With the truck fixed, we finally got to take a trip down the mountain into Santa Fe. We got a pretty early start, leaving around 8:30. First we went to the library to see how the wifi was. The speed was incredibly fast! Very impressive! It was probably 5 times as fast as the expensive cable internet I had at home. Yay for public libraries! Since the library didn't actually open until 10, we decided to get some shopping done.
Driving in Santa Fe is frustratingly slow. Even the GPS seems to know that you'll never make 2 stoplights in a row; predicting that a 2 mile drive will take you 15 minutes. It was hard for Missy and I to keep Jeremiah in a zen state of mind about the slow going. We went to Best Buy to get a new computer. Got a sweet deal on a discontinued model that suits our minimal needs. Only $350 (plus 10%! Tax). The salesguy really didn't want to let Missy get something so last season. It's funny, because she knows exactly what she wants, and she tells the guy. But he still wants to ask questions, I guess so he can make his "expert" recommendations for the best computer. I think that when he asked "what do you want to use your computer for?" that she should have answered "mainly just wordpad". Tee-hee.
After Best Buy, we went to Petsmart. We looked at dog ramps and stairs. Buddy is really having trouble with his arthritic hind legs getting into the rig. Nothing really seemed like it would solve the problem. So we're going to have to jury-rig something suitable at each new campsite. With a front door, a back door, and the garage ramp, hopefully we'll be able to make at least 1 entrance senior citizen friendly. After Petsmart, we went to Target and then Lowes. At Lowes, Missy looked at getting a longer extension cord to go with the electric chainsaw. I guess she wants to park the pickup on the side of the road and be able to go longer distances into the woods to cut trees. (Plugging into the genny in the pickup bed). Holy Moly! The contractor grade cords were just as expensive as the chainsaw! We also tried to get a replacement saw blade (anticipating a time when the original will wear out). But after a frustrating 20 minutes with a couple of useless workers, it turned out they didn't stock the replacements for our model chainsaw. They offered to order one, but it would be 14 days. So that's no good. (Note for RV records, we swapped LP tanks. We got 1 week's usage from one tank. Not too bad from the normal cooking and hot water coupled with the new experience of nightly furnace usage).
We made our way back to the library. We had to pay to park in the library lot, because the streets of Santa Fe are not geared for parking a truck as large as ours. $1 for 2 hours, so not bad at all. We were at the library for about 3 hours. We got a ton of shows loaded. I got all the back blog entries updated. I was going to go back into the other ones and put pictures into each post, but that felt like too much of a task. So I cheated and did a coupla picture only posts. After reading some of my blog reader for about 45 minutes, Missy and I tried to research other places to go in NM. We thought we might be able to get a run in on the Rio Grande (moving to Taos), but the level was below runnable. I might have talked my siblings into to the run anyway, if only it had been described as a beautiful float at low levels. Instead, the description stated that at this level, all the pool drops became tight and technical with nasty consequences for missed lines. Sigh. We looked about 40 minutes for other national or state forest boondocking sites. The trouble we kept running into was that almost all weren't open until memorial day. So we are going to stay put. Jeremiah has a plane ticket home for May 5th. We'll be driving him to Albuquerque (used spellcheck on that bad boy), and so we'll probably find a new place then.
It was getting kinda late (5ish) so we got on our way (needed to get back to the dogs). We stopped at the grocery store, and then went back up the mountain. On the way up the mountain, they have a NM state park in the middle of the National Forest. Luckily, this park as an RV dump for $5. So we don't have to worry about finding a place all the way back in Santa Fe once we need to dump. We had a great day back in civilization! (Weatherwise, it was a good day to be away from camp. Winds were 20-30, with gusts into 40mph!)
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