Thursday, April 22, 2010 - Hidden Valley RV Park, Tijeras NM

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

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

more...