Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM

Indian wells, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM, January 20, 2009

Indian wells

To quote the nearby interpretive sign:

Mortar Holes

These cylindrical mortar holes were used by prehistoric people who made frequent use of Dog Canyon. Mortars are often referred to as "Indian wells" because they collect rain water, but they were actually created as a result of food processing. Hand-held pestles were used to grind wild seeds and beans into flour, creating mortars in the bedrock over many years. A total of 39 mortars have been located in this area.

I'm getting antsy.

It's time to move on and I'll probably go over to Leasburg Dam State Park, Radium Springs NM, a few miles north of Las Cruces.

On the way over I would like to stop at a Home Depot to repair my leaking fresh water tank inlet hose. I replaced that hose back when I was repairing the big water leak damage and I had trouble getting the hose pushed onto the barb fitting at the elbow into the tank. The working conditions aren't great - it's behind a drawer under the kitchen counter - and I'm not entirely sure what I messed up so making the repair in their parking lot has the big advantage of my not having to pick up my mess and drive into town every time I come up a part short.

Water tank inlet, September 23, 2007

Night camp

Site 7 - 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

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:

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