SEARCH Travels With LD

Sunday, January 18, 2009 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM

New soles on the old slippers, January 18, 2009
New soles on the old slippers, January 18, 2009

When I made these slippers 3 years ago I went to the effort of figuring out how to them from one piece of leather and the leather I used (a lightly sanded leather like nubuck) was not very tough. With some patching I managed to get an extra year out of them but they were now way past the need for new soles. Yesterday I put on some tough old horsehide. Gaudy be danged - let them soles LAST!

Night camp

Site 7 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM

The Heliograph in the Apache Wars

"The mountains and the sun...were made his allies, the eyes of his command, and the carriers of swift messages. By a system of heliograph signals, communications were sent with almost incredible swiftness; in one instance a message traveled seven hundred miles in four hours. The messages, flashed by mirrors from peak to peak of the mountains, disheartened the Indians as they crept stealthily or rode swiftly through the valleys, assuring them that all their arts and craft had not availed to conceal their trails, that troops were pursuing them and others awaiting them. The telescopes of the Signal Corps, who garrisoned the rudely built but impregnable works on the mountains, permitted no movement by day, no cloud of dust even in the valleys below to escape attention. Little wonder that the Indians thought that the powers of the unseen world were confederated against them."

more...