DAY 29 - Tombstone to New Mexico

(photos: Boothill Cemetery; our blown tire; our nice campsite at Rockhound SP)
We got up early, put away all our outside stuff, had breakfast, etc. David and Nora took the movie back to the store, which opened at 8:30 a.m. David said Nora walked part of the way there and all the way back, and they actually came back sooner than I expected, and I figured David would carry her most of the way. She can walk just fine, but when she stops every 10 seconds to pick up a rock or inspect a plant, it can take an hour to walk 50 yards.
By the way, if you are wondering about the little marks on Michael’s nose in the photos from previous days, he was laying on a blanket on his tummy on a nylon-covered swing at the Randalls’ house. He squirmed around so much he pushed his blanket out from under his face, then rubbed his face back and forth on the swing, chafing the skin on his nose. It scabbed over, but it’s almost gone today.
We pulled out around 9 a.m. and stopped several blocks later at the Boothill Cemetery - the one with all the funny and famous gravestones. (Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a .44. No Les. No more.) Ownership of the cemetery was recently taken over by the City of Tombstone. They request a voluntary $2 donation to go in, which we gave. They have done a lot of work there since I visited last.
--------------------------
We were driving along I-10, approaching the border between Arizona and Texas, when we heard a loud noise and then a lot of banging. Figuring a cabinet had popped open or something, I went back to investigate. After about five seconds, I told David to pull over. It was definitely something on the outside. It was outside of the kitchen area, which could have been the stove vent, the drain valves or a variety of things. Turns out we blew a tire. Our choices were to try to call AAA from there, or try driving to the nearest stop. We were five miles from the next exit and it was one of the dual-axle tires that blew, so it wasn’t completely disabling us. The other tire right next to the blown one was carrying the weight of that side. I wasn’t driving, but I knew it couldn’t be hurting the steering much if David didn’t know right away that it was the tire. So we pulled back on the road and drove slowly to San Simon. Using the mapping software, I found something listed as a service station in San Simon. When we rounded the corner at the exit, we were shocked to see a sign for a truck stop specifically listing RV service. (I was imagining sitting around all day waiting for the correct tires we would need, or a big enough jack, or whatever.) Even more amazing, as we started to turn in, there was a sign painted on one of the truck stop buildings: TIRE SHOP. So we got ourselves a new tire and made sandwiches. We would have had to stop for lunch pretty soon anyway, so we didn’t really lose that much time. Just money. It wasn’t a totally unplanned expense, though. I had actually predicted before we left that we would probably have a problem with at least one tire, just because the tires--given their age and relative lack of movement before we bought this motor home--were the weak link.
Nora‘s comment on the whole situation was, “Dada having tortilla sandwich,” which is pretty funny because it was about three weeks ago now that he had a tortilla sandwich. I guess she just says it every once in awhile because it always makes me laugh.
We were also lucky that one of tire shop workers was getting back from responding to a roadside call at 12:15 because the guy who changed the tire for us wasn’t authorized to run the cash register. The other workers there were on an hour lunch break, and not expected back until 1 p.m. I guess you can get away with stuff like that in small towns.
We are back on the road and just passed an interesting road sign. In Arizona, the signs said, “Blowing dust, next 30 miles.” After we crossed into N.M. the sign said, “DUST STORMS MAY EXIST.”
-----------------------------
We pulled into a state campground here in Deming, N.M. called Rockhound State Park, after waiting for some cows to cross the road near the entrance. I picked this park ovenight just for Nora. Each visitor is permitted to take home up to 15 pounds of rocks, including the gems and minerals found in the hillsides here. The place is beautiful. Each campsite is quite large, and features a poured concrete patio, a level gravel parking space, landscaped cactus beds, a nice picnic table with a sun canopy over it, a garbage barrel, and an electric and water hookup. The sites are at different elevations, so you can’t really see into the other sites. They also have a nice playground that Nora made good use of. All this for $14. So far, the nicest and cheapest places we have stayed have been state parks. They require more energy and more fuel to get to than the KOAs and such located right along the highways, but I think we will make a more concerted effort to stay in state parks in the future. They seem to be the best deal and come with best scenery. This campground is apparently funded by the lease of mountaintop space for cellular and television antennae. They are kind of ugly, but we have great cell phone reception and we are getting about four different local TV channels showing ABC alone.
After we settled in, I hiked up the trail where people go with their bags and clawhammers to search for gems. I had an empty pants pocket and a Leatherman multi-tool. Not knowing what the heck I was doing, I looked for anything shiny or, alternately, funny-colored and smooth. I did find some shiny, sparkly rocks and also some that were dark colored and smooth. Supposedly gems look quite different polished than they do in their raw state. Rockhounding took me back to the days when I was a kid and would collect rocks in a corrugated cardboard box, sometimes “polishing” them on the edges of the box. Somehow I ended up with some Fool’s Gold in there, but I know it was given to me, not found on the ground. The searching today also made me remember that my mom’s dad had a rock tumbler, and I never got to know him before he died and never found out what happened to it. I wasn’t really prepared for a desert hike, since I was wearing shorts and tennis shoes and the narrow path was lined with cactus, so once I filled up my pocket, I scurried back down to the campsite, stopping at the campground display to compare my finds to those on the information board. Seems like most of the things I found were different colors of jasper. I still have hopes that the one I found had a vein of opal in it, but what do I know? When I arrived back at camp, Michael had spit up all over David’s shirt, then fallen asleep in his arms. Nora was (of course) collecting rocks, but when I came over to her, she said, “Mama, Nora’s bottom hurts.” This was kind of weird because usually if something hurts her enough to make her take notice, she is crying, or at least pouting. I said I would take a look. To my great surprise, I found a caterpillar in her diaper. I guess she didn’t know how to say, “It feels weird,” or something like that, and she knew something was wrong, so she said it hurt. Pretty crazy. It is VERY buggy here. There are tons of flies and I saw a gigantic hornet-type thing outside the window. Just thinking about it all makes me itchy.
We cooked out dinner, but ate inside because it was already dark when the burgers got done.
I’ve been realizing lately that a lot of what I have always loved about camping is the solitude: hiking familiar paths after dark with no flashlight at Camp Wyandot; sitting alone in a canoe in the middle of the lake; watching a sunset in silence. The few times I’ve been alone on this trip, I’ve felt that old feeling: a mix of peace and a little bit of trepidation. The fear I get walking a trail in the dark awakens the survival instincts that make me feel very human, physically . The serenity of being alone with my thoughts is calming and puts me in touch with my mind, making me acknowledge another aspect of my humanity. These moments have been rare on this trip, but I realize I need to create more of them. Playing with Nora at the playground, I stood next to her as she put pebbles into the holes on the side of the sliding board. Instead of getting impatient waiting for her, I turned and watched the orange sun slip below the horizon. Now that Michael is sleeping on a regular schedule, there’s no reason I can’t take the dogs for a walk after the kids’ bedtime. It’s not the same as when I was a teen. There is that constant pull of my thoughts toward the family, and the certainty that I need to get back soon. But tonight I went outside by myself after the kids were asleep, burned some cardboard boxes we had from the new things we bought, and stared at the stars. Out here, it’s hard to see the constellations because there are so many stars. In the city, it’s easy to pick out the big and little Dippers and Orion, because many nights they are they only stars really visible over the spill of the city lights. Out here, it is hard to find a black space in the sky that isn’t speckled with the glitter of tiny, far-away stars.
It seems like I’m just getting into the rhythm of this trip and it is two-thirds of the way over.