Christmas Decorations for RV'ers

Mr.  & Mrs. Santa and their reindeer found their way into our RV.
If you have been following our blog, you know how many decorations Margaret put out when we lived in our house here in Las Cruces, and when we lived in the house in Rexburg.  Unfortunately, we just don't have the room for them any longer so she figured out how to decorate with some of our favorite miniature pieces.

We have an end table that sits between our recliner chairs.  Normally we have our philodendron sitting there.  It was a perfect spot to place these pieces.

The toaster oven sits on the counter next to the back door that we use as our primary entrance to our home.  Some of the miniatures and magnetic stick on decorations were placed there.

This Santa is not a miniature, but when we were sorting through all the Christmas decorations, I really liked it.  It is a blue Santa, and blue is my favorite color so we decided we could find a place for it.

Decorations were placed around the television.  In the house, we had 52 Santa Clauses.  We have 17 in the trailer.  Not bad, huh?

The kitchen table was a good location for the nativity pieces, a toy shop, and another of my favorite Santa's.  Notice it in the back?  When were travelling across Arizona several years ago, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel and spotted the Santa in the gift shop.  It may have actually been a back woodsman, but I felt like it was a more authentic looking Santa.  Knowing how much Margaret liked Santa's, I purchased for her (me?).

Here is a close-up of him.  He is pretty neat, don't you think?  Of course he is not miniature either, but we can find a place to store him from one Christmas to the next.

The valance above the kitchen window of the slide out are graced by three beautiful Santa's.

The back of seat for the kitchen table was a nice place for this Santa.

I was attempting to get a close-up of the toy shop.  You can see our nutrition box off to the side on the seat of the kitchen table.  The spider plant usually sits where the Christmas tree is sitting.  The plants don't mind.  They get plenty of light.  After Christmas they will be returned to their customary place.

We placed a small wreath and a bell ornament above the door on the inside.

Another larger wreath was hung on the outside of the trailer.  We taped blue Christmas lights around the windows, and turn on one of those devices that project multi-colored lights so that the entire side of the trailer is lit up at night.  Not exactly Nation Lampoons Christmas Vacation, but it is the best we can do.

I hope you have enjoyed this tour of Christmas decorations for RV'ers.

My next post will be of all the decorations we usually put out that are now in storage.  

Beautiful Sandhill Cranes grace the sky over Percha Dam State Park in October.

Where I grew up in Northern California, these beautiful birds graced the grain fields to forage on wheat and barley dropped from the combines.  It was understood that they were not to be hunted. 
                    
There were also numerous flocks of Canadian Honkers, so it was never an issue, although our grey female cat, Smokey, did not care.  Anxious to feed herself and her kittens, she jumped on one from behind. It quickly took flight.  About three feet off the ground, Smokey realized her mistake and abandoned her attack.

Like geese, they form V's during flight to draft off of one-another.  They will change positions of leadership when the leader begins to tire.

It is fascinating to watch them break formation, bank into a turn, and fold their wings and drop into a landing.  However, I was not able to capture it on film.

There were several open, flat fields where the cranes could land.  They chose this one because it is a field where corn had been harvested.  They were busy gleaning fallen kernels.

Sandhill Cranes are about the same size as Great Blue Herons that also inhabit this area, but bulkier.  They are smaller than the Whooping Crane.

It is difficult to get a good close-up picture of the Sandhill Cranes with the lens I have for my camera.  If I had gotten any closer, they would have all taken to flight.

Closer examination of the Cranes reveals beautiful plumage with red feathers capping the head, blue feathers along the neck, and brown feathers along the wings and tail,  Here is a link where you can find pictures and information on the Sandhill Cranes: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sandhill_Crane/id

From Percha Dam State Park, we returned to Rock Hound State Park, our winter home of 2017/2018.

This little fellow came walking out from under our truck as we were preparing to unload it.  With the enlargement of the photo, this is very close to the actual size of it.  Brown tarantulas our not uncommon to the area.

I attempted to get a frontal view of the tarantula.  The scientific name is Aphonopelma hentzl. It is commonly known as the Texas brown tarantula, and is found throughout the southern United States.  Although many people fear spiders, these are not much more dangerous than a bee sting.  One of my colleges in graduate school had a tarantula for a pet that he let walk along his arm.  I wouldn't go that far, although he assured me as long as it was well fed, it would not bite.  To each his own.😇

Caballo Lake State Park

To the east of Caballo Lake State Park are the Caballo Mountains.  The lake is eighteen miles long and a mile across at the widest point.  I have kayaked across near the boat ramp.

The entrance to the park is about one mile from the exit/entrance to interstate 25, the North/South route between Albuquerque and Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Percha Dam State Park is about 4 miles from here.

Rock Hound State Park allows visitors to take small samples of gem stones.  Most of the parks are like this one.  Take only memories.  The main attractions here are boating, fishing and birding.  We saw quail, road runners, doves, and hawks.  There are numerous small bird species we did not identify.

Birding is very popular.  When we were camp hosts at Rock Hound, we met several couples who camp across the U.S. just to locate and identify bird species.  This is trail number 35.  34 is located at Percha.

All the rules and information are listed at the entrance, along with the pay tube.  It is always wise to get your campsite before paying.  If you pay first you may find out there are no sites available, and there are no refunds.  We had that happen when we were camp hosts.

Caballo Lake State Park has three campgrounds. They are shown here on the map posted at the entrance pay station.  Stallion and Palamino are reservation sites.  Appaloosa is first come, first served sites.  We stayed in Appaloosa.

You have no difficulty finding your campsite.  Each campground is well marked.

If you take the road to the left here, you go into the back part of the Appaloosa campground.

Here are the rest rooms for Stallion.  Pretty handy since there are no full hook-up sites there.

The sites in Stallion are not too close.  They provide a sense of privacy.  Water and electric are provided.

If you turn to the right at this point, you enter Appaloosa Campground.  If you continue ahead, you go to the boat ramp.  There is ample parking for boat trailers, and even places off to the left of the boat ramp where people are allowed to "primitive" camp.

The RV's are a lot closer together in Appaloosa than Stallion, but the sites are still very nice and easy to access.  On this occasion, we selected the handicap site.  It had a concrete pad (nice for leveling our trailer), and was right next to the nearest bathroom (located in the Palomino Campground).

Here are a couple of unoccupied sites in Appaloosa.

Again, if you turn to the right you enter the campground, and if you continue ahead, you go to the boat ramp.

At the entrance to the Palomino Campground there is an interesting rock garden.  The rock pathway leads you around to various cactus species.

This is exciting :).  It is the dump station.  It serves three parks.  Caballo, Percha, and Riverside.  Riverside State Park is located just below the Caballo dam, along the Rio Grande.

The sites in Palomino are reservation sites also.  They are close to each other, but there are some full hook-up sites available like the one occupied by this Starcraft trailer.

We meet some wonderful people while camping. I met a couple who happened to own one of my favorite dog breeds.  This is Bree, a female doberman pincher.  She was very friendly.  Her owner tried to get her to pose for me with her ears up.  She would not do it, so when she did not realize I had my camera ready, I snapped this shot.

                         

This is Bree's playmate, Tinker.  She is a beautiful Chihuahua.

I will close this blog post with a beautiful New Mexico sunset.  However, I must confess.  This is not a sunset picture taken at Caballo Lake State Park.  It was taken at Leasburg Dam State Park shortly after we left Caballo.  We never saw a beautiful sunset while camping at Caballo.

On my next blog post, I will feature pictures of Sandhill cranes that are migrating at this time of year. 
                             
     

Humming Bird Delight

We returned to El Vado State Park.  To our delight there were an abundance of humming birds anxiously waiting for our feeders.
We joked that they probably see our bright red pickup as a signal that the bird feeders are back.

There are four feeding stations on each feeder.  Usually one male bird will claim the feeder and run off the other humming birds as they come in to feed.  As you can see in this photo, they are sharing the feeder.  When we were at Heron State Park last year, a Rufus male claimed the feeder and successfully kept most of the other hummers from feeding.  We were told by one of the rangers that the farther they  migrate, the more aggressive they are.

Here I was able to capture the humming birds in flight as they came to the feeder.

This still shot allows you to see the back side of this humming bird.  The color is an iridescent olive green.  I believe they are broad tails.

We hung up a second feeder and soon had visitors feeding at each feeder.  At one time, we counted as many as twelve birds coming to the feeding stations.  This was during the first two weeks of August, and there were not too many flowers in bloom.

Here I captured a photo of the humming birds in flight.  I tried to capture a movie of them, but could not figure out the movie picture function of my camera quickly enough.  I will have to go back to school on that, and then relearn how to upload movies to my blog.

If you look closely, the bird on the right, that is closest, has a white band around his throat.  I believe it is a male.  When they hover in flight facing you, you can see alternating white and brown feathers in their fanned out tails.  This led me to believe they are broad tail humming birds.

I checked out images of broad tail humming birds on google, and many of them looked like the pictures I have.  However, there quite a few images of broad tail humming birds with a bright red throat.  I am not an expert on bird identification, but do enjoy watching them.  Humming birds are one of my favorite species.

El Vado lake is being drained down so repair work can be done on the dam.  The ramp was closed, but I was allowed to put my kayak on the lake.  It was nice not have to share the lake with motor boats, ski jets, and water skiers. 

The main draw back to El Vado and Heron State Parks is the lack of cell phone and Internet signal.  The cool mountain air will probably draw us back next year.

We left El Vado for Caballo Lake State Park so my next blog post will feature it.

Blue Water Lake State Park, New Mexico

We visited Blue Water Lake State Park in New Mexico briefly in August of 2015 when we were on our way back to Idaho at the conclusion of the ten week course I attended in Albuquerque.  I had not started this blog at that time, and I had not taken any pictures.

This was our campsite for twelve of the 14 days we stayed at the park.  We boon docked for the first two nights while we waited for this handicap site to become available.

Notice how brown the ground appears.  We were just beginning to get the early monsoon rains.  By the time we left the grass and weeds were coming back.

This is the entrance to the Canyon Loop camping area.  It is a primitive camping area with several reservation sites available.  I walked our little poodle along this road a couple of times a day.

Here is one of the reservation sites in the Canyon Loop area.  The sites provide quiet and privacy.

The dam can be seen off in the distance.  It is located at the southeast end of the lake.

I zoomed in on the dam.  I did not want to take a chance by taking my camera with me in the kayak.

Here is the dam from up above.  There is quite a lot of water flowing out of the lake in spite of the drought.  The little white appearing dot in the lake is a man fishing out of his kayak.

This is a close-up view of the water flow.

Here is a close-up of the white dot in the previous picture.  Through the camera I could see his rod.  This lake is famous for huge tiger muskie. The keep size limit is 40 inches.  The muskie were planted here to clean out the carp.  We were told people could see waves of orange from the large gold fish (carp) before they put in the muskie.

 The stream exiting the lake can be seen from the Canyon Loop campsite where I walked the dog.  There is a trail down to the stream.  It is unimproved, rugged, and crosses the stream in places.  There is also a warning about the possibility on encountering rattle snakes.

Margaret waited for me while I took pictures of the dam, although she had walked up to it with me once before.

Storm clouds were rising at the far end of the lake.  There are houses dispersed along that part of the lake.  We were told it was not an organized community.

Across the lake from where we were camped, people are allowed to primitive camp.  I think there might be a risk of getting stuck if a huge storm occurs.  There are a couple of portapotties there, and a ramp entry to the lake, although unimproved. 

The boat ramp on the campground side of the lake is concrete and has a mooring platform.  This area of the lake is designated a no wake zone.

There is a nice children's playground.

Near the children's playground there is a area set aside for star parties.  The constellations shown here are etched in concrete slabs encircled by benches that accomodate the guest when a star party is presented. Can you name these constellations?

Here is one of the slabs.  Each of the constellations shown on the display board is etched onto a slab like this,  It would be redundant to show each.

The view here of the visitor's center does not do it justice.  It is where the showers are located.  These were recently added.  They are kept in excellent condition, and locked between 9pm and 7am.  They had trouble with the old facility that used to be next to the handicap site.  That unit was replaced by these rest rooms.  There is a vaulted toilet there now.  It was not inconvenient for us.  We just drove up to the visitor's center to shower.

I often close my blog post with a sunset, but today I will close with a picture of beautiful storm clouds forming near the west end of the lake.  We have had an extreme drought here in New Mexico so the Monsoon rains are welcome.