Monday, February 2, 2009 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
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Repurposed concrete adobe brick, Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM, January 25, 2009
So that's what that is...
Some time ago I noticed this unusual "rock" delineating a trail in the park. This concrete-in-a-bag "rock." And wondered what it could have been made for. When a neighbor pointed out a damaged spot in one of the campsite shelters where a careless Rv bumped it I had one of those Aha! moments - it's a fake adobe brick - used to build a fake adobe shelter, plastered with fake adobe plaster. Of course.
Night camp
Site 4 - Rockhound State Park, Deming NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Find other references to Rockhound on this website
- List the nights I've camped here
- Go to the Rockhound State Park website
- Get a Google map of this 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