Friday, February 8, 2008 - Alamogordo NM
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Walking up-canyon on the Second Bench at Milepost 2.75, Dog Canyon Trail, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, New Mexico, February 2, 2008:)
The Dog Canyon line cabin is just ahead
The remains of the stone line cabin in Dog Canyon is less than 1/4 mile ahead of where I took this picture but is well hidden down in the canyon. In tomorrow's journal I'll post a picture of what is left of the cabin down near the stream. I'm not sure of this and I might have it wrong but I think the cleft you see in the rocks a bit left of center in this picture is the route of the trail as it heads up and out of the canyon above the line cabin. The brochure I so conveniently misplaced describes the section of trail above the cabin as rather difficult and if that's the route I would tend to agree with that assessment.
Today I broke camp to head off toward Deming New Mexico
My three weeks at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park are up and I need to move on. The rules at New Mexico State Parks limit the length of time one can stay to three weeks on and one week off. My plan is to meet up with my new friends Andy and Kate & Terry at Rockhound State Park when they move over there in a couple of weeks. Today I went into Alamogordo to run some errands and do laundry and tomorrow I'll wander the 125 miles or so over to Rockhound.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Alamogordo NM
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Alamogordo NM
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #1306, 233 S New York Ave, Alamogordo, NM 88310 - (575) 434-5870
- Good level parking
- Verizon cell phone service- I don't recall
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - I don't recall
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Five Trillion Spiders
Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.
From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69