Friday, May 1, 2009 - Enid OK
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Welcome day, Valley of Fires, Carrizozo NM, April 28, 2009
A fine time was had by all
Except me. The ride over to Enid today was not much fun. I awoke in Pampa TX in the midst of a peas soup fog and air humid enough to chew. Quite a shock after a dry southwestern winter I must say and more than a bit unpleasant. The first 1/3 of the drive was in that gradually lifting fog - which was gradually replaced by a light drizzle. This was joined by a strong headwind and rough pavement that had the rig a rocking and a rolling along with cabinet doors and drawers opening and carefully (I thought) possessions scattering about the rig (insert grouchy grumble here). So I stopped short of my plan to reach Ponca OK today and holed up in Enid.
To top it all off the WalMart here in Enid is one busy scene and the only level parking is in quite near the store. So I shut my refrigerator off (they tend to die if run unlevel) and waited patiently for business at the store to let up so I could move to a level spot for the night. About 6:00 I decided to move - ha! - the chassis battery is flat stone dead! I had left the headlights on. Oh how I hate it when that happens. And how much I like carrying my own jump battery in the form of the house batteries. It's the best thing since sliced bread and an onboard toilet {grin}. A few minutes moving wires about and recharging things with the generator had me going quite handily.
But I'm still grumpy with the marginal at best internet access signal here....
Let tomorrow begin.
[Update] Tomorrow began - it took until then to post this longer post - this one from the Wal-Mart in Vinita OK en route east on US60, where I stopped to punch down the bread.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Enid OK
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #499, 5505 W Owen K. Garriott Rd, Enid, OK 73703 - (580) 237-7963
- Some level parking - most with a gentle slope
- Verizon cell phone service- Extended Network
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - via Extended Network, poor signal with dropouts
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- 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: