Monday, December 8, 2008
Valley of Fires Recreation Area, Carrizozo, NM: Dec 4
This campground sits on a ridge overlooking 127 sq miles of malpais (badlands). The Rec Area occupies 463 acres and was named for a Native American account of the eruption that created a valley of fires. The magma flowed from Little Black Peak 1500 to 2000 years ago, one of the most recent lava flows in the country. Our plans were to stay 3 nights, relax, & enjoy the 3/4-mile nature trail. Unfortunately, when we plugged our trailer into their electricity, it tripped their circuit breaker. Switching from 30-amp to 20-amp made no difference -- that breaker tripped also. We called park maintenance, who assured us the breaker was new, and that the problem was almost certainly in the trailer. He offered an extension cord to see if we'd have any luck hooking up to a neighboring site, but Doug, who seemed to be coming down with the flu, decided just to get set up & crawl into bed. What's more, as part of the testing process, Doug had turned off all the breakers inside the trailer, so when Willie tried to run the inverter nothing would work, convincing us the problem was with the inverter (and depriving Willie the opportunity to watch TV while Doug slept). We did go online & find an RV repair facility in Roswell before Doug crashed, and he made an appointment to have them look at the trailer the next day.The next day we got off by 9am, despite the 22-degree weather. When we got to Roswell the electricity tested fine. The repairman said Valley of Fires is notorious for bad electricity, and if we had talked with him he probably would have told us to not waste our time coming in. But they had three minor RV parts that we had been looking for for over a year, one of which he installed for only $10, so it certainly was not a wasted stop.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 10:04 PM 
