S.V. CAMBRIA: New Mexico

Camping Anyone?

Monday, May 09, 2016TheCambrians

We hadn’t planned on going camping. In fact, we hadn’t planned on being away from the boat much during the winter. I was going to fly to Wichita to spend Christmas with my family and David was going to stay aboard Cambria to start tackling his to-do list after a long cruising season. But then we received an invitation to spend Thanksgiving in Las Vegas from one of David’s sons saying it had been too long since he’d seen us – he was right, it had. So, we packed up the truck and hit the road, fully intended to be back in January.

From top left to right: Our sweet suite in Las Vegas (thanks to David's son), one of David's granddaughters racing in a soap box derby, my niece picking me up at the airport in Philadelphia to start a 1,300 mile drive to Wichita, me and my niece in Casey, IL in front of the world's largest chair, my niece in front of the world's largest pitch fork, me and Santa, my 97-year old grandma opening the present I drew for her, and me and David on Christmas morning.

But then it started to rain.

Not in Kansas where we spent the bulk of the winter but in the Seattle area where we berth the boat. And it didn’t stop until April. There was no reason for us to come back, not unless we wanted to spend our days hunkered below decks just waiting for the chance to get outside to tackle the brightwork. So, we lingered. And then we lingered some more.

I have to hand it to my mom. I’m sure it’s exciting when we first arrive and take over the lower level of her house; but after a month or two, I’m imagine she’s ready to have her space back. To her credit she never said a word but by the time month three rolled around, I decided we needed to come up with a plan.

It was still raining in Washington, so there was no point going home. Even if we wanted to leave, I-80 to the north was a mess and had been most of the winter so any westerly movement would have to happen through the south. We both needed to see a dentist, something we’d been putting off for years. So, it seemed like a good idea to take advantage of logistics and make a trip across the border to

Mexico

(more on that in a future blog) on our way

Hatching a plan.

I decided we should camp our way back to the boat. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, but I have this “thing” for late-winter camping. And my practical side (i.e. David) was distracted when I was putting together a plan, allowing me to run rampant. Which is exactly what I did.

It’s not that winter camping is a bad idea. It’s not. It’s just that our last attempt didn’t go very well (or the one before that): It snowed, it was cold, it was windy and we encountered a drunken fool who decided it would be fun to shoot off a handgun and say things like “I’m going to light you up.”

So, why on earth would I decide to give it another try? The answer’s simple: What practical side I have usually loses out to optimism.

The first of March rolled around and we needed to go. Saying goodbye is never easy; it’s the worst part of this lifestyle. But we’d put it off long enough, and it was time to finally get moving. Our first campsite out of Wichita was one we already knew: Oliver Lee Memorial State Park near Alamogordo, New Mexico to visit White Sands National Monument – 275 square miles of gypsum sand dunes and a World Heritage Site.

We were off to a good start . . . .

How about you? Have you done any late-winter camping or do you have a favourite place to camp? Join the conversation below in our comments section.

New Mexico

Gila National Monument

Thursday, March 08, 2012TheCambrians

New Mexico Pictographs

Gila National Wilderness

Wednesday, March 07, 2012TheCambrians

Pictographs from British Columbia (left) and Gila National Wilderness (right).

We started the morning off by filling out police reports regarding last night’s ordeal. Not because we have any hope of the guy appearing in court – he was just passing through the area on his way home to Pennsylvania – but because we said we would. At this point, it would be easy to pack everything up and head for home, but we decided we couldn’t let some crazy guy ruin our time here, so we’re going to stick it out for a couple of days before moving on to our next site.

We had to wait until after ten o’clock for him to finish packing up and, once he did, we went back to our site where everything was justas we’d left it over twelve hours before. But if I’m to be honest, the grounds, once peaceful and beautiful, had lost all of their appeal.

I needed to clear my mind after breakfast, so I took a walk in one of the nearby canyons. I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere –inside or outside of my head – so I called it quits after an hour or so back to Upper Scorpion where David was taking a nap. When he woke up, we went down to Lower Scorpion and walked along the “Trail of History” to see a small cliff dwelling (I like to call it a single family unit) and a few pictographs that managed to survive the last seven hundred years. The similarities between these drawings and the ones we’ve seen in British Columbia are remarkable. The indigenous people of the time were clearly travellers and, even though we’re familiar with some of the history, can’t help but be amazed every time we see evidence of the migration ourselves.

It had been a windy and long day, so we had a somewhat early evening and were in bed by eight o’clock. While lying there waiting for sleep to take over, I couldn’t help but relive the events of last night in my head. I know I’ll be over it in a couple of days but, until then, every little noise is making my heart race quickly reminding me how lucky we were that nobody got hurt.

A small, three room cliff dwelling in Gil National Forest.

Guns New Mexico

Gila National Wilderness

Tuesday, March 06, 2012TheCambrians

Sunrise from the visitor center.

It was much warmer last night and down right hot by nine o’clock this morning as we had breakfast and broke down camp. By ten o’clock our work was complete and we were on our way to Gila National Forest which is good because, though only 189 miles away, it took most of the day to get there.

Gila National Monument, the site of cliff dwellings over seven hundred years-old, is forty-two miles from civilization along a road that snakes through the Mongollon Mountains and takes an hour and a half to travel. Out of convenience we chose Upper Scorpion campground which is only a quarter of a mile from the dwellings and turned out to be a HUGE mistake. There were three groups there: David and me; a father, his daughter and three of her friends from university; and a single man in his late-thirties or forties with a small dog.

The evening started off harmlessly enough with the single guy lighting a large fire and playing Outlaw Country music from the stereo in his truck (that should have been our first clue) but as the night wore on he began talking to himself and got louder and louder to the point of yelling as he danced around the fire. Every now and then you could make out a word or two: “Patriot Act”, “Mexico”, “$3.49” (gas prices?), “war”. And there were more intelligible rants: “Fuck George Bush; piss on him”. “I’m not yelling just for fun here”. “No ONE is trying to help me”. “Fucking pussies; go back to Texas” (the group camped closest to him was from Texas). The guy was clearly crazy. Problem was, we didn’t know what kind of crazy.

It was still early, some time before eight, but very dark and the wind was picking up, so we put out our fire and went into the tent hoping he would eventually do the same. I was beginning to get nervous as he grew angrier and wanted to distance myself the best that I could from the situation.

As we laid in bed he continued to rant and, without being able to see him any longer, I got confused by the location of his voice and thought he had crossed the road to the banks of the Gila River when I heard him yell something that sounded like “what the fuck” or “fuck it” before firing three shots from a large-caliber handgun. Time slowed down, or seemed to, as the adrenaline rushed through our bodies, and it went deadly quiet except for the sound of our hearts pounding and blood pumping through our veins. I was sure that he had just killed himself. But he hadn’t. The first three shots were soon followed by another two. How long we laid there, it’s difficult to say. It seemed like a lifetime. I remember whispering “what should we do?” and then it was silent again, possibly to reload, when we heard footsteps approaching the tent.

The father and his daughter from the campsite at the end of the grounds were in the toilet when the shooting began and managed to sneak over to our tent (which was closer than theirs) without him seeing them – he was still at his campsite after all. They wanted to get help but didn’t feel comfortable leaving in their truck, neither did we. Not happy about the fact that they came to our tent with the aid of a flashlight (or at all for that matter), we needed to leave before the guy set his sights on us; so we got dressed and snuck out the back, ducking behind trees and keeping low until we felt safe enough to leave the bush and walk along the road to the next campsite, only a half mile down the road. As we were walking, we could hear him yell “I’m going light you up!” while firing more rounds.

The father sent his daughter, Claire, with us to go get help and went back to the campsite to get the rest of their group and walk up toward the dwellings to safety while they waited. There was only one couple camped at Lower Scorpion (why couldn’t it have been us?) and they drove us to the residence area. There wasn’t a ranger on duty so we ended up at the volunteer dorm where, through a series of phone calls, two US Forest Service Deputies were dispatched. Because we’re out in the middle of nowhere, it took over an hour for them to arrive and by the time they got to his campsite, it took five minutes to wake him from his drunken stupor.

Meanwhile the rest of the group, who had decided to hike down the road rather than up to the dwellings, arrived and we learned that the father had talked to the guy about settling down only ten minutes before he started shooting (draw your own conclusions) and was later threatened by him. The deputies arrived shortly after and, despite the threats, said they couldn’t arrest the man nor could they ask him to leave the site because he was drunk. All they were able to do was confiscate his weapon, a Sig Sauer 45 caliber pistol, along with his axe and issue him seven hundred dollars in tickets – including one for littering twelve empty rounds.

We had all expected to see the guy carted off to jail and were disappointed with the outcome – it had beenan absolutely terrifying night. There’s only been one other time in my life that I’ve been more afraid, but this experience was so much more intense and completely out of our control that it doesn’t quite compare. Lying there in the dark not knowing where he was, what he was thinking, or if the next bullet was for me, for David or for Sally was chilling. We didn’t know if anybody was shot or hurt. We had no clue what this guy was doing or what he was capable of. Was he just blowing off steam, or was he going to start hunting? Was he suffering from post-traumatic-stress-disorder and think he was back in Iraq and we were the enemy? Had he been there in the first place? It was all so surreal, like a scene from a bad movie.

The deputies shuttled us back to the campground to gather our things while they stood by to make sure we weren’t harassed. The guy was still awake and wandering around arguing with one of the officers about something or another while the other group broke down their tents and drove to the residential area where they planned to camp for the night and we picked up a few things so that we could stay in the truck at the visitor center. It was two o’clock by the time we could sleep.

New Mexico

Lincoln National Forest

Tuesday, March 06, 2012TheCambrians

New Mexico

White Sands National Monument

Sunday, March 04, 2012TheCambrians

Sledding at White Sands National Monument.

We arrived at our next destination, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, late yesterday afternoon and made camp as the sun was setting over the San Andres Mountains. It turned out to be a cold and miserable night, something we’re not set up for. Our tent is light-weight nylon and we use our duvet for a cover rather than proper sleeping bags (I can’t stand to have anything closing in my legs). I did my weather homework before we set off so I’m confident things will improve and last night was the exception rather than the rule, but it doesn’t change the fact that we need to invest in new equipment if we plan to do any more late-winter camping in the future.

But things have a way of improving in the light of day, and we were warmed by the sun’s heat while David made breakfast and we got organized for the day ahead. The sole reason for our stop is to visit the White Sands National Monument, 275 square miles of gypsum sand dunes,about twenty miles away. It’s like no other place on earth and one I just had to see … especially when I learned that you were allowed to sled down the dunes. We took the obligatory tour of the visitor’s center where they had the local weather posted and our suspicions were confirmed … today’s low temperature was 28°F. Well, if we can survive that, the rest of the trip should be a breeze.

The dunes were calling, so we jumped back in the truck and entered the monument to drive the eight-mile scenic route to the recreation area where we could finally test our snow saucers. After painstakingly seeking out the perfect dune, we climbed to the top and gave it a try. It took a while to get the hang of it – like most things in life, there’s a technique to sledding (feet up, don’t lean back too far, distribute your weight properly, avoid soft sand, etc.) – but it wasn’t long before we were flying down the hill and catching air on the final dip. It was all fun and games until I got a little carried away and didn’t bail out when I should have, landing hard on my tailbone. I tried a few runs after that, but the damage had been done and my sledding days were over, for now anyway. I’ll be the first to admit that I often forget my age (which is still quite young, mind you) and tend to overdo things from time to time, but David’s the real offender and it wasn’t five minutes after my tailbone bruising that he did the exact same thing. It may take us a while, but we do know how to admit defeat, so we called it a day and went back to Alamagordo for lunch and to pick up some more ice and firewood before heading back to the campsite to clean up.

The details of what happened next are a little fuzzy and I’m not sure who the culprit was – me or David (surely it was him) – but somehow the doors to the truck got locked. I was getting Sally organized for a walk and shut my door. And then David shut his. Only problem was that he had laid the keys on the driver’s seat … and the windows were rolled up. We have a spare set, but they were tucked safely away in the console (where else would they be?) so he walked up to the Visitors’ Center to call a locksmith (the phone was in the truck as well) while I took a shower to wash away all of the sand. Twenty minutes and forty-five dollars later, the doors were open and another“disaster” had been averted leaving us to enjoy dinner by campfire while Venus and Jupiter rose in the western sky and the nearly full moon lit up the night. Life is good . . . .