Monday, October 31, 2011 - Oasis State Park, Portales NM
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Sunset, Oasis State Park, Portales NM, October 30, 2011
Gotta fly
There are some huge dairy farms in this area. It's housefly heaven! Think I'll head up to Sumner Lake State Park tomorrow.
Night camp
Site 23 - Oasis State Park, Portales NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - connection is reasonably fast.
- Go to Oasis State Park website
- Go to Oasis 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.