Magnus Goes to the Red Rock Country

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

It's going to be hard to write about this trip. It was long anticipated and should have been very exciting, but there are some unmentionable annoyances causing me to be alternately anxious and despairing. It's nothing that anyone else in the world would consider the slightest bit important, so I won't describe it here--you'd think I was an idiot.  But I fully expect it to overshadow the whole trip.

So we got a very early start for a rather long drive (5 hours 12 minutes on Google) to Longhorn RV park in Alanreed, TX.  We made decent time and got in fairly early.  The lady running the place wasn't there, the office was locked and I couldn't get hold of her on the phone. But eventually she came out of her house and checked us in.

It turns out that AT&T has very little/poor service out there, so my phone kept dropping the connection. Her Verizon phone worked fine. Starlink worked, of course, no obstructions as far as the eye could see.

I don't think there was a dog exercise yard, so Molly got lots of walks around and around the RV parking lot. No stickers that I recall.  Molly's human spent her time staring off into the flat distance. Time well spent.

 

Review posted on campgrounds.rvlife.com:
Basic, inexpensive RV park in an overgrazed short-grass prairie
Longhorn RV Park, site 11, $30 cash

Gravel surface; very open and windy.  There was a county burn ban going on, but we were allowed to use our little charcoal grill cautiously, with a hose close at hand, to make steak and fish.

Very few trees and would be hot in the summer. Saw a horny toad in the field next to our site. Lost of big red ants for him to eat. Horses you can pet. No birds.

Convenient location to I-40. The owner was very nice but the office was locked and I couldn't get hold of her on the phone. It turns out that AT&T has very little/poor service out there, but her Verizon phone worked fine. Starlink worked, of course--no obstructions.

Review: Birding Under the Influence

Birding Under the Influence: Cycling Across America in Search of Birds and Recovery
by Dorian Anderson

Slightly misleading title, unless he meant "the influence of obsessive behavior syndrome."  Because he is clearly an obsessive nutcase--in a pleasing sort of way. Addicted to alcohol and controlled substances, basically anything he could
get his hands on, he manages to quit and stay quit. Only to substitute a new addiction--bicycling across America in search of the ultimate "Bicycle Big Year" goal of 600 birds.

Very enjoyable to read and I wish it were longer. He interleaves the cycling adventure and the bird sightings with long peeks back into his past.  Both are fascinating to read about, but I would have preferred more birds. Not less memories--that part was about perfect--but more birds. But then, I'm a bit of bird watcher myself.

Recommended to anyone even if not interested in birds. And a rare glimpse into the good and the ugly of america, as seen from a lone guy on an overloaded bicycle.

Review: The Cold Dish

Longmire #1 by Craig Johnson

Having read one of the later books and liking it, I decided to go back and read the first in the series and possibly complete the whole thing.  So now, having finished this, will I?

Don't know. It was awfully interesting and even a little on the "gripping" side at times. But during his snowstorm recovery section, I got awfully bored--it seemed to be repeating the hallucinations (visions?) over and over--and I skipped forward a good bit. Not pages at a time--more like reading the first line of a paragraph and skipping to the next.

But it was certainly a wild ride. A little slow, but enjoyable.

So I'll try one more.

Review: Walking Home

Walking Home: Common Sense and Other Misadventures On the Pacific Crest Trail

by Rick Rogers

Lovely adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail!  I didn't like it as much as some of the long trail travelogues I've read but that was only because he didn't spend as much time on nature stuff--plants, animals,  geology, all that.  But he did meet some wild and crazy people and have some fun (and cringe-worthy) stories.

Early on he starts off with new boots that he picked out himself, without any advice from a mountaineering/hiking store. The sort of boneheaded thing I would do myself. I know myself and I know my own feet, right?

Not under a 35-pound load, traversing rugged terrain!

Another part that was kind of scary and sad was about his hiking partner that he joined up with. She was a shallow, self-centered, idiot, and it took him a long time to figure that out.  I'm not sure if he ever did--but I'm scared to tell any more because I might be giving too much away.

Anyway, it's fun to read, hard to put down, and very much recommended. Fun stuff!  And his personal growth during the adventure, while understated, was enviable. At the end he was a guy I'd really like to go hiking with. And that says it all.

Review: The Longmire Defense

The Longmire Defense
by Craig Johnson

I chose this mystery, book 19 in the series, because it was about an older guy (I'm older) who was still working despite his age (I work on my house projects) and had a dog (I do too!)  His dog is named dog, which probably implies it doesn't have a significant role in the story. And it didn't.

Some one else reviewing this book wrote:  This one felt like a return to the strengths of the series, for those who have followed Sheriff Walt from the beginning. No narco-terrorists, no supernatural stirrings ... just good old-fashioned greed and financial skulduggery.

And that pulled me in. It was exactly as described and I very much enjoyed. A little slow moving throughout, but not in a bad way.  

Review: Wander

Wander: A Memoir of Letting go and Walking 2,000 Miles to a Meaningful Life

by Ryan Benz
 
Not your typical Appalachian Trail thru-hike. Mr. Benz was an older guy (30s ?), with a successful, well-paying career and a wife and even a house, I think.  His marriage ended because for both his wife and him there was nothing but the job and the lifestyle--they didn't grow together in their years together but instead grew apart.  And during those years, he kept putting off "real life" until some nebulous point in the future when he'd attained the perfect job and lifestyle.

The marriage ending jerked him into thinking about what he really wanted out of life, and it wasn't the high-pressure job or the big house or the perfect marriage. What was it?  He didn't know, so he quit.  All of it. To hike the trail.

Wish I had done the same thing, but there were too many people depending on me. But he did, and I couldn't stop reading to find out if he found what he was looking for. Would he or wouldn't he?  And could he even walk that far?
 
Read this and find out. I'll guarantee it's full of adventure and pain and happiness and finally, even joy.  And just possibly a mountaintop at the end.

Review: Hero Dogs

 Hero Dogs: How a Pack of Rescues, Rejects, and Strays Became America's Greatest Disaster-Search Partners
by Wilma Melville and Paul Lobo

Wonderful story of the vision, founding and execution of the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, by the founder herself, Wilma Melville.  (Paul Lobo is her co-author)

As you'll find by reading the cover, after volunteering in the cleanup of the bombing at Oklahoma City, Ms. Melville made a vow to help 168 dogs receive search-and-rescue training in her lifetime—one for every Oklahoma City victim.  The dogs that were recruited and trained were mostly rejected shelter dogs, all of those that were too smart, driven and active to be adopted as family dogs.  In fact, mostly it was the most troublesome that--with a lot of patient training--became the best search dogs.

This is her story and it's fascinating from beginning to end. And not over yet!  She's like in her late 80s or early 90s and still kicking.

Review: Force of Nature

Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail
by Joan M Griffin

So very detailed she must have spent hours every evening taking notes--and worth it!  Awesome description of the author's trials, tribulations and joys on the trail. It only took them about a month to make the hike, but the description was so lively, scary and wondrous that I wanted it to take much longer.

And isn't that just about the best praise you can give certain books--wish it had gone on forever?

She describes the mountains and the trails so beautifully you want to be doing exactly what she's doing...except for the rain, the slippery mountain passes, the narrow logs across icy streams, the trail that disappears in a snowfield, and the ever-pounding footsteps made by blistered feet. It's a relief when she switches to hiking sandals--been there, done that and felt the wonders.

Review: Sea People

 Sea People
The Puzzle of Polynesia

by Christina Thompson

One of the more fascinatingly comprehensive books about an unusual subject that I've ever encountered!  Gripping from beginning to end. How is that possible for a work of strict nonfiction?

I guess it's because he put a lot of everything in. His own background (a little), then the history of the sea captains who explored the Pacific; descriptions of the people they met on the Islands; the geographic and logistics of sailing between the islands; the many conflicting theories on how people without modern navigational instruments could have routinely (or accidentally???) sailed so far, and more.  And then he shifts gears and describes the attempts in modern history to recreate the Polynesian voyages.  And then jumps into archeology and the puzzle of pottery, which together with the study of fishhook design shows the interrelationship of the peoples of the Islands.

All of these puzzles had my brain wondering if he was ever going to reach some sort of comprehensive theory about "this is how it happened"--and then he jumps into radiocarbon dating of samples.  This answered some questions but also introduced a lot of errors into the theories that were being tossed around by various researchers. I had thought that radiocarbon dating was only accurate up to a range of a few thousands of years, but this book explains how refinements in radiocarbon dating technique, statistical analysis, and corrections for sampling error, can produce much more precise results.

For example, dating the ashes of a campfire created by humans doesn't take into account the age of the trees that were burned in the fire.  That doesn't make the date useless, but it helps if you can also date the trees or other objects in the ashes for correlation.

And then the evidence from modern genetics studies comes into the puzzle. Interesting thing I learned--in problems of origins such as this, if access to the human remains is culturally sensitive, scientists can be a lot of information from the remains of the humble rat, man's eternal companion.  There are three species of rats on the islands--the Norwegian, the black, and the Polynesian (Rattus exulans). the latter of those accompanied the original explorers of the islands on their journeys.

So the book has a pretty satisfying conclusion to its many questions--where did the inhabitants of the Islands (New Zealand, Hawai'i, Easter Island and those in the triangle of these three) come from?  When did they come?  How did they get there? Was it a one-way journey or back-and-forth?  and the only question left unanswered, for now, is Why?

Review: Have Dog, Will Travel

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey
by Stephen Kuusisto

Lovely little memoir by a man who is blind from birth, then finally gets a seeing-eye dog at age forty or so. After years of pretending he could see--because his idiot parents forced him to--at age 38 he lost his good job and finally confronted the reality that pretending wasn't getting him anywhere. (Literally)

So he gets his service dog and undergoes the training to work effectively with her. That's the cool stuff--the dog comes pre-trained, but but human being has a lot of work to do!  Finally, together they begin on his real journey of life--traveling independently, taking on new jobs, and doing all the stuff that a blind man alone is afraid to do.

It's a little soppy and repetitive, but still fascinating. One thing I'd never considered is that a dog takes his direction from the human handler, and so long as there's a safe way to do it, he does. So if the human, say, wants to jaywalk across a city street in downtown New York, the dog will check traffic, see if there's a way across, and take it.  Even it if scares everyone watching near to death.

Good dog!

review: From Here to There

From Here to There
The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way
by Michael Bond

Most fascinating non-fiction book I've read in a long time. It's all about how the human brain learns to get places--with or without maps, in known and unknown terrains.. The sections on the search for a lost hiker on the Appalachian Trail and the ones on Alzheimer's disease patients are especially fascinating. And heart-wrenching.

For reasons we don't know, Alzheimer's patience are often driven to walk, and when they do walk, they often continue in a straight direction for many miles. It's as though there is something essential about moving and about going somewhere, purposefully, is deeply ingrained into the human psyche, and one of the last functions to be lost in a degenerating brain.  Why? It's not known yet, but it could be one of the things that makes us human.

He even has a chapter on how we navigate through big cities and other featureless and over-featured mazes (think: hospitals) and on design strategies to make big cities (and hospitals) more navigable.

Very useful if you ever wanted to know (a) Do lost people really go in circles? (b) How did Eskimos and Polynesian sailors and other native people travel long distances without satellite navigation? (c) Is your GPS affecting your brain?  And so much more.
 

Review: a Good Man With a Dog

 A Good Man with a Dog: A Game Warden's 25 Years in the Maine Woods
    by Roger Guay

Good Dog!  And good dogs! And a great book.

Mr. Guay recalls his 25-ish years as a game warden in the Maine Woods, and it's a wild and crazy ride.  At first he tells his "normal" game warden stories--the fish hidden in the duffle, the doe permit episode; the many nights of skulking along the shore of a pond in search of a mysterious searchlight. And many episodes where he is able to educate the public, and their children--quite lovely. And then he moves on to his increasing work in the search-and-rescue field.

Somewhere in there he learns how useful a dog can be. His well-trained dogs can distinguish between game fish and trash fish; find discarded shotgun shells; track down hidden caches.... It's a blast.

I have to warn you that the widespread use of snowmobiles in the woods takes a lot of the joy out of his mission. Instead of educating hunters and enforcing game rules, he's tracking down drunks who take off cross-country in the cold and dark forests. It takes up more and more of his time.

But then he trains a cadaver dog and gets into rescue after floods and explosions. Grisly, miserable, and mostly unrewarding work. But the whole book is still fascinating to the max.

Highly recommended. And a lot of scary action scenes, too.

Magnus Moves! Massachusetts and back, Day 25

Home
Friday, August 2

And home, only to find the heat pump thermostat off. It's likely we'll spend the next few nights in the motorhome. And the grass and weeds outside are so tall that it looks like no one ever lived here. My $70 Bur Oak tree is pretty much dead but the hackberry tree growing beside it is two feet tall.  Note that it wasn't there at all before I left, although there may have been a few leaves sprouting down low.

just horrible. I don't think I ever want to be gone so long again.  One of the hummingbird feeders was on the ground and Waynette had hung it on a concrete block, pretty much on the ground there, too. And the cord it was hanging by was chewed through with most of it is missing, probably buried in the tall grass.  I'll fix it tomorrow--for now I just cleaned and refilled it and hung it on the wire where I hang the bird feeder in winter.

Everything looks horrible. Horrible.

But as to memories of the trip...it was our longest trip to date. Too long? In some ways.  And it was somewhat disappointing--so many things anticipated and missed; so much adventures undone, places unexplored. I really really wanted to get out on the shore of Cape Cod and explore mudflats and marshes and see the little birds. I wanted to eat the farmed oysters and try some local clam chowder. I wanted to look for whales at the tip of the camp, at Provincetown.

But i did see the herring gull and the scarlet tanager. And Elyanna playing with her Grandpa was a hoot. And having them at camp was fun even if it did cut into our explorations. Plenty of time to do that when we don't have family nearby.

I enjoyed walking in the rain. Showers at bathhouses. The tall trees.  The last two campsites by water.  Sunsets. Long walks on wooded trails. Exploring the safe unknown. Loved all that--a major criteria for my campground choices from now on should be access to trail systems.


Trip Notes

450 miles with generator and 3-6 hours stoppage time (setup & teardown) leaves us 1/4 tank. Do not exceed this--aim for 425.

For a 24 day trip, 1 bag of trail mix is not enough! Will only last 21 or 22 days

Need to shave legs daily.

Check out Fall Creek Falls SP for camping. Also cloudland canyon. They have waterfalls.  Also Dauphin Island Campground.

Next trip bring prunes and veggie hash.

Try freezing guacamole. Bring tofurky and hummus for wraps

When scheduling the drive for a 4-hour leg, schedule either one break in the exact middle or two breaks, one at either end.  Anything else sucks.

Magnus Moves! Massachusetts and back, Day 24

 Thursday, August 1, 2024

On to Maumelle Park in north Little Rock. Apparently this northern neighborhood is where the richest of the rich live; the road going toward the park is pristine and recently resurfaced with brand new asphalt and a bike lane on either side; the houses look like they'd cost $750K to 1M in the Dallas area; and the whole setup is awfully clean.

The guard at the gate let us in early--check-in time wasn't until 4pm but we arrived at about 1:30. And setup was pretty quick. We had this lovely site right on the banks of the Arkansas River--

 

Which is perfect in pretty much every way except no sewer.  But there are three dump stations. We got Starlink reception by setting it on the ground near the end of the side toward the river.  There are big trees to give us shade. The spacing between sites is excellent and the sites are pretty long. We went ahead and parked the Jeep in back and then backed in the motorhome to it, so we could hook up in place.  Of course that wouldn't work if we were going anywhere, but we're not. The site reservation page said it was 70' long but the RV and Jeep with tow hitch barely fit. The RV is about 35', the jeep 16' and the tow hitch maybe 4' so that would be about 55 or so feet. There's no way this site is any more that 60', but I'm not going outside in the heat to measure it.

 

 In fact, the only issues I have at all with this park are:
On weekends it gets very crowded. It's pretty empty today; maybe 1/4 to 1/3 full? but last time we were here was a different story.
No long trails away from people. There are a few little trails but they're mostly paved and not very exciting
No sewer, of course
And it's too damn hot

It's 97 today, heat index 107. But the big trees and the breeze off the river help make it livable. And it is, of course, August.  So I can't blame the park.