Last Days with Jeremiah

May 3-4, 2012
Thursday-
After giving the dogs one last walk over at Chipmonk Rocks (what I call the area of rock wall border where the chippies love to run and taunt the pooches), we got packed up and ready to leave SFNF. While it will be nice to leave for someplace warmer, I will miss this first rate forest. We loaded up all our firewood into the garage. Hooking up with the newly lowered truck was problem-free. Phew! Missy and Jeremiah make fun of me, but I always have anxieties about doomsday scenarios. Since we hadn't tested the truck with the fitty attached before now, there was still a chance for unforeseen tragedy. (Missy told me just recently that she and Jeremiah share a "Tina is crazy" look between them whenever I bring up one of my perfectly rational problem scenarios. She said she's going to miss having someone to give that look to once it's just the two of us.
Driving down the mountain, everything performed as expected with the new truck. Once we got into cell phone range, I called the campground to see if they had openings. They did! We had a small snafoo with getting there. I had downloaded a pdf with the address on it. However, that address took us the wrong way. Then, we tried to use google maps on our phones, but couldn't find the name of the campground (which we later found was because it was misspelled in google). We eventually figured it out, and arrived at the campground around 1 pm. We dumped our tanks (15 nights in the forest, and we just eeked out with freshwater and still had room in the blacks) and went to the office. I was going to pick the back-in site overlooking the Rio Grande, to have parking practice, but sadly there was NO shade. With extremely hot temps and no awning (thanks to that freakish storm at Wausau last summer), we needed to find a shady spot. So we took a nice pull-through. I'd like to take credit for a perfect parking job, but since it's not difficult at all to just drive straight in, Jeremiah won't credit my record.
This campground is decent. Only $20, with no added fees for pets or extra person. 30 amp, with water. Nice view of the Sandia Mntn, but close to the freeway (lotsa traffic noise). There's a small shelter with a picnic table in it. It's surprisingly nice to sit in the shelter, even during the most sweltering part of the day. With mid-80s and brutal sun outside the shelter, it's pleasant in the shade with a constant gentle breeze. Sooooooooooooo nice to be wearing shorts again! And we don't need the furnace at night!
Friday-
Be careful what you wish for. Sooooo hot in the sun. I can barely take the dogs out to do their business before they fairly pass out from the heat. (They also do not like the stickers and cacti hurting their paws). We spent most of the day doing internets. Missy and I looked at places in Taos for our next stop. I'm a little worried about the weather for the next 10 days. Highs only to 70, with intermittent thunderstorms. Lows to the 30s and 40s again, so looks like we'll be needing the furnace again.
We went out for Mexican for lunch, and did takeout Chinese for dinner. The former was disappointing, and the latter was stellar. Tomorrow we will bring Jeremiah to the airport for his flight back to MN. I sure hope we can manage without him…