The more than one meaning of the word WIND

The first and most important meaning of the word wind is  "We're in... Not Duluth as poor Duluth continues its relentless march into April. 8-10 more inches of snow are predicted the next days. Six inches of snow fell on April 1st.

No winds yet on in Rock Canyon on Sitka's and my morning hike

Now let's talk more about wind.... no one told us there would be gale force winds out here. A beautiful 72 degree day and the bulk of the day was spent making jewelry in the trailer...40mph blasts of unrelenting wind. We had a dinner invite from the camp site next to ours. Greg and DJ actually live in Truth or Consequences. We delayed until tomorrow because the winds were so crazy, it felt like we needed to be here in case something happened....like what, I am not sure, maybe flying debris or ripped bed tent... or who knows. The sky earlier was filled with sand, which is sifting inside the trailer. Major cleaning day tomorrow. Finally, 7pm and it is starting to quiet down.

We thought about moving on or even going to a different part of the park (this park is 40 miles long), but we decided it's best to stay put and wait out the wind and at least make use of the internet in this park. The last internet we will see for awhile. Tuesday the winds let up and we will have stayed here at Elephant Butte for the maximum 14 days. The mornings are glorious for hiking and Sitka and I have taken off exploring the park.

Rock Canyon

perfectly calm morning houseboats in Rock Canyon

We have also day tripped from here. Best use of our finite resources. We get 24-26mpg without pulling the trailer. Not even half that pulling it. Both day trips were spectacular. This past Sunday, we ventured out on the Geronimo Trail Scenic Byway. Highway 52 rolls through breathtaking vistas in the Black Range on the way to three former mining towns Cuchillo, Winston and Chloride... all but ghost towns now. The history is rich as well as amusing.

Haunted Catholic Church

Cuchillo was named for a nearby creek and a local Apache chief, Cuchillo Negro (Black Knife). Cuchillo flourished as a stage stop and trade center from the 1880s to the 1930s. Now a few families reside there continuing a ranching tradition.

Winston (first named Fairview) was settled in1881 by miner who found nearby Chloride "too rowdy." It had a school, bars, a newspaper, horse races and featured plays and songfest at Cloudman Hall (named after the butcher).

Miner, businessman and future legislator Frank Winston, who came to town in 1882, owned several business and generously gave credit to customers in hard times. They renamed the town in his honor in 1929 when he died. Winston flourished until the silver panic of 1893. Now only a few families reside here.

The mountain in the background, literally looked like a paint by number in the sky. I was struggling to capture breathtaking vistas.

The 11 residents of Chloride live in this former ghost town. It sprung up in 1880, two years after Briton Harry Pye chanced upon silver ore, a discovery he initially kept secret. Word eventually got out, prompting a silver boom. Chloride in its heyday, had nine saloons, a general store, a dry goods store, a millinery shop, a restaraunt, a butcher shop, a candy store, a pharmacy, a Chinese laundry, a photography studio, a school and two hotels! The black range newspaper was printed a top the general store from 1882 to 1896. The demise of Chloride also came with the silver panic. Today, many of the structures still stand. The old pioneer store is a museum.

The pioneer store was built by James Dalglish, who had come from Canada hoping that the high desert would help his ailing health. He ran the store through 1897 and sold merchandise that anyone could possibly want from his establishment. As mining waned he sold the store tot he James family finally running the place until nearly every Chloride resident had moved away. In 1923 the store closed with its contents sealed away exactly as they had been on the last day of business and were left undisturbed, except for the rats and bats over the next several decades. In the late 1970s the Edmund family moved to Chloride and talked  Mr. James into selling them the  store. They began the massive job of being historical archeologists. The process of opening the museum took until 1998 and is a fascinating testament to the pioneer way of life.

An interesting character in Chloride built this stone house by hand. Austin Crawford was a stone mason who arrived in Chloride in 1880. He built a number of the structures in town. Austin was an elderly man when he built this house. The old timers in town said he carried every rock up from the creek to build it. Back in the day he was involved in gambling  and mining schemes, although not illegal, not necessarily the moral standard he held himself to in his later years after "finding religion". He had a vision that God was going to send a hail storm to destroy all the "bad" people in Chloride. He built this house to protect himself and his family accounting for the steep roof and each room in the house had its own access to the outside, in fact, the rooms did not connect to each other inside the house.

Cassie Hobbs is one of the icons of Chloride. She never had a day of schoolin', yet she was the true pioneer woman. she made everything by hand– beautifully hand carved furniture, all her and her families clothing, including hand carved shoes and boots soles and heels. If she didn't know how to make it, she'd figure it out. Cassie in later years took over  Austin Crawford's house as a workshop

 affectionately naming it Doodledum.

A most memorable day trip was to White Sands National Monument. A day that is forever etched in memory. Rising from the heart of the Tularosa Basin is one of the world's great natural wonders - the glistening white sands of New Mexico. Here, great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert and created the world's largest gypsum dune field.

White Sands National Monument preserves a major portion of this unique dune field, along with the plants and animals that have successfully adapted to this constantly changing environment. 275 million years, a shallow sea covered southern Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas. This sea rose and fell repeatedly over millions of years leaving the gypsum deposits as the water evaporated. 

The last couple days have been filled with hikes and jewelry making, map and internet searching as well as weather watching. Tuesday, April 8, the winds will die down and we will move on... we think we will move to the farthest northwest point of this trip and then head back south to chase the warmth...we are meeting more and more people doing the same. Northern New Mexico is unseasonably COLD! but more on that the next post.

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck