No sense making plans.
As soon as I got back to Denver, I had to adjust quickly to mid-80s days and 60s nights, a big step up from Pete's 50s days and low-40s at night.
I don't really enjoy cooking, but I do enjoy eating, so I cook because I have to, not because I like it. I much prefer seeing a plate of food on the table than bits and pieces of it scattered all over the kitchen counter. But unfortunately, for half the year I have to deal with my own cooking, and it's only the thought of getting good food for the other half of the year that makes this boondocking lifestyle I live palatable.
I decided to go through New Mexico to get to Arizona for two reasons: to see how low the water at Elephant Butte had gotten, and to see if there were a normal number of Sandhill cranes at the Bosque Del Apache, since there were hardly any last year. But the water at Elephant Butte Reservoir is rising after a couple of heavy rains, so I'm not sure if it's low enough now to be interesting. I figured I could boondock at the Truth or Consequences Walmart for a night, then pay the $10 entrance fee to Elephant Butte State Park and take some pictures of the extremely diminished water level. But after checking on the Internet, I found out that as a nonresident, I could boondock at Elephant Butte State Park for $15 a night, with no daily entrance fee, so it would make more sense to spend the night at the state park instead of driving into Truth or Consequences to spend the night at Walmart…. The cost of Diesel fuel is the culprit there.
So it looks like I'll have to check the water level at Elephant Butte when I get on the road to see if it's worth visiting, instead of just getting on I-40 and heading west to Arizona.
Theboondork
There were a lot of tiny flowers at Pete's, all of them the size of my thumbnail.
Even after it cleared up at Pete's, the clouds just didn't want to give up completely. This will probably be my last trip to Pete's, until I come back next spring. I always miss the place, and wouldn't trade it for any other place I go.