24. Apr, 2016

WEDNESDAY 02-04-08 

Having spent the night in Wal-Mart’s car park, we set off for the second leg of our journey from San Antonio, Texas to Roswell, New Mexico. We went without a shower to save time allowing us to get on the road that much earlier. We travelled at a slower speed today as we were travelling off the main highways. I set the cruise control to 55mph and that’s the speed we did for most of the day.

Much of the landscape we passed through was very flat and looked scorched by the sun. The small residential areas were miles apart and looked really run down and poor, only Carlsbad was of any size and offered far more shops than we’d seen the whole day. You have to wonder where these people go for their shopping as there are so many miles between hamlets, most of which had no shops at all. We also passed a number of oil fields with their ‘nodding dog’ pumps. This pleased The Chef as she didn’t want to leave without having seen one. 

Our RV seemed to have given us more mpg today having slowed the pace down. We’ve spent a lot of money on fuel during the past few days and I will be glad when we reach Williams, Arizona, which will mark the end of these long driving periods, and for us, the start of the trip proper. 

On arrival at Roswell www.roswell-nm.com we went straight to the UFO Museum www.roswellufomuseum.com , which holds photographs, newspaper clippings and models covering the supposed UFO crash landing at Hub Com Ranch about 20 miles out of Roswell on July 8th 1947. There’s not much to it really, but I guess it draws the tourists. After that we went on to the Roswell Museum and Arts Centre which was both interesting and free. It had displays of historical artefacts, Native American culture and clothing, and a very interesting section on the pioneer rocket scientist Robert Goddard who did seem to be a man ahead of the game. 

Whilst I have an open mind regarding UFO matters, looking around Roswell town I find it hard to believe Aliens would choose to even crash here. 

This evening we booked in to the Town & Country RV Park for the night. It’s nothing special but it’s convenient. We ate alfresco but didn’t stay outside very long as the wind suddenly got up and was blowing fine sand everywhere. I popped out of the RV later and spotted the sunset which was very impressive, but unfortunately by the time I’d fetched the video camera the light had changed and the moment was lost. Rosina managed one shot of it in a different direction which was good. It’s just a shame we hadn’t spotted it sooner. 

LOCATION TONIGHT: Town & Country RV Park, Roswell, New Mexico (GPS: N33.350945 W104.525076).

24. Apr, 2016

24. Apr, 2016

24. Apr, 2016

TUESDAY 01-04-08 

Today we set out on our first of two days travelling to Roswell, New Mexico. We started off slowly, having run in to the same roadwork’s we hit when we first arrived in San Antonio. The RV seems to be getting through a lot of fuel. We were travelling at around 65-70mph, just going with the traffic on Interstate 10. We stopped off for a break at a Rest Area which was quite impressive; it even had a dump station and fresh water for RV’s. 

Unable to find a suitable Rest Area we decided to go to the Wal-Mart supermarket at Fort Stockton. On our arrival we found a number of RV’s parked up for the night, and so asked for permission to join them, and the staff kindly agreed. 

We are still struggling to understand the RV’s systems, and initially thought we’d have to spend the night without running water as we had no water pressure. 

The Chef had bought some cooked food from an Albertsons supermarket which we’d passed earlier in the day, and all we had to do was heat it through in the microwave. The two items on board which cannot run off the auxiliary batteries because of their high power consumption are the air conditioning unit and the microwave oven. 

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the generator to start up and provide us with the power for the microwave oven. We couldn’t even get the gas oven pilot light to ignite. The air was blue, it’s all you need at the end of a day’s travelling. The Chef had to heat the food up in a saucepan. After the meal I had another play with the generator and finally got it running. It should be straightforward to use now that I have some understanding of it, and things got even better as I discovered how to create the water pressure. 

Fort Stockton itself grew up around Comanche Springs, at one time the third largest source of spring water in Texas, and near the military fort which was founded in 1859. Fort Stockton was garrisoned by companies of the 9th Cavalry known as “Buffalo Soldiers”. After the military post was abandoned in 1886 and the railroad companies had bypassed it Fort Stockton went in to decline. Granted we were only on the edge of town but had to agree, it looked a dump, and really quite poor, so we decided we’d activate our motion alarm detector tonight in case we were broken in to whilst we slept – it looked like that kind of neighbourhood. 

LOCATION TONIGHT: Wal-Mart supermarket, Fort Stockton, New Mexico (GPS: N30.895304 W102907532).

24. Apr, 2016