Arizona 2024: Day 8: Fort Sumner, NM: Is the GOAT Billy?

Every seasonal time change I get the Chambers Brothers song “Time Has Come Today” stuck in my head. I first heard that song in high school when a friend (Jeff Pierce) played it for me. Jeff also introduced me to 10 Years After. If you are out there, Jeff, I hope you are well and still rocking!

I woke up at 0600 (new time) and waited for an acceptable time to start my walk. One weather app said it was -3C and one said it was +2C. Take the average. I turned on the tank heaters for a bit. Flipped the hot water tank on and got ready to go for a walk. Today I took the northern path on the Comanche trail. It was beautiful and full of elevation changes and some of that walking on the edge of something that I love so much. I took pictures. My walk was a bit short so I overshot the campground on my way back and did the other part of the Comanche trail.

We did an accelerated morning as we had to have breakfast, disconnect the van and put stuff away, hit the dump station and head to our next destination. Pictured is my van toaster. it makes crumbs and often slightly burnt toast. But I like it. We discovered it years ago on an episode of the youtube channel “Sailing Solianis”.

While we were dumping the van holding tanks (why are people talking about it? It was a perfect van dumping!), we got an alert from Campnab that a better site was available at an upcoming state park. Mrs Milddogs hopped onto her device, booked the new sites and cancelled the other one all while I was dumping the tanks. That makes us 3 for 2 on Campnab!

We stopped at the United Grocery Store in Canyon, TX to do some provisioning. Sadly, I had thought it was a HEB. We made do. On to Highway 60 for the drive to Fort Sumner. We stopped at a Dollar General to get a few things in a town. It was a fairly nice drive beside the train tracks and through cities like Hereford and Bovina (see a theme) past stockyards and huge grain elevators. There are many very long trains traveling on those tracks. Some having 4 locomotives up front and then a mid engine. About 30 km east of our destination, our GPS app started increasing our arrival time. Dang, construction! That added about 25 minutes to our travel.

We drove into the town of Fort Sumner hoping to see that the Taco truck was open. It was not. We were sad. Back we go to the original site of Fort Sumner to visit the grave of Billy the Kid. It was an interesting side trip and close to where we were going to be camping. Amy was happy to be out of the van and did her business right in front of Billy the Kid’s gravesite. A puppy has to do what a puppy has to do. You can search for the history of the headstones and whether or not Billy is buried there. We don’t really care, the entire area is full of Billy the Kid history and folklore so we thought it would be cool to take the 5 minute diversion.

We headed up the road to our campsite for the night at Bosque Redondo Park which is just southeast of the town of Fort Sumner. It is a free municipal park that you can camp at. So far there are 4 of us here. We chatted with a few of them. Was nice to share tips and stories.

Dinner was a meat thing grilled on the NomadiQ in pretty high winds, caesar salad leftovers and a sliced avocado that we had to eat today cause it went rogue and fell on the floor while we were driving. I over cooked the meat things a bit out of an abundance of caution.

After dinner Amy was tired so she decided to climb onto the picnic table and have a rest.

We think the grass field looks like African savannah. Just ignore the road!

Should be another cold night with a forecast of zero C. No electricity so that means the furnace will run off propane and the interior temperature will be set much lower than it is when we have electricity. As Ted says, more clothes, less covers! If you glance at that picture of the tank levels, you can see our propane tank is at 3/4 full. We filled the tank before the Texas trip last year and have not filled it since. I am a propane miser apparently.

Enjoy the time change! Don’t have surgery tomorrow!

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