Family time

My DB (Dear Brother) has agreed to fly to Albuquerque, then help me drive to Tucson where my SIL (Sister In Law) will be joining us, all to visit the new DGD (Dear Grand Daughter), the DD (Dear Daughter) and her spouse. We will be taking a side trip to the Taos mountains to visit a high school friend of DB's, known hereby as PF. Got all those acronyms? And how did these acronyms come into blog usage?  I think people are cautious about mentioning people by name, so we'll use the acronyms for now.

There's a scenic byway to Taos called "The High Road to Taos."  Humph, should have paid attention to a name like that! Anyway, all's well. PF lives at about 8000 ft. elevation, in an off-grid house he has built over the years. Seriously off-grid. You get there by a 1 1/2 mile  muddy, rutted Forest Service road. Fortunately the mud was dry, only ruts. These Lazy Daze can go anywhere. This area outside of Taos is old Spanish Land Grant territory. The cemetaries are full of names like Sanchez and Lopez, and these families have been in the area for 400 years! Incredible.

We stayed two nights at PF's property. PF gave us a good back roads, insider tour of the area through Taos and the Rio Grande Gorge. There are some beautiful BLM campgrounds along the river that I now know how to get to for next time.We made dinner for two nights, something that was appreciated, I think, by the back country crew that showed up to enjoy them.

The second night there, I was woken by thunder, lightening and rain.  Panic, of that special  night time variety ensued. Having seen the dried out mud ruts, I didn't want to negotiate wet mud ruts in the Lazy Daze. We hitched up pretty quick that morning and beat a hasty retreat back to paved roads.

To complicate matters, upon hitching and checking the turn signals, the right turn signals for the LD and the toad were not working. DB suspected a fuse, but we were unable to identify the culprit. Finally I  resorted to a phone call to one of the LD knowledge base folks, who was able to talk us through finding the problem 10 amp mini-fuse in the engine compartment fuse box. I guess you can blow this fuse if you make the wrong contact with the electrical pigtail between the motorhome and the toad.  Thanks, John! So now I know how to fix that problem if it happens again.

DB and I drove hard all day from the High Road to Taos, and camped in Demming for the night near the railroad tracks and a truck stop. Couldda just used the Walmart, oh, well.

I have many thoughts about our time with PF, but they're still unformed, and I think there are some privacy issues I need to be careful of, even though PF is off the Internet grid as well as the electrical, water, and septic grids. In many ways it was a very precious time to have with someone we knew in a land and time far, far away, and so long ago now.  If you're curious, and you see me in person, I can tell you more about it.