s non-sleep. Like I mentioned before, #*&@%$!!!
We got out early next morning and returned to Cummins. We found they had stayed for a little OT last night and had already swapped out our generator fuel pump. The generator was pumping away and had been for several hours prior to our arrival. Service being completed, we were ecstatic to hit the road. I would not refer to Odessa, TX as any kind of vacation destination.
Lubbock Elk’s Lodge was next on our stop list. We got there just in time for a few days of forecast rain & thunderstorms (non-triple digit temps, hooray!). We took the opportunity to avail ourselves of the cornucopia of shopping options such as Costco, Sam’s Club, Cabela’s, etc., as well as Jeanne being able to get her hair done at a real hair salon. As a little bonus she also got in some range time at a local indoor shooting range to celebrate her successful trips around the sun. In between shopping trips and torrential thundering downpours we got to check out the Buddy Holly Center museum. It was a little disappointing that they did not allow photography inside the main exhibit hall, hence, like the Soup Nazi in a Seinfeld episode (sorta) said, “No (pix) for you!” But I got a few from the areas that they did allow photos.
One day we wandered into a local sports bar/taproom called Little Woodrow’s. It was a non-game day so there were few patrons. This is a pretty impressive sports bar, TV’s EVERYWHERE, including a monster screen out in the “play” yard (outdoor seating area with numerous areas of entertainment/bar games.) Little Woodrow’s has (50) beers on tap (well, a few were ciders, seltzers and meads), but as I find common in Texas, if there is not a nearby craft brewery of even a smidgeon of notoriety, the majority of offerings are from my least favorite brewers (you know, the corporate boys like Coors, Miller, Bud.) We were curious about the atmosphere on a game day and it just so happened the hometown team Texas Tech had a home game on the next Saturday. Soooooo, guess where we were at kick-off on Saturday? The crowd was pretty loud/raucous every score. We stuck it out for a quarter and called it a game.
In our everlasting search for possible landing sites, we did a little surrounding area road trip, checking out some properties for sale. Real estate prices are fairly reasonable here in the Lubbock area, you can pick up a nice sized single family residence in the 300K-400K range, and there definitely is not a big shortage of 10-20 acre tract lots for sale. The drawbacks at this point in time are the crappy economy (high rates particularly), the isolated nature of Lubbock in the flatland area of Texas, and the Texas high property tax rates. But hey, it never hurts to look…
We left Lubbock for the cooler climes of Ruidoso, NM. Casino Apache provided a parking lot for a couple of night’s dry camping while we checked out the area. We even road tripped up to the megalopolis of Capitan, NM. The Ruidoso area is a ski area in the mountains and was utterly unimpressive, so much so I found nothing worthy of breaking out the camera. It evoked thoughts of a run down very tiny Truckee or Lake Tahoe area, complete with no less than 8-9 dispensaries (hint: 420).
One of our rare short travel days found our next temporary home back at the Las Cruces Elk’s Lodge. We were kinda burning time since we had ordered up our mail to be sent to Deming, NM. While stalled for a couple of days here we made our way down to the big “Farmer’s” Market which we found was very little “farmers” and more local arts and crafts.
A return one-nighter at good ol’ Dream Catcher SKP RV Park in “scenic” Deming, NM for mail pickup bright and early Monday morning then onward and upward. North of Deming right on Hwy. 180 in the Glenwood area we found our next temporary home. Big Horn Campground on National Forest Service land had (6) boondocking campsites with fire rings and one pit toilet. It took several tries in different sites to find a suitable site where we were not squished by the thick trees and were able to achieve level status, but we finally found one in site #1.
Glenwood is not much of a “town”, more like an area along the highway. Our site was, however, 5 miles from a local attraction known as The Catwalk. The trail is a tad over 2 miles round trip and includes a large stretch of steel catwalk constructed over Whitewater Creek and winding through some slot canyon areas. It was not heavily used when we were there but we did get to see a couple of fishermen catching what looked like brown trout.
Not real far away from camp we found the mining ghost town of Mogollon. It was a pretty steep narrow paved road up the mountain to get to it and we found that Mogollon was what they call a “living” ghost town in that a few folks actually live there among what old buildings still exist there. I was underwhelmed with this “ghost town” as far as ghosties go, but it was still neat wander/drive around.
We’ve always wanted to go see the town of Show Low in AZ, so being in that area it was our next destination point. We said good-bye to Glenwood then drove the short 130 miles into Show Low and a few days stay at the Elk’s Lodge there. $20 per night was hard to say no to, and we found the Elk’s campground unique, comparatively speaking, to most other Elk’s RV lots in that it was actually within a thick stand of pine trees and resembled any other wooded campground, actually geared toward “real” outdoor camping.
In our exploration of the Show Low town and area we happened upon a quaint little hub of entertainment called “The House Yard Bar & Eatery” and “Red Barn Creamery”. We were looking for the ice cream shop (the Creamery) and discovered they share the play yard with The House. What better way to chase down some of that sickly sweet & gooey ice cream than with an ice cold hops beverage? The yard had a small stage for their occasional music entertainment as well as various game areas and the whole shebang is family friendly.
We noticed an extremist right winger mega MAGA swag shop, appropriately named The Trumped Store. Sadly, being the epitome of the aforementioned extremist right winger mega MAGA deplorables that we are, we made the illegal U-turn, cut off half a dozen cars and trucks on the extremely busy main thoroughfare, jumped the curb and slid into the parking lot of said store. Yes, we stocked up on some new MAGA swag and I even got my picture with 45/47 (OK, it was a hokey statue set up inside the store). It seems we are easily amused…
Time for jacks-up, off with the wind. Where to…?