Saturday, April 28, 2012 - Caballo Lake State Park, Caballo NM
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Rio Grande Riverside Camp, Caballo Lake State Park, Caballo NM, April 24, 2012
Boondocking by the river
Thought I'd throw in a picture that'll give you a hint of the lay of the land here by the river and my relationship to the cliffs across the river where the Great Horned Owls and bees hang out. The cliff isn't as close to the river as it looks. There's a dirt road between the river and the cliff which puts those owls frustratingly far from my viewfinder.
So far neither the weather nor the owls have cooperated to give me another decent shot at them. It was in the 90s most of the week and the uncharacteristic highs mixed at various times with high winds (and a dust storm) and clouds have dampened my enthusiasm and the birds haven't been hanging out on the cliff before sundown either. But I keep watching and hoping.
Night camp
Riverside - Caballo Lake State Park, Caballo NM
- Verizon cell phone and broadband service - fair signal if a bit slow
- Go to Caballo Lake State Park website
- Locate Caballo Lake State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Wind on the Gangplank
There was almost no soil in that part of the range - just twelve miles' breadth of rough pink rock. "As you go from Chicago west, soil diminishes in thickness and fertility, and when you get to the gangplank and up here on top of the Laramie Range there is virtually none," Love said. "It's had ten million years to develop, and there's none. Why? Wind - that's why. The wind blows away everything smaller than gravel."
Standing in that wind was like standing in river rapids. It was a wind embellished with gusts, but, over all, it was primordially steady: a consistent southwest wind, which had been blowing that way not just through human history but in every age since the creation of the mountains - a record written clearly in wind - scored rock. Trees were widely scattered up there and, where they existed, appeared to be rooted in the rock itself. Their crowns looked like umbrellas that had been turned inside out and were streaming off the trunks downwind. "Wind erosion has tremendous significance in this part of the Rocky Mountain region," Love said, "Even down in Laramie, the trees are tilted. Old-timers used to say that a Wyoming wind gauge was an anvil on a length of chain. When the land was surveyed, the surveyors couldn't keep their tripods steady. They had to work by night or near sunrise. People went insane because of the wind." His mother, in her 1905 journal, said that Old Hanley, passing by the Twin Creek school, would disrupt lessons by making some excuse to step inside and light his pipe. She also described a man who was evidently losing to the wind his struggle to build a cabin: