Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM
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Poolside, Mule Creek Road, Guthrie AZ, March 30, 2008
Yesterday I mentioned the spectacular ride up through the Apache National Forest to Mule Creek NM. I had forgotten how spectacularly beautiful the rolling grasslands are along the New Mexico stretch of Mule Creek Road. It's rare to find grasslands like these out here that are not overgrazed. As usual I spent all my time gawking and I have no pictures to share with you.
Night camp
Site 14 - City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM
- Verizon cell phone service - fairly good signal - best on west side of the park
- Verizon EVDO service - faster than many places I've camped
- Go to City of Rocks State Park website
- Locate City of Rocks State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Sweet, Rich Hickory Milk
Hickory was another favorite. Rambling through the Southeast in the 1770s, the naturalist William Bartram observed Creek families storing a hundred bushels of hickory nuts at a time. "They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid" to make a thick milk, "as sweet as fresh cream, an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially hominy and corncakes." Years ago a friend and I were served hickory milk in rural Georgia by an eccentric backwoods artist named St. EOM who claimed Creek descent. Despite the unsanitary presentation, the milk was ambrosial - fragrantly nutty, delightfully heavy on the tongue, unlike anything I had encountered before.