On to Abiquiu Lake

Last night was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. I was lucky enough to be in a place with dark skies, but worried since earlier in the evening the sky was full of clouds. At 1:00 a.m. when I went outside, the sky was crystal clear, with millions of sparkling stars and planets in view, including the Milky Way. My half hour vigil in the chill wind was rewarded by a glimpse of ten meteorites flashing through the sky. I went back to bed happy.

We left Lathrop State Park this morning headed south. Hardy and Judy left for Rolla, MO. Eventually we will meet up again in Mission, TX, each having had lots of adventures in the meantime.

We are camped on Abiquiu Lake at the Corps of Engineers Riana Campground. We just decided yesterday to come here, and reservations must be made at least 4 days in advance, so we were lucky to find a site to stay in for the weekend while we wait for our reserved water and electric site for Monday through Thursday. The campground hosts, Harry and Venka, were friendly and helpful, but scoffed when we innocently asked if our site 15 was available. Evidently all the electric sites fill up for the weekend, and even getting up at 6 a.m. wasn't enough to get us here in time to find one open.

The campground is clean and well laid out, with spectacular views of the lake and the surrounding mountains.

We're about 56 miles north of Santa Fe and 70 miles west of Taos. Georgia O'Keefe lived and worked near here, in Abiquiui, NM, and her favorite mountain was the Cerro Pedernal, rising above the lake. We're sure we'll go to explore some of these places, but for now we're content to stay here.

We're still working on setting up our computers. Tonight Ken found the Windows 7 program and drivers for our printer. We installed the driver for our USB modem. Lots more will need to be done, but so far, I love my new computer. I wasn't so sure about the Verizon network earlier. We had 3G and 4 bars, but an agonizingly slow connection. After a while it cleared up, so no telling if it was a weather related problem or just a glitch in the Verizon service. We're actually rather surprised to find such a strong Verizon signal up in this wilderness.