Thursday, December 17, 2009 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM
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Lava field dawn, Valley of Fires, Carrizozo NM, April 28, 2009
Back on Saturday, December 5, 2009 - Brantley Lake State Park, Carlsbad NM I mentioned New Mexico's plan to close the park system December 23rd and 24th this year as part of an employee furlough program the State put in place to help deal with their budgetary shortfall.
It's time to start drifting toward a solution to the problem of where to make my Night Camps those nights so tomorrow I'm going up to Valley of Fires Recreation Area, Carrizozo NM. From there I'll head west over to the Rio Grande valley and hopefully touch base with friends at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and Elephant Butte State Park as I drift down the valley before making a blast over to Henderson NV to spend a few days with cousins Ken & Connie between Christmas and New Years.
Night camp
Site 42 - 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
Heliograph routes of the 1890 Practice
The date was May 15th, 1890, and the Army's Department of Arizona had just completed a major heliograph practice; it was, in fact, the largest the world had ever seen. I call it the "Volkmar Practice", after the man responsible for it, Col. Wm. J. Volkmar, the Assistant Adjutant General and Chief Signal Officer for the Department of Arizona. Although the practice lasted only sixteen days, preparations for it took months of reconnaissance and preparation. Involved in the long range signaling maneuvers were twenty-five heliograph stations stretching from Whipple Barracks near Prescott to Fort Stanton near Ruidoso, New Mexico. My guess is that close to two hundred men were involved, both cavalry and infantry.