Saturday, December 5, 2009 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM
< previous day | archives | next day >
Replacement Shurflo water pump, Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM, December 5, 2009
New Mexico has implemented an employee furlough program to ease its budgetary shortfall and will be closing the State Parks on those furlough dates. I sympathize with the State's need to trim their budget but these closures are sure going to complicate life for us full-timers a bit. We can't just go home.
Today I saw a notice posted on the park self pay pedestal and thought it was for some maintenance work and applied only here but later Andy posted this today to the lifewithalazydazerv group at Yahoo!
... New Mexico just announced that all its state parks will be closed, due to state-mandated employee furloughs, on the following dates:
Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009
Thursday, Dec. 31, 2009
Friday, Jan. 15, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Actually, it's worse than that: the parks will be closed from 9 am on December 23rd until 7 am on December 25th, and I presume the other closures will also be extended from one day to two. That means all of us staying in NM parks will have to scramble to find other places to stay for a couple of days. However, while all campers will be forced to leave, the campground hosts will stay. This makes little sense to me, but...
In addition, New Mexico is planning to close several parks in the coming year. Bluewater Lake is already closed for the winter, and may not reopen.
I've been waiting for the New Mexico State Parks to start showing effects from the fiscal shortfalls the states are struggling with.
These short term closures are going to create quite a scramble for overnight parking in the Deming area especially, with its three popular winter campgrounds (and where I like to spend the colder winter months). My quick dash to reach New Mexico early this year seems to have complicated things a bit for me.
The Christmas eve closure is going to complicate things for Walmart and its last minute shoppers too. This ain't gonna be pretty and we'll surely see a clamor from the public (and Walmart when their 12/24 sales fall short) for tighter overnight parking restrictions. I don't think I like where this might go...
The new water pump is installed
The pump is located in a confined area with tight access. By removing the access panel under the electrical control panel (where the old converter used to be) I could get my hands in from two directions which made the changeout much easier. Now I'm glad I decided to relocate the converter to a new home under the aft dinette seat when I upgraded it.
Night camp
Site 37 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM
- Verizon cell phone service - Access is via Extended Network, roaming
- No Verizon EVDO service - access is via the Extended Network and service varies with many drop-outs.
- See a list of the nights I've camped at Brantley Lake State Park
- Locate Brantley Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
- Go to Brantley Lake State Park website
- Locate services on my Resources map
- Check the weather here
Life is to be Lived, Not Controlled
No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me. I lived a public life and attempted to function under the assumption that the world was solid and all the relationships therein. Now I know men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health. Hence again I have stayed in my hole, because up above there's an increasing passion to make men conform to a pattern.
.... Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? - diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that were to happen. .....Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.