Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
< previous day | archives | next day >
The first bench, Dog Canyon Trail, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, New Mexico, January 20, 2008
My primary card that was compromised the other day and I'm happy to say I was able to use an older credit card I haven't used for a while and it is still acceptable. There was no real reason to think it wouldn't be but you never know; these big banks make me uneasy. As reward I treated myself to a nice lunch at Nature's Pantry Nutrition Center, a cafe and natural foods store on New York Avenue.
Night camp
Site 8 - 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
Crayfish Chimney
Late one afternoon I sat upon my camera case beside the path where it wound through the darkest part of the woods, down near the pond, and watched a crayfish building his "chimney," the land entrance to his underwater tunnel. He had just started to work above the ground when I first arrived. He came up through the moist black earth, carrying a ball of it between his two enormous fighting claws. Using the claws as hands, he spread the soil around the hole to form the base of the chimney. He then backed down the hole and after several minutes came up with another armful.