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Thursday, December 30, 2010 - LoW-HI RV Ranch, Deming NM

Tracks Through Time, Sandhill Crane, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 1, 2010
Tracks Through Time, Sandhill Crane, Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 1, 2010

I'm moved

By the fierce wind. By the dust blown in by the wind. By the cold weather predicted for the next few days. The combination sent me fleeing over to Site 8 for its electric hookups.

I've been boondocking fairly successfully for a few weeks now but this cold dust storm makes boondocking difficult with my setup. I have been heating with an unvented propane catalytic heater. It works quite well as long as I keep a couple of vents open to supply combustion air and exhaust the fumes. Now I've discovered I need to close the vents to keep the choking dust out. To do that I need to run my electric radiant heaters.

Night camp

Site 8 - LoW-HI RV Ranch, Deming 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."

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