Monday, November 19, 2007
< previous day | archives | next day >
Pilings, , Demopolis Lake AL, December 12, 2007
Slowly, slowly moving southward
I'm trying to keep a balance between quickly pushing south and taking my time to keep my expenses under control. It would be really easy to spend a hundred dollars a day or more on fuel alone. I can either drive long days and make camp later for long periods or do as I am doing now, and travel fewer miles per day. At this point I don't have enough experience to know which might prove the best approach. My traveling style in the past has involved long, hard days, covering lots of miles. Those trips were generally 4 to 6 weeks long and if I wanted to spend any time at all in the southwest I had to get a move on. This trip is a first for me. I have 6 months to cover the 7,000 or so miles I've budgeted for this trip. If I put half those miles on in the first month I'll be sitting somewhere for 4 months with no miles in the budget to even go into town for groceries. That would certainly lead my getting to too restless for my budget. We'll just have to see how this all plays out, but I have a fear of putting too many miles on and, at the high price of fuel, completely destroying my budget. Then again, isn't the whole idea of this adventure to slow down and smell the roses, as it were?
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Clarksburg WV
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #1544, 550 Emily Dr, Clarksburg, WV 26301 - (304) 622-1954
- Good level parking
- Verizon cell phone service- good signal
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - none but 1x dialup speed is reasonable
- Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Heliograph route between Fort Cummings NM and Tubac, AZ
1886 heliograph transmissions between Tubac near Nogales Arizona/Mexico, and Fort Cummings New Mexico: Joe Marques (Flagstaff) was doing some research in old Flagstaff newspapers and found something that might interest. In the Arizona Weekly Champion, Saturday August 7, 1886, page 2 column 1, it says: "A message was recently sent by the government heliograph (signalling by sunlight flashes) from Fort Cummings, N.M. to Tubac, Ariz., a distance of 400 miles, and an answer received in four hours." What a great [research] find! This was during the Geronimo Campaign of 1886, and the heliograph system at that time did indeed extend between the two stations. From Tubac, the most westerly terminus, the intermediate stations were Baldy Peak or possibly Josephine Peak just a little south of Baldy), Fort Huachuca, Antelope Spring, Emma Monk, White's Ranch, Bowie Peak (or Helen's Dome), Steins Peak, and Camp Henely (east of Fort Cummings). This means the message would have been relayed seven times, one way. It most likely was a test message, and relatively short, but I would love to know what it and the reply really said. The 1886 "airline" distance between Tubac and Fort Cummings; and of course on to Fort Cummings. I calculate the one-way distance between the two extremes as being 241 miles, with round trip of course being 482 miles.