Jemez Mountain Cabin

Very close to home, a little over an hour's drive, sit the Jemez Mountains.  (If you want to sound like a local, you need to know the correct pronunciation is 'HAY-muss', not 'huh-MEZ').  This is the region of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, Bandelier National Monument, Jemez Springs/River, part of the Santa Fe National Forest and the town of Los Alamos is just over on the other side.  It is also the closest mountain escape for us west-side-of-Albuquerque residents.  Tall pines, lush meadows, spring flowers in June that disappeared from our yards back in March or April.

Blue flax in the meadow behind us.

We are in a campground we had previously visited and car-camped in a decade or so ago, but it was refurbished a couple of years back.  It now has paved roads, nicely graveled campsites, retaining walls, new tables, concrete fire rings, new grills and six sites even have water and electric hookups.  Before it was just dirt sites and roads, which were OK, but this is much improved.  

We are lucky and were able to reserve one of the water and electric sites, which means we have easy living.  It is so peaceful and pretty here, with the wind whistling through the tops of the trees, the smell of the pines and the birds chirping.  Last night we enjoyed the bat show at sunset as they swooped high above the trees chasing the bugs.  The creek runs about 30 yards behind our Beach House, and Tom might go trout fishing while we are here.  I figure he has to catch about 10 pounds of trout before he breaks even on the cost of the 'couple extra things I need for the tackle box'.

He had intended to go fishing this morning, but when we arose we found a little water puddle on the floor, maybe a 1/4 cup.  It took us a while to figure out the exact source and how fix it.  Long story short, it was a tiny little leak from a 'loose' clamp on a water supply hose that had to be tightened less than an eighth of a turn.  But the hose was in the bathroom, behind the toilet and until we found it we were thinking we would be facing a toilet repair and even contemplated leaving here tonight to get back home and take the Beach House to the local dealer for repair.  The leak probably has been going on sporadically for the entire time we have had the Beach House, but it is so slow we did not see it until we parked on a slight slope on the downhill and to the right.  We had seen some water on the floor in previous trips, but we attributed it to splashing from the sink or the dog's water bowl.  So we are relieved we don't have a major repair, and a little proud that we were able to track down the source ourselves (Go Tom!)

We have a couple new additions to the Beach House.  Since we bought this rig earlier than originally planned all because of Hercules, we added a small memory of him so he is always in the Beach House with us:

Hangin' around in the kitchen, because that is where the food is.

The second addition is a sign from Tom's sister, Gigi.  It is just perfect and exactly what we have been looking for:

The lighting makes it hard to read, but it says "BEACH HOUSE" and is even color-coordinated with our paint job.