Archive for the SouthWest Category
Posted on January 20, 2010 by angela
Seven years ago Travis quit his job as an architect and has been living out of a backpack ever since. Before we left on our journey, Jason re-connected with him while he was in Central America. After spending some time scouting the diving instructor circuit in Honduras, Travis headed back to the U.S. for the holidays. His latest stop was at his parents home in Alpine, AZ and, well, we were invited.
Good thing, too. It was a great stop.
Jason and Travis were buddies in high school and hadn’t seen each other in quite a while. They had lots of stories about getting into trouble together. It was mostly geeky trouble, so I was only a little frightened
Travis’ travel style is a little different than ours – it’s a game to him to see how little he can spend for food and shelter. That means he’s slept in places with sewage on the floors (yeah, but it was only $2/night!) and gotten stomach amoebas eating questionable foods. He was talking about folks who say they want to do what he’s doing, but his response is, “yeah, well you don’t know where I slept last night.” The reality of long-term travel isn’t always the romantic vagabond notion people like to dream about.
Travis also said that for the past 7 years he can remember every single day. We’re finding that too. Every day is new and different and it makes life much more memorable.
Candy and Phil, Travis’ parents, moved here from Texas and found their paradise. They built a very cool log cabin with all the comforts. It’s a long winter at 8200 ft. and each season they go through 5 cords of wood keeping warm with their only heat source, a wood burning stove. Despite the snow, Candy’s daily driver is red VW bug (but they also have a 4WD Jeep to tow the bug up the driveway if needed.)
Candy kept us well-fed with BBQ brisket and homemade tortillas, so we really appreciated the hospitality and the warmth after nights in the cold. Bode loved the visit too, he got to go sledding and Phil taught him a new computer game. He wanted us to let Phil know that he’s almost won every level now.
We hated to leave so soon, but the forecast called for more snow and we were on a mission to escape the cold.
By the way, Travis is selling his much loved Mustang (after 25 years) to finance his next adventure to Alaska. Since we’re keen on him going and sharing more outrageous stories, we thought we’d help him advertise. Let us know if you are interested and we’ll connect you.
Posted on January 19, 2010 by angela
We headed across New Mexico to the Gila National Forest. The Cliff Dwellings and hot springs are 2 hours from the closest town of Silver City. The drive was stellar. There are towers of rock that formed these amazing structures. I’ve never seen anything like them.
We arrived after 4 so we headed to the privately owned hot springs a coupe miles from the park. Sweet deal. 3 different pools, all with a beautiful red rock cliff background. We decided to camp there, despite the dropping temperatures. The hot springs were about 10 steps from our van, so we could easily have a dip to warm up. We were pretty cold overnight and woke to find ice on the walls of the van. Everything was frozen and we waited as long as we could for the sun to come over the mountains and hit the van before getting out of bed. A quick soak in the hot springs warmed us right up, and we bundled up for our hike to the cave dwellings.
When we reached the Visitor’s Center we found out it had reached 10 degrees the night before. I’ve put a moratorium on camping below 25 now. Bode LOVES visitor’s centers. Everywhere we go he asks if there is one. Anyway, we spent a long time inside the Gila VC watching a film and looking at the artifacts they’ve found in the cliffs….and warming up.
From the photos, we were a bit skeptical. They didn’t look as cool as the photos we’ve seen of Mesa Verde, but we aren’t planning to go that far north. But after the 30 minute hike, which started with snowball fights and ended with us taking off our gloves and jackets in the warm sunshine, we were in awe. The 7 caves served as home to the Mogollon people who lived in this area over 700 years ago…and they let us hike right through them. Pretty awesome.
Posted on January 18, 2010 by jason
We woke up in Marfa to 1° F. The pipes were frozen at Dave’s house and so was everything in the bus. We were planning on heading out this morning and fortunately I also heard back from my old buddy Cam in Alamogordo. He had tomorrow off from work, so we should high-tail it up to New Mexico right away. Perfect timing. We took off on a long drive and finally put Texas behind us.
Cam has been a great friend ever since High School, but we (mostly me) haven’t done a very good job of staying in touch over the years. I haven’t seen him in person in almost 15 years. Since then, he’s lived in Alaska, Germany, South Korea, Italy, and now he just moved to his wife’s hometown of Alamogordo.
If you’ve ever fallen out of touch with someone and then just show up on their doorstep after many years, you might imagine things could be awkward. If it was, it lasted about 2 seconds, and then it was like no time had ever passed. Cam is still the great guy I always remember, and his wife Melissa and son Noah are just as cool.
Incidentally, Cam has had some notoriety recently after creating the Periodic Table of Typefaces. If you’re a graphic designer or generally interested in design, maybe you’ve seen it. I actually saw it a while back and had no idea Cam created it. The history and back-story of different fonts is actually pretty interesting. Heck, there’s even a documentary just on Helvetica.
Cam, Melissa and 10-year old Noah welcomed us to New Mexico with a warm bed in their new home and lots of home cooked meals.
We stopped by the Space Museum’s park to climb around on some rocket sleds, check out a real V-2 and other neat stuff. Bode wanted to know why the names of machines always have numbers in them.
Then we headed out to White Sands National Monument for some sledding. There was an occasional layer of snow on top of the white sand dunes, so you could choose your own personal coefficient of friction based on where you placed your sled. Sand = reasonable speed. Snow = holy crap! Bode declared it the most fun he’s ever had.
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