Elephant Butte

April 29, 2017

Our journey from Riana Campground in Abiquiu, NM is a journey we don’t often take… driving through snow and rain! The storm predicted for Friday night through Sunday morning made an early appearance – stalking Thursday in the middle of the night. We had no choice but to leave. We could have stayed Friday night and left Saturday morning like our original plan, but WTF…

As we drove, the rain and snow let up here and there, but every time we thought we had left it behind us, it would start snowing again. This went on till we were well south of Albuquerque, NM. We were both GLAD when we had just cloudy skies and no more rain and snow to contend with.

When we were getting ready to move Rosalita early Friday morning, we noticed a couple drops of water coming down from the ceiling –Sh*t! I climbed up to check our roof, and found that our rubberized roof sealer had a rip in it: probably 6” x 2”. This was another reason for heading south on Friday morning. I knew if we kept moving, rain and snow would just fly over the top. We arrived in Elephant Butte by 3PM, found our camp spot and stabilized everything. I went around the camp and looked for any camper that had a ladder we might borrow in order to put some plastic, weighted down with rocks on the roof… as there was a 20% chance of rain that night. As it turned out it did rain. So we felt super that I had the foresight to cover up our roof tear! Not a drop of rain penetrated our temporary barrier.

There is an RV repair business in EB, so on 5/3/17 we will hook-up the trailer and drive it to “O’Neil’s RV Service” for a patch job. We will then bring it home – because Rosalita is our motel – leave it hooked up for the night and return to O’Neil’s the following day. The patch has to sit and dry overnight (no rain please), and then the next step is to re-cover the entire roof with a rubberized sealer on 5/4/17. Glad we were not in Portal when this happened. Both of us are stymied re: how the rip got there in the first place???

Will keep you posted on the results of the repair job…

Well, we went from 33 degrees, (and snow), at Riana, to 89 degrees and SUN today May 2^nd, with the whole week predicted to be in the mid to high 80’s. Yes, summer is here (at least in this part of the world)!

At O’Neil’s Repair Service we unhooked and left Rosalita for the day. Since we had some time on our hands, we thought it was the perfect time to have quiche… Patti is soooooo looking forward to having Passion Pie quiche: she is the connoisseur of quiche! We had quiche in Bisbee at two different establishments and we did not like the consistency of their quiches at all. So now, a few days after Bisbee, we get to try our ole stand by Passion Pie – and see which one is best.

And the Winner IS….

#1: Passion Pie in down town T or C, NM… hands down (as far as our quiche taste goes!!!) Their quiche is always fresh made, filled with scrumptious veggies, plenty of cheese and they generally offer 6 or 7 different selections = try it if you go through T/C!!

Our O’Neil experience was very satisfactory! The patch job and sealer seemed to have worked well during the high pressure water “test” they ran, (but it hasn’t rained as yet…). The workmanship was quality, the price was fair (but having no other experience to compare it to ???). The work was completed “on time” and O’Neil’s even washed the rig after the job was finished. Nice guys to do business with.

Cinco de Mayo

We learned that T or C does a BIG “Festival” celebration on the weekend of Cinco de Mayo. Not exactly sure why that is but the festivities started off with the Police, Fire, Rescue, and all of their out-branch support services, as well as many units from the surrounding small towns. The Military had its presence as well as other political agendas being voiced. Lots of townspeople showed up cheering for their favorite floats, and as we were just down the sidewalk from the ‘judges’ table, it got really loud at times! We had prime seats at the sidewalk café outside Passion Pie, where we ate our quiche and sipped coffee while we enjoyed the parade. We felt this event revealed the BEST community spirit of small town America – whole families with lots of happy little children and grandparents cheering wildly and proudly.

We ventured into Las Cruces for supplies and a meal at Olive Garden before we leave for Bisbee, AZ again. We will pull out relativity early tomorrow and head south to Hatch, then west to Deming and south again just after Lordsburg, NM. We will stop in Rodeo, NM to get some farm fresh eggs from our buddies at Mt Valley RV, go through Douglas, AZ and back north to Bisbee.

Just out of Rodeo, is a small, rock memorial dedicated to the surrender of Geronimo the last Apache Chief, in 1886. This monument is about 50 miles southeast from Chiricahua, Geronimo’s hide out for so many years ago.

We are both looking forward to spending a month in Bisbee with time to check on real estate, etc. Who knows?