Best of Camping with the Zees

Click on photo to read the sign--you'll be glad you did!

I passed our little camping trailer out on the driveway this morning. We peered at each other sideways, nervously wondering if we would be having any camping adventures soon.

To get myself all geared up for the season to come, I was thinking about some of our previous camping experiences. Several of them have appeared on this blog. Perhaps, if you are thinking about doing any camping, you should look them over, too, just to remind yourself about all the delights awaiting you--lost fishing licenses, unexpectedly empty propane tanks, encounters with snakes, ditto with tarantulas, accidentally drinking live and wiggling flies, dogs who eat leashes, and the all-important Camping Rule #1 (Drink something, anything, to help you remember that camping is fun. Do this before trying to set up the tent trailer).

Here, these will refresh your memory....

Tenderfeet
Camping with real cowboys

The Bacon's on the Bed, Dear
In which the Zees are introduced to their new-fangled covered wagon

Endless Days at Bottomless Lakes
Endless Days... and Nights
Endless Days... But Beautiful
The dog ate all the leashes! Mmm, these flies taste minty! Oh, no, tarantulas!

Mr. Zee Goes Up
A snake slithers and Mr. Zee unexpectedly learns to fly

Endless Days...But Beautiful

Enough complaining. Here are some pictures of the beauty and wonders that surrounded us at Bottomless Lakes. All of these photos, except for the last one, were taken by Auntie Bucksnort.

Baby swallows in their nest by the bathroom entrance. They were guarded by three adults, who made every bathroom trip an adventure.

Once you got by the swallow guards, there was a tarantula doorman to greet you.
Vultures waiting for us to give up

Abundant plant life

Colorful mesquite beans
The little pirate band, temporarily in jail. Photo was taken just after Captain Emma ate all the leashes. (Left to right: Emma, licking her chops; Little Weets, aka Tiny Cujo; and Leny, my pillow mate).

Endless Days...And Nights

Sleeping in the little tent trailer is an art. There are enough beds to sleep at least seven very close friends. Mr. Zee, Auntie Bucksnort, the three dogs and I only make six, so there should be plenty of room--especially if the dogs acted like dogs and slept on the floor. Not our little doggy pirate band!

Bucksnort, for reasons best not enumerated here, got the two double beds to herself. The queen-sized bed (sounds spacious, doesn't it?) ended up with the other five of us rolling around and competing for sleeping space. Captain Emma likes the lookout position, which just happens to be the place where my feet would go, if they were ever allowed to assume a natural position. Little Weets likes to be right in the middle, under the covers. When disturbed, she lets the world know why one of her nicknames is Tiny Cujo. Her bared-teeth snarling sounds reduce us all to helpless giggles but no one has ever dared to touch her when she is doing her Cujo thing. Leny, the biggest of the pirates, prefers the inside edge of the bed, and Mr. Zee is quite happy on the window side. The problem is that the two of them sleep like wonky parentheses, forming this shape: ) (. My spot would be in the middle of those.

You will notice that the available space in between the wrong-facing parentheses is shaped like an hourglass. Now, if you have read this far (and I can't imagine why you would have done so) and if you know me at all, you will have to acknowledge that my shape is anything but an hourglass and never has been. Just keep that in mind when picturing our night under the stars.

In retrospect, I'd have to recommend against any kind of camping just two weeks after knee replacement surgery. I've been making a wonderful recovery, but night time is the most difficult because it is so hard to find a comfortable position. So there I was, shifting carefully in my allotted hourglass space, trying to position a pillow under the bad knee, then finding that I needed to do it all over again after fifteen minutes or so.

And then the snoring started.

Leny snores in what can best be described as harmonics. I hope that I am using the term correctly. What I mean is that she harmonizes with herself, kind of snoring in multiple voices, as it were. Then Mr. Zee would begin with a little counterpoint from the other side and both of them would gain in volume until I was shaking with laughter. And get this--every time I raised up my head to peer across to Bucksnort's quarters, no matter what the time of night, her eyes were wide open, which made me laugh even harder.

At some point I must have finally dozed off, only to waken at the earliest light to find Leny's tail section on my pillow (the one where my head was, not the knee pillow) and my head firmly clenched in Mr. Zee's armpit, which frightened us all very badly.

Next: The pretty parts of the trip

Endless Days at Bottomless Lakes

Mr. Zee has a special relationship with our little tent trailer. He worries about getting it set up before the sun goes down, and then he forgets to observe Camping Rule #1: Drink something, anything, to help you remember that camping is fun. Do this before trying to set up the tent trailer. Then he loses all reason and does strange things resulting in breakage and is very, very crabby.

We all went down to Bottomless Lakes for a couple of days of relaxation—Mr. Zee, my sister Auntie Bucksnort, and me. The dogs came along, of course: Captain Emma Sparrow (aka Hem E. Roid), Leny (Big Dog), and Weetzie (Tiny Cujo). The dogs and Bucksnort and I were all observing the first Camping Rule while Mr. Zee fumed and sizzled and broke things off the trailer. It was not an auspicious beginning, but we had all forgiven each other by the next morning, especially once Auntie Bucksnort agreed to delete all the plumber’s crack photos from her little camera.

Our camp site was in a picturesque spot. We could see Lea Lake, there were red sandstone cliffs behind us, and we had a wonderful view of the storms moving over the distant mountains. What we also had, there at our little campsite, were flies. More flies than you could possibly imagine; flies without number. Flies crawling all over us, the dogs, our food. Flies throwing themselves into our drinks, even when we changed over to travel mugs with the tiniest of openings. Bucksnort ate three, which she reported were minty, but crunchy.

I can measure the enjoyment of the other campers by some of the encounters I had in the ladies' room.

#1
Me, to middle aged lady at sink: Good morning.
She, grabbing my arm: How do you people stand these flies? We can’t cook, we can’t eat. We can’t wait to leave! Gaaahhh!!!

#2
Me, to teen-aged girl at sink: Good morning.
She, leaning in and staring at her own image after only one night of roughing it: [Silence].

#3
Me, to little girl at sink: Good morning.
She, backing away from me, then turning and fleeing: Mommeeeeeee!!!
Me, looking in my own mirror to discover wild hair, black circles under eyes, twitching caused by flies landing on skin: Mommeeeeeee!!!

To be continued...

Mr. Zee Goes Up

Like a painted backdrop







We were new to New Mexico, living in the beautiful city of Las Cruces right under the Organ Mountains--those mountains that always seem like a fake painted backdrop for a cowboy movie.

Wanting to get a little closer to the land, we drove in our little Subaru over to City of Rocks State Park near Deming for a bit of back-to-nature camping. In those pre-arthritic days we did real camping, the kind you do on the ground in a tent. On the ground. In a tent.

The first thing we learned about City of Rocks was that it was, well, rocky. We tried every which way to drive our tent pegs into that ground, but all we did was bend them. Eventually we recalled the First Rule of Camping:

Rule #1: Sit down and have a nice iced tea. A well-hydrated camper is a happy camper.

We were sitting there, perched on some flat rocks while sipping tea and marveling at the views when the Park Ranger stopped by to give us our camper registration. We got our paperwork in order and he stayed on a bit. Gosh, he was a friendly fellow and was happy to give us a few tips about hiking around the City of Rocks.

“Watch your step,” he said, “and always know where you are placing your feet.” We nodded, sagely.

“Never put your hand down where you can’t see it.” Okay, we were happy to agree with that.

“And never, never step over a log or a rock without checking the other side first…” We tilted our heads quizzically, not wanting to give away our total ignorance with any comment, but we leaned forward waiting for the rest of the sentence.” …because that’s where the rattlers like to lie, right there in the shade!” he finished up triumphantly.

We stood up kind of abruptly from those flat rocks that were casting a bit of shade and reached out to shake his hand, carefully watching to be sure that our hands were in plain sight the whole time. He waved us a good-bye, stepped off in a lively way to his truck, and drove away to enlighten some more campers. In the meantime, we were mentally making a revision to our first rule of camping.

Rule #1: Have a beer, right away. Have two. You can do this standing up with your feet right where you can watch them.

In one of those golden moments of marriage where no words need be spoken, we set about picking up and stowing our tent pegs back in their little bag. No need to pitch that tent on such hard ground and no need to talk about it, either. The Subaru’s seats folded down and we could quite happily sleep in there, while keeping mental tabs on all of our extremities.

Better than a tent

But the sun was setting, and the day was cooling off. It was a perfect time for taking a nice walk along some of the ancient Mimbres Indian pathways that wound through the incredible rock formations. So, we set off for some exploration.

It was just as we were strolling down a little incline when it happened. I sensed an abrupt movement at my side, and there was something strange and unexpected about it. I later found out that Mr. Zee had seen a little slither out of the corner of his eye, and having those snakes quite clearly on his mind, had taken immediate evasive action. What I saw as I turned toward him was a sight that has stayed in my mind for all these many years: Mr. Zee went up. He went up in a fashion that would have done Michael Jordan proud. He went up and up, and up some more, and he kind of stayed there for a while. I’ve never seen anything like it, before or since. I just waited, gazing up into the sky at him, with my hands and feet right there in plain sight.

It took a while, but when he came down again he was looking kind of lightheaded from his recent venture into higher altitude. We searched around a bit and discovered our little slitherer, a tiny red snake who was as anxious to clear the area as we were.

Later that night, lying cozily on our reclining seats and watching the stars through the moon roof, we revised that camping rule one last time. We had just realized that all that beer consumption meant a night time trip to the loo, in the dark, without being able to keep a careful watch on our hands and feet. Thus:

Rule #1: Henceforth, Jack Daniels will be the refreshment of choice when camping. A little goes a long way, and it can be consumed without ever stepping out onto the ground at all.

Bottomless Lakes State Park

We drove down to see the Bottomless Lakes a couple of weeks ago. The name has always intrigued me and I wanted to see that part of southeastern New Mexico. Here is what I learned.

The chain of eight lakes is located in southeast New Mexico near Roswell (of UFO fame) and the Bitter Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. The area was set aside as New Mexico's first State Park in 1933.

The lakes aren't really bottomless. According to the official brochure handed out at the Visitor Center, they are "actually sinkholes that range from 17 to 90 feet deep. They were formed when circulating water dissolved salt and gypsum deposits to form subterranean caverns. Eventually, the roofs of the cavern collapsed from their own weight. Sinkholes resulted and soon filled with water and formed the existing lakes."

The Visitor Center was filled with interactive displays. I tested different types of water, compared the depth of the different lakes, and read a bit about the local flora and fauna. I learned there and from a wonderful New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources (NMBGMR) website that the lakes are actually cenotes, "small perennial lakes within deep, steep-walled sinkholes that extend below the water table." Unlike other lakes that have water flowing in and out via streams, their water supply comes from underground springs and their water loss is through evaporation.

I would encourage you to check out that NMBGMR website. It tells of legends associated with the lakes--I like the one about objects lost in the lakes turning up in Carlsbad Caverns over a hundred miles away--and it details the geology of the area, including information about "Pecos Diamonds." Here is one last quote from the site, this time about the animals found in the area: "Rare and endangered species are found in the park. The small Pecos pupfish and rainwater killifish live in the lakes. The eastern barking frog and the cricket frog, also endangered species, live in the park. Their croaking can be heard throughout the day. Other animals include deer, skunk, snakes, lizards, jackrabbits, and birds."

Lea Lake, the largest of the chain, is home to a recreational area that includes tent and RV camp sites, a bathhouse, a year-round swimming beach, and pedal boat rentals during the summer months.

There are bike trails throughout the park, and a 3-mile mountain bike trail above the lake area out on the plains. We plan to go back down for an adventure-filled Zee Camping Weekend soon.

Oasis State Park

We camped at Oasis State Park last weekend. We didn't really expect much, as the park is just 18 miles away and, for some reason, camping trips are supposed to be much further from home. But Oasis provided a beautiful and restful camping experience. We watched the incredible sunset and the even more breathtaking sunrise. Because I am new to digital photography my photo of the sunrise doesn't even begin to do it justice. That sun was red orange, as it often is at dawn here.

We sat out late, watching the stars and listening to the sounds of the night. In the predawn hours, we heard hunting owls and a pack of coyotes. I also heard the continual lowing of a nearby cow, eventually followed by what sounded like the cries of a newborn calf. We couldn't see far in that direction, because the vegetation was growing so high.

Even though the fishing pond was drained for repairs, we didn't miss it. We took walks, enjoyed the fresh air and the beautiful prairie views and colors. We slowed down enough to look at the small things, watching the mating drama of a pair of large grasshoppers. Then we headed off for home, marveling that such wonderful experiences were available just a half an hour from our door.

The Bacon's on the Bed, Dear

Well, we had our first camping trip in our new little covered wagon (tent trailer) out on the prairie at Ute Lake this past weekend. Mistakes were made. I'm not ready to talk about how the fishing gear got packed and the fishing licenses got left behind. I don't really care to discuss what it's like to set up a tent trailer for the first time in the dark. I'll probably never tell you what happened when my emergency porta-potty (an empty yogurt container) sprung a leak. I'm also not ready to chat about trying to make coffee on a Saturday morning when you haven't had anything to eat the previous night because you were too tired from setting up the trailer and you discover that the "full" propane tank isn't.

On the other hand, I can't even begin to describe the night sky out there, where sky is mostly what there is. We watched the stars and moon come out (okay, they already came out while we were involved in our monumental struggles with the camper door once it was too dark to read the manual). We watched falling stars and the Milky Way, while in another part of the sky the lightning danced around in a faraway storm. Our wonderful campground host lent us a full propane tank ("that fella in town that fills 'em is only there between 7:30 and 8:00 on alternate mornings and you just missed him") and refused to take any payment at the end of the weekend. I learned to cook full meals without sideboards. It's easy, you just put the plate of bacon over on the bed while you use the big pan on the tiny burner to cook the eggs. We had steaks cooked over a wood fire. We slept with the prairie breezes blowing through our hair, secure in the knowledge that any snakes out doing some nocturnal exploration were probably unable to climb up and join us. We got to listen to Merle Haggard, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Creedence Clearwater Revival simultaneously thanks to our neighbors, together with the soundtrack from Rush Hour 17 (or so), compliments of the guy with the dish on his RV.

In the old, pre-arthritis days, we were purist campers. We were backpackers with serious boots and lightweight tents and infinitely thin foam mattresses. We had tiny backpacker stoves. We only ate what we carried and we packaged up little servings of oatmeal and trail mix. We were strong and we knew how to do camping the right way. Now we drink beer and sit in lawn chairs getting cricks in our necks looking up at the night sky, while marveling at the way that country music and vintage rock can start to blend quite nicely after a bit.

We were too busy with our camping experience to take any photos, although I had carefully packed extra batteries for the camera this time. I've asked the nice folks at the New Mexico State Police web site for permission to use one of their pictures of Ute Lake. I'll post it here if I hear back from them.