Monday, February 11, 2008 - Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM
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Line cabin, Dog Canyon Trail, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, New Mexico, February 2, 2008
The line cabin is built against a rock
What a clever idea. And what a great rock for the purpose. See how economically the builders of this little cabin set it right up against the flat side of that big rock? Most likely the work of building the cabin was done entirely by hand and those guys must have jumped at the chance to carry 25% fewer stones over here and fit them into place.
That rock probably has a moderating influence on the daily temperature extremes down here in this defile too. I don't know if that's helpful in the extreme summer heat but it should help keep the cabin warm during those cold winter nights after the sun goes down even though the sun doesn't reach this rock until late in the day during the winter months. If it reaches the rock at all in mid winter - it was mid day when I took this picture and as you can see the sun still hasn't quite reached the rock and I didn't stick around to see if the sun touched it later in the day.
Working on website
Today I started tweaking this website a bit to see if I can archive these Travels pages in a way that will make them easier to navigate. The Yesterday and Tomorrow links at the bottom of the pages are fine for linear reading but just don't cut it for finding older stuff. It wouldn't hurt if I managed to make some improvements to the whole site for that matter but I don't know if I can keep my attention trained on the project long enough to make a difference. We'll see.
Night camp
Site 29 - Pancho Villa State Park, Columbus NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - good signal
- Go to the Pancho Villa State Park website
- Locate Pancho Villa State Park on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
A Call to Nature
"About as far as from here to the station," went on Mr. Baca, "was a graveyard where the gang was supposed to camp out. I rode over to it and found where they had lunched the day before. There were {Begin deleted text}sardin{End deleted text} {Begin inserted text}{Begin handwritten}sardine{End handwritten}{End inserted text} cans and cracker boxes and one thing and another. Then I found where one of them had had a call to nature. I told one of my men to put it in a can. Saiz didn't know about this, and in a little while he went over behind some mesquite {Begin page no. 4}bushes and had a call to nature. After he came back I sent my man over, and by God it was the same stuff -- the same beans and red chili seeds! So I put Saiz under arrest and sent him back to the jail at Socorro with one of my deputies, although he kept saying he couldn't see what I was arresting him for."