Will it rain?
We have been getting lots of dark clouds the last couple days. I’m hoping it means the monsoons will get here soon and cool it off some. It has been up in the 90’s this week.
I made a trip to Grants on Honda a few days ago. I was mainly looking for RO water and some lettuce from Walmart. I rode all over town looking for a water machine outside a store and finally had to text my friend John to find out where he found it. It was off on a side street outside a Family Dollar store.
Today I rode west on interstate 40 to Thoreau. Thoreau has a couple gas stations, two restaurants, cheap propane, and a Dollar General. Every little village I’ve gone through this last week has a tent set up on the outskirts of town, selling fireworks. I’m thinking maybe New Mexico has a relaxed regulatory on firecrackers. I hope people are careful this year because setting off fireworks and rockets in the forest are how some forest fires get started.
While I was in Thoreau I drove up the back road behind Bluewater Lake to check out a nice boondocking spot I found a couple years ago. The person here at the visitors center told me the forest was all closed over there and I couldn’t go in. It was a good thing I was skeptical because the forest road and campsites were all open. The recreation area on the other side of the lake is closed, however; that’s probably what she heard about.
Every day I look for an open electric site here. There are only five, and if one opens up, it is grabbed almost immediately. There are several reservation electric sites that I noticed are sometimes empty every day. Other state parks will allow you to stay at these sites if no one has reserved them. I walked down to the visitors center to ask them why they didn’t rent out these reservation sites if no one had reserved them. She gave me some story about a guy that wouldn’t move because he was drunk the night before and couldn’t drive. It was such a hassle that they don’t do any temporary occupancy. Sounded like a good scenario for a heafty ticket from law enforcement to me. I think they just don’t have the staff or energy to coordinate the reservation system with first come campers.
All of us in the southwest are hoping for rain!
I suppose if you took an open reservation site for one night and had to move the next day, you might risk there not being an open non-reserve non-electric site available. I don’t think I’d move unless I was sure I wouldn’t have to move back out before I was ready to leave the park.
Have you tried asking the campers in electric sites when they are moving, and then taking Honda down and staking out the site that morning?
No I haven’t done that Donna. Seems like every time I go by there is no one outside. I don’t feel right knocking on someone’s door and asking them when they are leaving. There are probably 50 open non-reservable sites here now. Not sure what it will be like next week.