Sunday, January 27, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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Hopping from gotcha to gotcha
Maybe, maybe not. As long as my TP gotcha had me at Wal-Mart yesterday anyway, I thought I'd see if I could find an upgrade for the cheapo hand held vacuum I've been unhappy with. There wasn't much to choose from but I picked up a little Dirt Devil Power Reach that looks like it will do the trick. It looks to be more powerful, easier to empty, and more versatile than the cheap little thing I've been using. So far so good. I gave it a test run when I got back to the park and it works pretty well with good suction and the hepa filter catches the dust instead of letting half of it blow on through like my old cheapo vacuum. The crevice tool could have a longer hose but I think it will be ok as a tradeoff I can work with.
So here's the gotcha
When I went to Amazon.com to get the links to put this paragraph together I found the consumer reviews there almost universally pan the Power Reach. Gotcha - I should have read the reviews first.
But then again what do I care? My needs are different from those of the average consumer who seems to be largely unhappy with the short hose for the wand and a lack of power to the rotating brush. Aside from those shortcomings, which I think I can live with, the thing seems to be pretty well built and there is little on the market to choose from in the handheld vacuum category these days that is not cordless. I don't think I want a cordless vacuum for the RV.
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
A Siberian dog signal-howl
A camp in the middle of a clear, dark winter's night presents a strange, wild appearance. I was awakened, soon after midnight, by cold feet, and, raising myself upon one elbow, I pushed my head out of my frosty fur bag to see by the stars what time it was. The fire had died away to a red heap of smouldering embers. There was just light enough to distinguish the dark outlines of the loaded sledges, the fur-clad forms of our men, lying here and there in groups about the fire, and the frosty dogs, curled up into a hundred little hairy balls upon the snow. Away beyond the limits of the camp stretched the desolate steppe in a series of long snowy undulations, which blended gradually into one great white frozen ocean, and were lost in the distance and darkness of night. High overhead, in a sky which was almost black, sparkled the bright constellations of Orion and the Pleiades--the celestial clocks which marked the long, weary hours between sunrise and sunset. The blue mysterious streamers of the aurora trembled in the north, now shooting up in clear bright lines to the zenith, then waving back and forth in great majestic curves over the silent camp, as if warning back the adventurous traveller from the unknown regions around the Pole. The silence was profound, oppressive. Nothing but the pulsating of the blood in my ears, and the heavy breathing of the sleeping men at my feet, broke the universal lull. Suddenly there rose upon the still night air a long, faint, wailing cry like that of a human being in the last extremity of suffering. Gradually it swelled and deepened until it seemed to fill the whole atmosphere with its volume of mournful sound, dying away at last into a low, despairing moan. It was the signal-howl of a Siberian dog; but so wild and unearthly did it seem in the stillness of the arctic midnight, that it sent the startled blood bounding through my veins to my very finger-ends. In a moment the mournful cry was taken up by another dog, upon a higher key--two or three more joined in, then ten, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, until the whole pack of a hundred dogs howled one infernal chorus together, making the air fairly tremble with sound, as if from the heavy bass of a great organ. For fully a minute heaven and earth seemed to be filled with yelling, shrieking fiends. Then one by one they began gradually to drop off, the unearthly tumult grew momentarily fainter and fainter, until at last it ended as it began, in one long, inexpressibly melancholy wail, and all was still.