Friday, January 18, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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Baby it's cold outside
This cold weather is setting new records for LD & Me. Maybe even an all time record for LD, a southern gal all her life, as far as I know. She seems to be weathering the freezing temperatures fine so far. Nothing has burst - there are no telltale puddles underneath. I assume the waste drains are frozen and perhaps there is ice in the tanks too. We'll see what happens when everything thaws out.
When the pipes freeze
The fresh water drain valve is exposed and is surely frozen as well. I've been expecting the plastic piping and valve I used to replace the original with last summer to burst but so far so good. I think I will replace it again this coming summer with pex, which has greater resistance to freeze damage, just in case these freeze-thaw cycles have weakened it. Each freeze-thaw cycle stretches the pipe when ice forms inside and expands. If the pipe is stretched beyond its elastic limit it will take a permanent set in a slightly stretched state. Then the next cycle adds a bit more to the permanent set. Freeze. Thaw. Set. Repeat until the pipe ruptures. Having said this, surely the principal applies to the waste tank drain pipes and valves as well. Uh....anybody know how many cycles they will withstand?
Maybe just put a plug in the bottom of the fresh water tank since I don't see much need to access it except for draining & cleaning. On second thought, maybe that's not such a great idea. If the water pump quit someday, easy access to the fresh water tank from outside might prove valuable out in the boonies. Maybe two valves - one up at the tank to close in cold weather and one down where it is accessible to get a bucket of water is better. We'll see. Then there's the waste tank drains to think about stretching as well.
Now to try to find out if there is any snow on the road over the mountains I need to be concerned about.
Today's journey: US 380 west to Hondo, New Mexico then US 70 west to Alamogordo, New Mexico then US 54 south to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park.
Night camp
Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
A Siberian dog signal-howl
A camp in the middle of a clear, dark winter's night presents a strange, wild appearance. I was awakened, soon after midnight, by cold feet, and, raising myself upon one elbow, I pushed my head out of my frosty fur bag to see by the stars what time it was. The fire had died away to a red heap of smouldering embers. There was just light enough to distinguish the dark outlines of the loaded sledges, the fur-clad forms of our men, lying here and there in groups about the fire, and the frosty dogs, curled up into a hundred little hairy balls upon the snow. Away beyond the limits of the camp stretched the desolate steppe in a series of long snowy undulations, which blended gradually into one great white frozen ocean, and were lost in the distance and darkness of night. High overhead, in a sky which was almost black, sparkled the bright constellations of Orion and the Pleiades--the celestial clocks which marked the long, weary hours between sunrise and sunset. The blue mysterious streamers of the aurora trembled in the north, now shooting up in clear bright lines to the zenith, then waving back and forth in great majestic curves over the silent camp, as if warning back the adventurous traveller from the unknown regions around the Pole. The silence was profound, oppressive. Nothing but the pulsating of the blood in my ears, and the heavy breathing of the sleeping men at my feet, broke the universal lull. Suddenly there rose upon the still night air a long, faint, wailing cry like that of a human being in the last extremity of suffering. Gradually it swelled and deepened until it seemed to fill the whole atmosphere with its volume of mournful sound, dying away at last into a low, despairing moan. It was the signal-howl of a Siberian dog; but so wild and unearthly did it seem in the stillness of the arctic midnight, that it sent the startled blood bounding through my veins to my very finger-ends. In a moment the mournful cry was taken up by another dog, upon a higher key--two or three more joined in, then ten, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, until the whole pack of a hundred dogs howled one infernal chorus together, making the air fairly tremble with sound, as if from the heavy bass of a great organ. For fully a minute heaven and earth seemed to be filled with yelling, shrieking fiends. Then one by one they began gradually to drop off, the unearthly tumult grew momentarily fainter and fainter, until at last it ended as it began, in one long, inexpressibly melancholy wail, and all was still.