Friday, January 18, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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Baby it's cold outside
This cold weather is setting new records for LD & Me. Maybe even an all time record for LD, a southern gal all her life, as far as I know. She seems to be weathering the freezing temperatures fine so far. Nothing has burst - there are no telltale puddles underneath. I assume the waste drains are frozen and perhaps there is ice in the tanks too. We'll see what happens when everything thaws out.
When the pipes freeze
The fresh water drain valve is exposed and is surely frozen as well. I've been expecting the plastic piping and valve I used to replace the original with last summer to burst but so far so good. I think I will replace it again this coming summer with pex, which has greater resistance to freeze damage, just in case these freeze-thaw cycles have weakened it. Each freeze-thaw cycle stretches the pipe when ice forms inside and expands. If the pipe is stretched beyond its elastic limit it will take a permanent set in a slightly stretched state. Then the next cycle adds a bit more to the permanent set. Freeze. Thaw. Set. Repeat until the pipe ruptures. Having said this, surely the principal applies to the waste tank drain pipes and valves as well. Uh....anybody know how many cycles they will withstand?
Maybe just put a plug in the bottom of the fresh water tank since I don't see much need to access it except for draining & cleaning. On second thought, maybe that's not such a great idea. If the water pump quit someday, easy access to the fresh water tank from outside might prove valuable out in the boonies. Maybe two valves - one up at the tank to close in cold weather and one down where it is accessible to get a bucket of water is better. We'll see. Then there's the waste tank drains to think about stretching as well.
Now to try to find out if there is any snow on the road over the mountains I need to be concerned about.
Today's journey: US 380 west to Hondo, New Mexico then US 70 west to Alamogordo, New Mexico then US 54 south to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park.
Night camp
Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
A Voyage and a Harbor
The native American was forced westward by the young escaping the limits of east coast villages that had been established only a generation or two earlier by parents escaping the limits of European villages. From then on, whether seeking a whale, rafting with Huck Finn, easy riding with Peter Fonda, or next week in Cancun, there has been a strong belief in America that happiness lies somewhere else. And yet as we find freedom we also rediscover loneliness. As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan says, we require both shelter and venture. We need freedom and support, silence and cacophony, the vast and distant but also the warm and near, a voyage and a harbor, the great adventure and the hobbit hole. Much of the iconography of our times gives little sense of this. Instead, the individual is treated as a self-sufficient, self-propelled vehicle moving across a background of other things, other places, and other people.