2012/06 Western USA trip - Brantley Lake |
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I set off for the Carlsbad area, thinking that I could get there from the El Paso road, but the GPS screeched at me until I went back to Alamagordo and took a steep twisty road over the Sacramento Mountains through Cloudcroft, a prosperous looking ski area. [I found later that it was a 70 degree summertime resort long before skiing came. It advertises that it’s the country’s most southerly ski resort, but it’s often short on snow.]
The foothills on the other side were being farmed but it must be a tough life. We stopped in the run-down little town of Hope Village, and it was hard to tell whether anyone still lived there. Then we were down on the desert floor again and at over 40C (104F). Note that because New Mexico is on the spine of the continent, even these low spots are up at over 3000 feet, about the same as Mount Snowdon in Wales.
We let the GPS guide us to Brantley Lake park; the area looked correct, dirt roads, some trailer parks and homes, but the roads weren’t familiar. Eventually it led us onto sand roads, probably lake bottom in a wet year. We gave up, returned to the road, and followed the signs instead. I think the GPS was correct as to direction but it didn’t know about the lake!
We found a good camping spot but it was too hot to just sit around. We set off after our usual late lunch, a short drive up to the Living Desert state park but we were too late for the last admission of the day.
On our way into Carlsbad we found an AT&T store and the ladies went in to try and sort out Edna’s messaging problems. Their first guess was that international messaging wasn’t enabled on Carolyn’s phone, but a phone call ruled that out. Next guess was that the original deal didn’t include messaging, even though Reno’s AT&T said that it did. Edna paid the fee for the additional service but only on condition that it wouldn.t expire when the voice service would in a few days. (She later found that the messaging worked but as we feared, it soon went away when the voice service expired. Which just confirms my belief that phone companies worldwide are all thieves; they make the deals and rules sufficiently complicated that both customers and staff can take the optimistic view of any service offering, but the companies never deliver what’s promised.)
In the midst of this long process we took off for dinner to a Denny’s just up the road. Denny’s service is often lacking but this time it was the coffee: hot brown fluid but it didn’t smell or taste like coffee, not even like yesterday’s coffee! Their second try wasn’t perfect but it was drinkable.
It was still hot back at the lake. This jackrabbit was ignoring us campers. Do you like the ears? I took a walk through the cactus zone down to the water’s edge in the hope of cooling off, but the lake is a reservoir surrounded by jagged rocks and not friendly to paddlers.