There are pictures for you on this entry

Well, just a couple more days before I leave Pancho Villa State Park to begin my winter adventures. Can you see the headlines now? Trio Terrorizes South Texas. This starts on Sunday when Carol Rayburn, Elizabeth Baldridge and I meet up in Las Cruces, New Mexico. We’ll be looking at maps, RV park directories, and deciding on a loose itinerary through south Texas, The next blog entry will start this adventure.

But first, I finally have some pictures to share with you. Remember to enlarge photos, just click on them.

74-Wheels
Highway 9 runs from the Arizona border to the Texas border, and along the way it goes along Pancho Villa State Park. This two-lane highway is the route of choice for over-sized transports and their accompanying escort vehicles. There are no bridges or underpasses. Some mighty interesting stuff passes by and often stops in Columbus where there are a couple large areas they can pull off the road to rest, eat, or fix tires. One vehicle - reportedly a nuclear reactor for a submarine - has been here all month. I've been told there are two more between Columbus and El Paso, Texas. I heard they are awaiting permits to enter Texas. I heard the huge loads will be loaded on ocean-going vessels and taken to the East Coast. This particular vehicle is both very wide and very, very long - there are 74 wheels. My pictutre doesn't show its massive-ness.

PVSP sing-a-long, wiener roast, S’more-making evening

The Friends of Pancho Villa Park couldn’t let these lovely fall evenings go by without an outdoor activity. Campers and park volunteers gathered for an evening of singing and eating. We missed the full moon by just a couple of evenings, but that didn’t dampen our fun. Twenty-six of us sat around the fire and had a great time. Friends President and his wife – Bud and Jeane Canfield – led the singing and also sang to us some of their favorite songs.

Here we are enjoying the lovely evening.

Another weeding surprise

It was very early one morning last week. The outside temperature was about 50-degrees. I bundled up and headed out to finish weeding an area near the restrooms. I was determined to get it finished – Just had a small area left. This area had a couple tumbleweeds and several gourd plants. This area did not get done last year so the creeping weeds (gourd plant – think pumpkin plants) spread out to about ten-feet or more in diameter. I like these weeds. When I find the center/root of the plant and cut it and pull, a huge area is cleared. This particular plant had grown up and through a large prickly pear and ‘cows tongue’ cactus plants. I cut and gently pulled in order to get all the spreading vines to follow without being cut by the cactus. No way did I want to get close to the cactus to pull. Slowly the vine was clear of the cactus. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement at the base of a prickly pear. Looking closer, I saw five shivering kittens – looking at me with eyes open on their sweet faces! I quickly picked up some smaller weeds from my pile and tossed them on the plant to re-create their cozy area. Mom cat was nowhere to be seen. No more weeding this morning. When I looked later in the morning, the kittens were gone; evidently Mom Cat moved them.

Here are the kittens – a.k.a. mouse catchers

Halloween Carnival and Costume contest at Columbus Elementary School

The park, being in the small town/village of Columbus provides lots of community activities. Volunteers Diane Patton, Gwen Young and I were asked to judge the costume contest. We thought it would be easy. Wrong! What a challenge! Fortunately we didn’t know any of the children, so had no biases. The coordinator gave us guidelines: creativity, originality, spookiness, and colorful-ness (I’m sure you know what I mean even if I did invent a “word”) There were four age categories: 0 to 4, 5 to 11, 12 to 15, and 16 and older. So many costumes were great – and I’m happy to say many were homemade. I had thought we’d just see the ‘costume of the year’ that is mass produced and available at the dollar store – those would be very hard to judge. The hardest ages were the 5 to 11 because there were so many entries; about 35.

Here is the 0 to 4 winner

Here is the 5 to 11 winner

A surprise visit from Selma and George

A morning phone call from my friend Selma turned my day from “write and edit all day” to “go with George and Selma to the Pink Store for lunch” day. What fun. The two of them had been in Silver City (about an hour drive from here). We had a great time. George and Selma bought some Mexican treasures.

Here we are after demolishing our lunches.