Days 14 & 15

The last two days have been busy. Up early in the morning and back late in the evening. I haven't had the energy to write the blog.

It's good to have a group of friends to shoot with. On Thursday we shot the yellow course. Unfortunately the weather gods weren't with us. There was a stiff wind blowing most of the targets away from the stand. The red course on Friday was similar, only this time it was the overcast. We shot at 8:00 with a heavy overcast. 8:00 around here is just after dawn. It was dark. The overcast didn't burn off until the last two stations. I wish we'd shot red on Thursday. It was set up so that the wind would have blown all of the targets towards the stand.

The above isn't an excuse, just an observation. I'm continuing my string of bad performances at the nationals. There wasn't any wind problem earlier on Thursday in the K-cup and I shot poorly there also.

I ordered a pair of shooting glasses. They were to be here on Friday. Unfortunately, the lab screwed up the prescription. The optician will mail them to OR next week. I'll be lucky to see them before Thanksgiving. They won't do me much good then.

The topgun shootoff last night was entertaining as usual. It's amazing to see the targets that the top shooters could hit. The party was a little different this year. They set up a buffet line outside of the stadium. It included several kegs of beer and a table full of wine bottles. Everyone seem to have a good time. They sure went through a whole lot of food. I think the kitchen staff were run ragged by the end.

We picked up a couple of real estate brochures and started looking at ads. It seems that prices have dropped a little since last year. It will time to get serious a looking next week.

Day 13

Ah retirement. I can't even manage to make a blog entry every day. I thought about it last night, but I just didn't get around to it. I'll write this as if I was doing it last evening.

Our competition starts tomorrow (Thursday). Today we shot the practice course. It was about the same as last year. There were a couple of targets that I had problems with. One I never hit at all despite shooting at least 10 pairs. Overall I shot it about as well as I did last year.

Apparently the K cup targets are a lot harder than last year. Wendell Cherry only shot a 79. High score was some kid (a sub junior) with an 89. We shoot the K cup tomorrow at 10:00. It's supposed to rain heavily tomorrow afternoon while we are shooting the main. Oh well.

Each year they have a contest where you go around to different vendors and get their initials on a sheet of paper. After visiting 24 vendors you turn in the sheet of paper. That enters you in a drawing that they hold on Friday night. We got our sheets filled in. Now all we have to do is win.

I ordered a new set of shooting glasses from Ranger. I really like a couple of the tints that they have. The glasses are supposed to be here on Friday. Because the glasses use tinted clip ons, the glasses without a clip on will make a good second pair of glasses. The special show price was another reason to buy them. They are going to cost less than a normal pair of glasses.

The rest of the group showed up today - Dan & Patsy, Gerry, Kim & Justin, Don, and Gary. We went to Rudy's for dinner. Unfortunately, no one told Rudy's that the Nationals were going on. There was a long line and by the time we got to the front they ran out of food.

Day 12

We are in San Antonio. After setting up the trailer we headed to the National Shooting Center. It's good to get there early. There was no line at registration, which is a lot different than the long line that will form there later in the week.

It's too early for all of the vendors to be open. However, there were enough open to do some of the bargain hunting that is part of the experience here. Even though it was early it took less than a minute after we parked the car before we met someone we knew. It was a man and his daughter that we had squadded with at a tournament in Arizona.

Lucy had a great time. People were continually stopping to pet her. Of course she loves the attention. She also got to meet a couple of other dogs and get in a good sniff. Finally we took her up near the pavilion so she could do some retrieves. All the activity made for a very tired doggy tonight.

After we got back, I got up on the roof to try to find the leak that I thought I had sealed last year. Yesterday's rain storm showed that I hadn't. I really couldn't see any place that looked like it would leak. So I just spread some more caulking around the skylight. I hope it fixed it. It's supposed to rain again later this week.

I got the guns out this evening. Tomorrow we'll shoot the practice course. We might also shoot a couple of the games. The rabbits look like fun. Also there's a five stand that has a couple of targets that I'd like to try.

Day 11

Yesterday was so boring that I forgot to post. The day started early (about 2:00 AM) with an impressive thunderstorm. The thunder was so loud that it actually caused the trailer to shake. There was rain, lots of rain. It rained hard until late in the afternoon. We were depressed that we've traveled 2000 miles and it's still Oregon weather.

The day was spent in the trailer. We left only to do the wash. For entertainment we downloaded a bunch of George Carlin videos from youtube. The man was a genius. We ended the day with some preparation for today's move to San Antonio.

Day 10

Not much going on today. We did some more shopping at the shops in Fredericksburg looking for Christmas presents. We managed to find one - that's slow progress. Shopping was much easier as the big crowd that was here yesterday for the wine and cheese festival was absent. We happened to pass the main area where the festival was held. Parked on the street were two large garbage dumpsters. Both were full to the brim with empty wine bottles. It must have been quite a party.

I decided to spend the rest of the day reading. A book of three short stories about fighting terrorism. Nothing too heavy.

No real plans for tomorrow. We'll probably go visit a couple of real estate offices.

Day 9

Traveled from Midland, TX to Fredericksburg, TX. It's interesting driving along in the boring flat landscape that's around Midland and suddenly making the transition to the hill country. The hill country consists of rolling hill (imagine that). Also trees! Mainly oak treas that grow about 15 to 20 feet high. It's nice looking country and absolutely gorgeous after several hundred miles of west Texas.

Fredericksburg is the hometown of Admiral Nimitz, the man who commanded the naval forces in the Pacific during WWII. He spent a lot of time fighting with MacArthur over the conduct of the campaign. Fortunately he won out on the important parts. There is a large museum here dedicated to the Pacific war. It has some very interesting exhibits, some old WWII armaments (tanks, armored vehicles, and a gun turret). It even has a life sized mock up of a Japanese submarine. One sobering area is a courtyard containing plaques. One each for every naval vessel sunk in the Pacific during WWII.

The rest of the town is dedicated to the tourist trade. There are about 6 long blocks that are solid stores. There are clothes shops, jewelry stores, restaurants, specialty food stores, furniture stores, knick nack shops, and ice cream parlors. There's even a gun shop (my favorite). Of course everything has a Texas theme. Lots of five pointed stars and references to cowboys. Scattered about the outskirts of town are the trappings of a small city (Walmart, grocery stores, schools, and a hospital).

After setting up the trailer we played a round of miniature golf at a course that is adjacent to the RV park. Miniature golf is one of my weaknesses. Then we went into town. They were having their monthly wine and cheese festival. The place was packed. We saw plenty of people with wine and beer glasses - no one with cheese. One of the reasons we are here is to find Christmas presents for people. I scored a good one for my mother. We'll go back again tomorrow for some more shopping when there is less people.

We are now in the part of Texas that we are considering living in. We picked up a couple of real estate brochures and looked at the display windows in a couple of real estate offices. We'll be going back to those offices on Monday to ask about some of the properties that we saw there.

We've got three days here and then on to San Antonio. The alarm clock is off until then.

Day 8

The activities for today were shooting and grooming.

The reason we came to Midland was the Windwalker sporting clays course. The course is unique because of the shooting stands. The stands are built by various local contractors to show off their fabrication skills. Some are two stories high. One was a two room structure with a tile floor. The course is set up on land that is basically flat with no trees. There's a depression at one end that's filled with low bushes. There are two very nice towers with two machines in each tower. The target setters did a good job with what they had to work with. We had a good time.

I suspect that the place makes a good profit. The proprietor says that they have charity and corporate shoots almost every weekend. The shoots have up to 1100 people at them. They certainly have a lot of capital equipment. They have at least 40-50 good quality golf carts in addition to enough traps for two 11 station courses, two five stands, and a sub gauge course.

After the shooting it was time to give the dog a bath. She hadn't had one for two weeks and the smell was getting to be too much for a small trailer. We went to a self service dog wash. It had a couple of modules in it with a tub for the dog and a hose. You put in $10 for 10 minutes. The module has a dial that allows you to select hot water with soap, plain rinse water, rinse water with creme rinse, and blow dry. There's a timer to let you know how much time is left. It turns out that 10 minutes is plenty of time to wash the dog.

After we got her home we did Lucy's nails. This involves both of us. I hold the dog in my lap while Ellen grinds down the nails with a Dremel tool.

Tomorrow we go to Fredericksburg, about 300 miles. That means using the alarm clock again. This is the last stop before San Antonio and the Nationals.

Day 7

Today's trip was from Roswell, NM to Midland, TX. The road east from Roswell crosses into the Permian Basin. It's easy to tell when this happens because the oil wells start appearing. The Permian basin is the floor of an ancient sea that used to take up most of the middle of the North American continent. The oil that they pump out of the midwest consists of the remains of the sea life that lived in that sea.

Most of the trip was made over flat land. I mean table flat land. It's weird for someone who spent their life in the Northwest. Think about it. Where in the Northwest can you look in all directions and see nothing but the flat line of the horizon. That describes the area for at least 50 miles around Midland.

Midland is one half of a pair of cities. The other is Odessa. The cities are about 9 miles apart. The business of both cities is oil. There are refineries as well as every kind of oil drilling support company (pipe, drilling, fabrication, tanks, pumps, etc.). I can't recommend Midland for its scenery, but there are some interesting things here. First, the oil fields themselves are impressive. They go on for miles, covering more area than many states. There are a couple of very interesting museums. One describes the history of the oil industry. It has many interesting exhibits including a collection of old oil drilling and pumping rigs. The second is a Commemorative (used to be Confederate) Airforce museum. This has a wonderful collection of old aircraft, many in flying condition. There's even a meteor crater outside of town. It was formed by a fragment of the bigger one that formed the meteor crater in Arizona. Apparently it is one of several that are strung out between here and the Arizona crater.

This is the first time in the three 10,000+ mile trips that we have taken that we've called up a campground and they've been full. The second campground (the one we are in) only had a few openings. Why would this be in the late fall in the middle of nowhere you ask. The answer is oil. Both campgrounds are filled up with the trailers of oil field workers. At $80/barrel the oil business is booming. There ain't no recession in Midland/Odessa.

So why are we here? Because there's a gun club here of course. When we were here last year we couldn't shoot the course because they were setting up for a tournament. They are having a tournament this year also. However, we will be there on a Friday instead of a Saturday so we can shoot the course before they reset it. This is the last practice we will get before Nationals.

Best of all, I'm turning off the alarm clock. Tomorrow is a sleep in, leisurely breakfast, day.

Day 6

Traveled from Gallup, NM to Roswell, NM today. Didn't see a single alien the whole day. At least no non-human ones. It rained most of the way. Luckily the rain stopped about 40 miles north of Roswell. The folks at the RV park said that a big storm passed through yesterday. It snapped off several telephone poles. I can't say I'm sorry we missed it.

The drive is singularly boring. There are some red rock features near Albuquerque. Other than that the land is featureless. It's just dry range land. There isn't anything growing that's higher than a low bush. The only thing interesting is that we passed through Lincoln county. That's the site of the Lincoln county war and Billy the Kid's exploits. I'm really glad we didn't have to travel through Lincoln county on a horse like they did.

Roswell is a surprisingly large town. It seems to be a service town with many car dealerships, equipment dealers, a large hospital, big box stores, etc. It's also home to the New Mexico Military Institute which is a fairly large college. There's a two block area in the middle of the old downtown that's oriented towards the UFO story. Lots of blow up little green men, and every sort of item (coffee cups, golf balls, towels, t-shirts, etc) with images of the big eyed alien on them.

There's one establishment called the UFO museum that is a fairly honest portrayal of the incident. Apparently there was a secret Air Force project to use high altitude balloons as part of an early warning radar system (remember, this was 1947). One of the balloons crashed near Roswell. Of course the Air Force didn't want to admit anything. Some really neat detective work done years later traced the "spaceship fragments" to a factory in the East that had contracted to make the balloons. The factory also made party balloons. The "alien markings" on some of the debris turned out to be designs on some surplus party tape that the contractor used in the construction of the balloon.

Of course the conspiracy people would say that all of this was cleverly set up by the government to cover up the truth. I doubt that the government is anywhere near clever enough to pull something like that off.

Tomorrow is a relatively short (212 mi) drive to Midland. I think I'll leave the alarm off.

Day 5

This was not one of the better travel days. It started out with a sprinkling of rain as we were hooking up to leave. We dealt with rain all day long. Sometimes a light rain and other times a downpour. When it was raining heavily the rain collected in the ruts in the road. Where this happened you could see the road oils collected on top of the puddles. Not ideal conditions to pull a trailer in.

Besides rain there was a head wind. The wind blew constantly for the whole trip. At times it was very strong. It and the elevation changes (see later) caused us to get the worse mileage I've ever recorded pulling the trailer, 6.8 mpg. Couple that with some high fuel costs and this was an expensive day. Part of the reason for the fuel costs was the isolation of the road. The rest was the "excise tax" that the Navaho tribe puts on fuel sales. Apparently it isn't enough that they get the casino concession. They also get a lot of government money. We were passing large tracks of government built housing and schools for the tribe all day.

The roadway itself was another challenge. We passed through 3 states (UT, CO, and NM) today. All three were rebuilding the road. This made for lots of speed limit zones, rough roadway, and delays caused by flaggers. I'd say that at least 75 miles of the 260 we covered were under construction. That's not to say that the construction wasn't needed. The road is old and has been beat to hell by the trucks. Some portions are so deteriorated that I had to slow well below the 60 mph that I usually travel.

Lastly there were the trucks. The elevation of the road varied from 5500 ft to 7000 ft. We must have gone up and down between those two points at least 8 times during the day. The trucks were all exceeding the speed limit down hill and doing 20 or more mph under the speed limit up hill. This meant that we would pass them going up and they would pass us going down. It was just a pain in the ass.

OK, enough bitching. We aren't going to see much of Gallup. In order to make an early start tomorrow we left the truck connected to the trailer. This means that all we see of Gallup is a short section of route 66 that parallels I40. It looks like any other comparable street in the US. It's lined with chain motels and fast food joints. No character at all. Things might be different in the center of town, but we won't be going there.

Tomorrow we head to Roswell. If I see any of those big eyed, pointed chinned, green guys I'm going to shoot one and mount him on the wall.

Day 4

Another day looking at red rocks. We went to Deadhorse Point State Park. The park contains a point that overlooks the Colorado river. The point is several acres in size. It's sides are sheer cliffs that drop several hundred feet. The entry to the point is a narrow neck of land that is less than 100 feet across.

The point got its name in the 1800's when cowboys would drive wild horses onto it. They would corral the horses there by building a fence across the neck of the point. Usually the cowboys would separate out the horses they needed and release the rest. Apparently on one occasion they forgot to release a group of horses. The horses subsequently died of thirst.

I suspect that this may be be a sanitized version of the story. The point would also be a great place to strand wild horses that were competing with cattle for the available fodder.

Views from the point include sheer red rock walls hundreds of feet high. These end in deep canyons that lead to the Colorado. The Colorado here is a grass green in color. The wind was blowing hard at times. Hard enough that it was difficult to stand straight. The wind went all the way down to the river (maybe 1500 feet below). We could see the waves it kicked up on the river's surface.

The point overlooks an interesting mining operation. There are 400 acres of evaporation ponds. They contain water from the Colorado that has been pumped underground to a formation containing potash. The potash goes into solution and the water is pumped back up to the evaporation ponds. The operation produces 240,000 tons of potash a year. I wonder how much water they take out of the Colorado.

There are a couple of things that I've been meaning to mention and have forgotten to write about. First is the effects of the lack of humidity. One finds oneself drinking a lot more liquid than usual. I drink at least twice as much as I do when I'm in Oregon. More if I'm hiking in the desert. I've also gotten right back into the swing of desert hiking. Just set a comfortable pace that I can keep up indefinitely. Don't hurry and the distance will disappear sooner than I expect.

The second thing is the stars. There is little in the way of air or light pollution in either Snowville or Moab. An elevation of over 5,000 feet helps, too. The stars are numerous and brilliant. The Milky Way is a solid haze of stars. It's the kind of show that makes you stand outside looking up until your neck aches.

Tomorrow is a travel day, so I'll have to set the alarm. I hate it when that happens.

Day 3

We spent the day at Arches National Park. The scenery is spectacular. It starts with a 700 foot climb up the face of a cliff face that is one side of an enormous fault. Once you get to the top, the road winds by some amazing rock formations. The colors are many shades of red. The formations include spires, small buttes, vertical walls, and rock falls.

Further into the park are the arches. The first main one is a double arch. There's a trail up to it that allows a person to get directly under the arches. Looking up from below is like looking at the buttresses in a large cathedral. Things get better from there. All in all we visited at least 8 arches. I say "we", but it was really me. The wife's knee kept her from venturing far from the truck. That was too damn bad as she missed out on seeing most of the park's best features.

After spending most of the day in the park, we went to a sporting goods store and bought her a walking stick. Hopefully she'll be able to get around better using it.

The day ended with a desert hike to exercise the dog and try out the walking stick. The dog had a great time and the stick allowed my wife to participate.

The original plan was to go to Gallup. We've decided to stay an extra day and explore some more of the area.

In reviewing the pictures I took today I found that the color balance is off in all of them. Thank heavens for Photoshop. Now to RTFM until I identify the button that I must have inadvertently pushed.

Day 2

Traveled from Snowville to Moab. The trip was uneventful except for the enormous amount of construction on I15 through Salt Lake City. Didn't make very good time as we made a couple of unnecessary fuel stops. Since I haven't been this way in 40 years I'm not familiar with the road. I didn't want to risk getting stuck out in the desert w/o fuel.

Moab is situated in the middle of some of the most spectacular scenery in Utah. I won't try to describe it, just look it up if you are interested. Unfortunately we will be limited to viewing what we can see from the truck. My wife injured her knee a couple of days ago. This will prevent us from doing any hiking or bike riding. I'm really disappointed about the bike riding. There's a cool bike trail that skirts the Colorado gorge just outside of Moab. I'm sorry that we won't be able to take it.

Moab itself is a real tourist trap. Block after block of tour companies, art galleries, souvenir shops, restaurants, motels, etc. There's a lot of people here, apparently because it's a Saturday. They are divided into two groups. There's the bike riders. They tend to be young, fit, and wearing counter culture or biking clothes. The other group are the ATV riders. They are older and dressed in protective clothing. The bikers tend to live in tents, the ATV'rs in RV's.

The campground borders public land with a set of ATV and bike trails that originate at the campground. That makes getting the dog some exercise very easy.

Day 1

I've decided that this will take the form of a sort of diary of our (my wife, the cats, the dog and my) travels over the next few months. My intent is that I will update it every day. Of course, we all know where the road paved with intentions leads.

Today we left Richland OR after a week of hunting. The hunting was great, with lots of birds. The important part was how the dog did. She did wonderful on retrieves, but not so good on finding birds and pointing.

Today was a travel day. Back to Baker City and then east on I84 to Snowville, UT. That's a distance of about 400 miles. 400 miles is about as far as I like to to drive in a day. The campground here is the only one I've ever been at that has a driving range. I hit a bucket of balls and then had dinner. Then I set up this blog and made the first entries.

Opening day of the deer season is tomorrow, so there are a lot of people here with ATV's who plan on being up early tomorrow. We'll probably get up about 7 to be on the road by 8. We have 320 miles to make to Moab. Snowville consists of two restaurants, a gas station, a post office, and a few houses. Nothing much going on. The area around it town is flat - the northern end of the Salt Lake Basin. It's a part of Utah that you want to get through ASAP.

First Post

I'm creating this blog at the request of my coworkers at Intel. I went back to visit them after 10 months of retirement. They were so interested in my stories of life outside of a gray cube that they convinced me to start a blog so they could follow along. I said why not.

So this is for Russell, Walt, Osman, and anyone else at Intel who spends 40 or more hours a week of their lives in a windowless lab trying to figure out why the latest hardware, BIOS, or software doesn't work as advertised. There is life outside of Intel, and it's a lot of fun. Get out of the cube as soon as you can afford to.

I'm not sure that anyone will read this, much less comment on the content. However, if you do comment I don't guarantee that I will read it or respond to it. After 30+ years working with computers everyday I have a limited amount of time that I want to spend in front of one.