Thursday, April 22, 2010 - Hidden Valley RV Park, Tijeras NM
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Great Egret, San Antonio NM, April 21, 2010
Eastbound
Boy am I going to miss my morning walks in this bounteous Rio Grande valley. I've had a great 3 month stay here at the Bosque, spring is well under way, and now it's time for me to head east for the summer. I'm pulling out today on the first leg of that long journey. A leg that will only get me as far as Albuquerque where I want to stop at the Apple store for a look at the new iPad. The idea of a bigger screened iPod touch with the extra features of the iPad, like GPS location awareness, might make it a great fit in this mobile lifestyle and I want to check it out.
Night camp
Site 68 - Hidden Valley RV Park, Tijeras NM
- This is an older, 100 site, dirt pad, full hookup, RV park on a wooded hillside. The sites are a little small and close together by today's standards but are quite serviceable, quiet and clean.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Hidden Valley RV 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.