A man truly at leisure ... a dog on his lap and a parrot on his shoulder...???

This is the road to Truth or Consequences (T or C) AZ... who says you have to go east to see Fall Colours?

Dry country but still very beautiful

Believe it or not ... that is the Rio Grande near T or C

Hardly a lot of traffic. Speed limit is 80 mph

General Map of T or C if you can make it out

Now this is a great spot for RV'ers. As mentioned in the epistle, it has Power and Waterhookups on concrete sites over looking the reservoir and a easy access dump station at the entrance

Organ Mountains ... any guesses why they are called that?

This is the Tularosa Basin on the way through the White Sands missile range to Alamogordo Az

Great place to visit if you like Pistachio Nuts (and we DO) Everything you could make out of the nut, great tours on how they harvest them and free samples. What more can a man want?

This is Big Daddy's Diner in Cloudcroft AZ @ 9,000 feet

Does Elsie look stuffed or what. They had great soups, and the sandwich was so large that even I had problems finishing

Two "We were there" pictures

Yes we were ..

The little town of Cloudcroft. One street mainly.

"The Lodge" this place was huge and looked really upscale. Great place for the desert dwellers to cool off in the summer and go crazy in the snow in the winter

Complete with a copper dome. Pretty splashy

This is one of the cabins that line the wooded little roads around the town. It was built just turn of the last century

When the mine was working, they built a railway to access the ore. This is all that is left of a rail that climbed 5,000 feet in less than 16 miles

It was strange to go from temperatures in the mid 80's to those in the mid to low 60's and then back to the 80's all within 16 miles. Note the truck run away lane. Necessary, I think

More Fall colours

Still more ... in about 5 miles we will be back in the desert

A topographic warning sign on the side of the road

From the flat greyness of the desert to this ... it was refreshing

For all you geologists ... note the stratified layers having been uplifted

Even a tunnel ... hey we are back home ..

Building this road would not have been easy

The river that carved this valley is responsible for the strange surreal white sands in the desert below

Had to stop and look ... it was a long way down

Obviously Elsie took this ... Hmmmm, was she about to push??? Had I made her mad that day?

Back to the desert ... with one last glimpse at the foliage

This is a great Mexican Restaurant in Mesila which is a suburb to Las Cruces. We went there with our friends Bruce and Geri Conard from Washington

Does Elsie look happy

I don't think that Geri was very hungry that day???

Bruce, very coolly, devouring his lunch. Again a Happy Face?

Hard to see but I started to take the picture and by the time I got the camera out, this is all that was left

Four, Very Happy Replete Souls

The three days were over too quickly and they pulled out to head to Palm Creek RV Park in Casa Grande Az. We will see them again on our return west trip as we head home in March

They have a beautiful rig

We went to a local Bar for dinner one night and here is teenaged Elsie bopping and grooving at the juke box

Some people don't believe me when I tell them the speed limit on the I 10 in Texas is 80 mph. Now they can't argue...

This is one of the homeland security check points along the I 10. You stop and the fellow asks how many on board and if you are all Americans. There is always a pause when I say "no" then add we are Canadians. They always look surprised

Another "proof" sign ... ice in the desert

This was the first day of cold we hit. You can tell by Lord Stanley's look, he was not impressed

Shared body heat ... the only answer

The Texas foothills. This is one of the side roads the bikers love to travel. Would you pay attention to those signs?

a dip going through a dried out river bed. When it rains, the water at the bottom will be 5 feet deep on the road

A sunset shot at Buckhorn Lake Tx

The weather finally did turn nice. Nice flat well cared for sites

There was a Prevost Coach Rally just as we left. We tried to count the Prevost Rigs at over 1 million a copy (?) and had to finally guess that there were over 30 there. Now, let's see ... 30 times 1,000,000 ... my mind can not grasp large numbers

This is the view from our front window at Buckhorn

Not Bad Sites eh? Each site has its own cement pad for the RV and Grass for the chairs.

It was quite crowded when we arrived

This is the BBQ and Smoker that the Park uses on Sundays for their "Meet and Greet"

Well kept and clean ...

This is the view to the left of Harvey over to the Dog Walk. The weather had changed for the better

From the other side of the River looking back at Harvey. He looks pretty good eh?

This is the fountain just across the river from our site

The other side of the river is "The Club" where you can lease a site for 30 years and build a "cassita" along side your Rig. These are really nice setups!

But us Hoi Ploi are not allowed in there. Adds to the selectivity of the place

Now this will take some imagination! This is Harvey's Radiator cover at the back when it is open. In the epistle part, I mentioned the channel iron bar I found lying across the compartment

The top of the bar was lying against the oil filler cap in the top right of the picture

That is the Engine Radiator side on the right. The radiator you can see on the left is for the Turbo inter cooler

Fortunately, the bottom of the bar lodged itself on the radiator support just where that patch of sunlight is as you maybe can see, had it fallen outside of that support, it would have gone straight through to the road and the top of the bar would have done some considerable remodeling

WHEEEW ... our LUCK HAS RETURNED!!!