Terry and I have been dry camping at Mike and Pam Steffen’s place in Salt Flat, Texas for a couple of days, swapping lies, playing with their herd of dogs, target shooting, and admiring the star filled sky above us at night. In another life, that would be called goofing off, but in the laid back RV lifestyle, it’s called….. okay, I guess it’s still goofing off. But what’s wrong with that?

Mike is a well known and respected RV columnist for Trailblazer magazine, and his work is also familiar to readers of MotorHome magazine, Trailer Life, Woodall’s, and most other RV publications. Mike has been presenting seminars at RV rallies for longer than Terry and I have even been RVers, and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years.

Salt Flat is located on U.S. Highway 180, about 60 miles east of El Paso, and seventeen miles from nowhere. To get to Mike and Pam’s place, you turn north at the cattle guard, drive eleventeen miles down a dirt road, cross a couple of dry washes, take a right at the scorpion crossing, bear left at the pile of cow flop, and then drive for six days and nights. Eventually a wild menagerie of friendly dogs will run out to greet you, and you’re there. Do you get the picture?

This is rustic dry camping. Our Verizon cell phones and air card don’t work way out here, but we arrived with a full tank of fresh water, a full propane tank, empty waste tanks, and our Onan QuietDiesel generator gives us all the power we need. Mike and Pam are so far off the grid that they’re not even in the same galaxy. But, that doesn’t mean that they’re roughing it. When the sun hides behind the clouds and his large array of solar panels doesn’t work, Mike ties a key onto a kite string and pulls power right out of the sky, and if that doesn’t work, all he has to do is harness a couple dozen of his dogs and put them on a treadmill and they’ll crank out some power!

Okay, so it’s not a four star RV resort, but how many of them have a private shooting range where I can play with my toys? Not many! Yesterday I hauled a couple that I had not tried out yet across the yard to Mike’s range and put them through their paces, and after I got a bit familiar with them, I even managed to impress myself.

I love dogs, and this is a great place to get a puppy fix. Mike and Pam have a bunch of lovable mutts, and not a poodle in the lot! I have been licked, nuzzled, and snuggled enough to hold me over for a couple of months, and I’ve scratched behind enough canine ears to send a battalion of fleas across the border into Mexico.

As you can see, we’ve had a great time here, but today we’ll get back on the road and head for the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming, New Mexico. Coming across west Texas on Interstate 10, I fell in love with the big 350 Cummins engine in our Winnebago all over again. It just eats up hills and doesn’t even seem to notice. Today will be its first real test. We’ll avoid all of the traffic in El Paso by taking the 375 Loop through Fort Bliss and over the Franklin Mountains to Interstate 10, just south of the New Mexico state line. Called Transmountain Drive as it crosses through Franklin Mountains State Park, the road has some pretty steep climbs and descents. We came over it in a gas powered motorhome years ago, but we never attempted it in our old bus conversion. I don’t think it’ll be a problem with this rig.

On another note, we have received e-mails from several Gypsy Journal subscribers complaining that pages 7 and 30 of the new issue are unreadable due to a problem with the printing process. If you get a bad paper, please e-mail me, and we’ll send you a replacement.

Thought For The Day – Each of us has our own individual Heaven and Hell.

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We’ve been in a lot of RV parks over the years, from upscale resorts with every amenity you could imagine, to mom and pop places where they call you by name and tell you about their grandkids as you check in. But I don’t think we have ever been to one as nasty as Parkview RV Park in Fort Stockton, Texas. If we had taken the time to look the place over Friday evening when we checked in, we would have kept on driving and found a rest area or a truck stop to spend the night in. But we didn’t, so we have nobody but ourselves to blame.

There were a few nice RVs there, mostly overnighters, I’m sure, but the majority looked to be parked there long term. Run down trailers with trash piled up outside the doors, beer cans and dog crap laying all around, and a general air of neglect.

Yesterday morning when I went outside to unhook our water and electric and get ready to leave, two pit bulls ran up at me snarling and baring their teeth. I yelled at them and they stopped a few feet short of me and stood there, growling. About that time a fellow came out of one of the long term trailers and said “Just ignore them. They’re just challenging you. They won’t bite. They do that to everybody.” I told him I’d appreciate him calling the dogs inside, but he told me to ignore them again.

I’ve seen what a pit bull can do to a human being, and before I continued unhooking, I went back into the bus and stuck a Glock in my back pocket. The dogs stood their ground, but never came any closer, which I’m glad for. 

Now, before anybody goes off on me about how pit bulls have an undeserved reputation, or saying that I should have called the manager or the police, don’t waste your breath. I love good dogs, but I will not tolerate a dangerous animal. I’ve written enough newspaper stories about pit bull attacks first hand to want to listen. The manager of this place obviously doesn’t care or he wouldn’t allow people to have those kinds of dogs running loose. And I wasn’t about to sit there for a couple of hours waiting for the cops to show up on a non-emergency call.  Since the owner would not corral his animals, I would have defended myself if they had come at me. End of story.

We drove 120 miles west on Interstate 10, and the bus performed well, cruising right along and climbing the hills without getting hot. Of course, it was a much cooler day than Friday was. When we left Fort Stockton, it was 45 degrees.

At Van Horn we topped off our fuel tank, then followed State Route 54 north for 55 miles. This nice two lane road follows a couple of mountain ranges with awesome views, and except for an occasional dip, it’s a flat route.

At the junction with U.S. Highway 180/62 we turned west and passed through Salt Flat, which is nothing but a couple of old buildings and a historical marker telling the story of the El Paso Salt War.

It seems that for centuries, Mexicans and Apache Indians came here to collect salt from an ancient lake bed. In the 1870s, a couple of white businessmen from El Paso claimed the land and then demanded that the Mexican salt collectors pay them for harvesting what they had collected for generations for free. Hostilities broke out, and by the time the matter was resolved several men had been killed and the United States and Mexico were on the brink of war.

Twenty or so miles past Salt Flat we rached our destination, the home of our friends Mike and Pam Steffen. Mike taught classes with us at Life on Wheels and is a well known RV columinist. You’ve probably read his articles and columns in Thousand Trails magazine, Trailer Life and such. Mike and Pam have a big spread here, with a bunch of friendly dogs for me to get my puppy fix with, including yes, a very gentle pit bull. I spent the evening getting licked and tussled by my puppy pals, and loved every minute of it.

This is one of the small handful of places where we have not been able to get online with our Verizon aircard. But Mike was kind enough to leave his WiFi connection open for us. We’ll be here a couple of days before we continue our trek west.

Thought For The Day –  ”The duty of the press is to print the truth and raise hell” Mark Twain

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