April 6, 2009 - Artisia NM - The Choas Cafe

The great thing about this blogging is that you can make an entry while in a rush and comeback later and revise it - which is what I am doing now. Making a few corrections and filling in some details.

I am having breakfast (it was too cold in sit in camp waiting for the sun to come up) - biscuits and gravey and chorizo - and I found an outlet to recharge my battery and an unsecured internet connection.

Chirzo in Spain is usually a fermented cured pork sausage. I argue in vain that Spain has better sausages that Italy. Every region has their specialities and there is such a variety there. Spain is in love with the pig - jamon - Case de Jamon. And no a Javalina is not a pig - it is a class (technically a family) all of its own (meaning it has no close releatives). They come through camp in packs (pigs are found in herds - so there) of half a dozen to two dozen emitting a musky smell and brouzing on the vegataion at dawn and at dusk. In Mexican cusine the chrizo comes uncooked and is generaly fried and served soft.

The only safe thing to do is nothing
And noting is what being safe is

To do good, you must, to begin with, do something – Musil

 Just time for a quick update on my travels: Big Bend - four nights in the Chisos Mountains and two at Cottonwood on the bank of the Rio Grande (Rio Brovo is you live on the other side). $5,000 fine if you cross over and it true when they show the calvary crossing over in those old western movies that you can wade across - only four feet deep right now. And where it comes through the Sante Elena canyon you can touch both walls at the same time.



Davis Mountains home of the McDonald Observatory (Jack Horkehimer with is too obvious rug sitting on an image of the moon exhulltingly extilling the night sky on your public broadcasting station). Located just past Fort Davis, Texas.



Balmorhea St Park - pool feed by one million gallon per hour spring - scuba divers explore its 25 foot natural bottom. The day I was there a woman was photographing a friend dressed in a glittering red mermaid suit - almost another Wikiwasahie Springs. The temperature is a constant 71 degrees.


Guadalupe Mtn National Park the world's largest reef system fanning out in a horseshoe enclosing the Permian Basin and exposed here in the Gaudalupes (Texas' highest elevation.




Carlsbad Caverns Nat Pk. The caverns are huge. Hunderds of thousands of Mexican free tail bats make in their home in the sumer (only about a hundered had arrived - the count from the previous night). Taking the Natural Entrance path you descend 750 feet to the Big Room (an 8.5 acre cavern). There is an elevator back to the surface (at the time of construction it was the world's larest single assent elevator - those of the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower being multy assent elevators) in 59 seconds.



Then into New Mexico - the high plains - up the eastern side - got a National Park pass and a NM park pass which includes camping - so I'm comitted now to roaming this state to recover my expenese - 36 state parks and a lot of the state that I've never seen.

And all of the pick up trucks
Scurry about like foraging ants
And the RVs are lumbering
To escape
Their ravenous fury
Along comes the family dog
Occupying the extended cab
With its big bore diesel chugging
All the family hop out to brush their teeth
There at the water spigot. They are all
Cursing about awaiting the sun
And for the fun to begin

Well back to my breakfast before it gets cold (what's the use, it already is).