Heron Lake State Park, New Mexico – Day 5

In the last few Blog entries, I’ve been discussing my problems with the malfunctioning alternator in my Ford Bronco II.

Yesterday morning I borrowed the camp host’s truck and drove the about 25 miles to pickup my ordered replacement unit…

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

Because of the injuries I suffered in the May 27th accident I had hired two young park rangers to assist me with the removal and re-installation of the new unit. Through some miscommunication with the camp host, they did not show up. By 1:30 PM, I was feeling half-way decent and decided to brave the heat and install the new unit myself. So, carefully and slowly, not wanting to re-injure my strained chest muscle, I got it installed in about 30 minutes…

Speaking of my injuries, the accident happened four weeks ago today. I’m surprised after all that time how still swollen and painful my right rib cage area remains. They told me to expect 6-8 weeks, possibly up to 10-12 weeks to heal. I take my last codeine-based pain medication this morning. After today, I’ll be on just Ibuprofen.

A few days back I got an Email from a fellow by the name of Eric Griego who said he noticed my Blog entry about arriving at Heron Lake. He and his wife Kelly, live in Albuquerque. They come up here on weekends to sail with the New Mexico Sailing Club, a small private group of about 100 members, here on Lake Heron. Eric grew up in the Seattle area as a teenager where he developed his love and interest in sailing. They extended an invitation for me to come and visit them…which I did last evening.

Here are some photos that I took…

I had a very enjoyable two-hour visit. It was really nice to be down near the water away from the heat and the bugs.

Meeting new and interesting people is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2012
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

CHANCE ENCOUNTER IN DEMING

Jim’s long time friend, who chooses to remain anonymous, introduced us to her two best friends, Mary Berg and Pat McKay.  Mary is a psychic and does individual readings. Once she was asked to help the local police department on a case of theirs. She is an upbeat, interesting woman to talk too.

Pat McKay, is the former wife of  Buck Duane Walker,  who murdered Muff and Mack Graham,  a couple living on their sailboat on the Island of Palmyra. Palmyra  is  located off the coast of Hawaii. It was a sensational case when it happened in the 1960’s and the book, The Sea Shall Tell,  was written about the event, and the capture and trial of Buck’s girlfriend,  Stephanie.   Pat was married to Buck for ten years, and knew him for 40 years.  He was a mesmerizing, clever, self-educated man and a psychopath. She visited him in prison, got to know his girlfriend,  Stephanie after the murders,  and even had a strange tie to Muff and Mack Graham, the two murder victims.   Pat’s family introduced  her aunt to date Mack before he met Muff. The Graham’s lived aboard their boat sailing the world over in much the same way RVers live on wheels, moving from one destination to another.

Pat  was grateful it was not she who sailed to Palmyra with Buck Walker. The book  was written by Richard Henderson and the attorney, Vincent Bugliosi who defended Stephanie.  Pat claims it was really Henderson who wrote the book. It was later made into a movie by the same name. Jim became quite fascinated by this case because he discovered  that Buck  Walker, while serving life in prison, wrote his version of the events that happened on the Island, under his father’s name, Wesley Walker.  Jim found his story interesting, well written and credible.

We enjoyed meeting Pat, and hearing about her interesting life.  She has written an as yet unpublished book about her life and how it intersected with the people who met their fate on the Island of Palmyra.   She met Jim’s friend while living in Mexico and they both moved to Deming.

It is interesting to meet someone who has a lot of  “inside”  information about the real life characters of a book you just chanced to read.  I can’t wait to read Pat’s book and will let you know on this blog when it is available. Sometimes you meet people who change your life. It was so for Pat McKay.

HYANNIS PORT

From Mary’s Desk:

Hyannis Port, the name itself, suggests so much history given the Kennedy years. People here honored their favorite son with the JFK Museum. President Kennedy’s Museum and Library with all of his presidential papers and history is just outside of Boston. Here, the JFK Museum is small and more personal. Mostly homey pictures of the Kennedys with some anecdotes.

Senator Ted Kennedy’s accomplishments are acknowledged here as well,  but the most interesting to me was a video of Rose Fitzpatrick Kennedy giving a tour for NBC of her house and pictures and artifacts of their political life stretching back to Hoover and Roosevelt. An admirable woman who lived with greatness and great tragedy.

We walked to the Harbor, which I found more commercial than others I’ve seen. Many big vessels, and small cruise ships ply these waters. Deep sea fishing charters and rides on the giant Catamaran below are great.

But, I wouldn’t recommend the water taxis who advertise their romantic zip around the harbor to see everything. In the ad you see four  people on board. But, in reality, they look like this:

Art shacks sit next to the harbor and we visited them all. The mosaic work was beautiful and innovative.

The mixed composition  mosaics had tiles, glass, beads, shells, marbles, and rocks.

David Palnick makes jewelry and his handle is insideoutbeads.com. They’re blown glass beads.

And SeaHagSue.com.
does shell wreaths with local shells only. She was a kick. She told me building her wreaths made her hungry for all the shellfish they represented and she’d have to go out and gorge. Good thing she wasn’t painting cows.
Roberta Anslow, also had a different take on photography.

She somehow transfers photographs to canvas in a skinny format. They fit in small places, can be stacked and so on. She calls them a unique size for a fat-free world. robertaanslow.com
The individual shacks had woodcarvers, knot tying, quilt making, greeting cards and stained glass. A beautiful garden of buoys led us to the Harbor on one side. Loved it.

Nearby is the Maritime Museum. It too, was a small museum. One thing I’d never seen nor heard of before is the racing sail boats from the 1930’s. They were called sailing canoes.

They were built like a barrel. The sailor sat on top and maneuvered his sail astride a wooden saddle-like seat.

Understandably, not many of these rigs survived.
The museum had 27 models of ships, and a short history of the area. It had one section devoted to pirates that children would enjoy. One female pirate and others I had never heard of before.

One thing the area doesn’t lack is beaches. Yet, here it costs $15 to park and enjoy the beaches. We drove around and found several places with little or no parking where you can enter the water. One was near a Veterans Memorial Park. We stopped to see a memorial to the “Forgotten War” Korea. And a small memorial park dedicated to President Kennedy with a fountain and a view of the ocean.
Hyannis Port has plenty to do, a lot of night life, plays, art, wine, beer tasting, music and events for anyone’s taste. We passed a park setting up booths and the band was already playing. The music was more the hard rock type and we skipped it. For a look at more photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/1579penn/61910HyannisPort#