Toxic Camping New Mexico and Keeping Warm: Slim's 2024 Travels Pt 8
in my last video I had just arrived at my New Mexico Camp after driving through an unexpected snowstorm well I just got here it's dark and it's raining bit of an adventurous day but now I can relax chill out go to bed although I was now at a lower elevation the morning was still below freezing and the frost and snow encrusted my windshield as soon as that snow melted the winds picked up oh! it's cold here reminds me of an Alberta cold in the winter not expecting this in New Mexico and although it's just above freezing there's a nasty wind chill which is making it feel a lot colder maybe the wind's coming from Alberta and tonight it's supposed to get colder woohoo can hardly wait! I mean it's cool in here that's why I've got my winter coat on but I'm not going to start up the the heater that's just a waste of propane I'm fine like this but it's stay in the camper day which is okay because I can work on the the laptop and I also have a few repairs I have to do when I tried that shortcut through the desert uh it was a little rough and bumpy and yeah the camper got tossed around quite a bit and there was at least one casualty and it's right here and I always have these uh these doors and these drawers uh strapped extra straps I know they have latches and all that but if the latch gives a just gives me a little bit extra Comfort however this was my casualty I broke the hinge right there\ and uh it's only going to get worse these hinges are really really flimsy I should have had three not two but I went to Home Depot found the exact same Tobe so I'll put two new ones here and use the old one that's still good right there probably the better idea was to find stronger hinges but at the local hardware store they only had the same so replace the broken hinge with a new and uh it's only going to get worse these hinges are really really flimsy I should have had three not two but I went to Home Depot found the exact same To so I'll put two new ones here and use the old one that's still good right there probably the better idea was to find stronger hinges but at the local hardware store they only had the same so I replaced the broken hinge with a new one after replacing the top and bottom hinge I added the older good one to the middle hopefully this is a little more rugged by midday it was warm enough to step outside and chat with the neighbors the two Tula Rosa Valley is surrounded by mountains which is the southern extension of the Rocky Mountains some local Peaks like the Sierra Blanca are close to 12,000 Ft elevation the place I was camping is a popular one for travelers visiting the area situated right beside Highway 70 a few miles past Alamogordo now the Hollowman settling ponds are not a big secret to boondockers I mean yes you can camp here for free and it's right beside White Sands National Park and White Sands National park does not allow camping right now so this is the closest place you don't have to pay for it and there's lots of room look at that spot there very nice nobody's there easily you know 60-80 RVs could be in here no problem however there are some issues and I've seen other videos on this and they sort of are missing certain things uh first of all there are no toilets whatsoever of any sort and uh it's by a Air Force Base so like right now you're going to get planes going by and jets so it can be a little bit noisy and there's also no drinking water there is water right there we're going to talk about that water later on but for some people it's free you know they're okay with it but for me I really really have some concerns now those that are familiar with my camper know that this is my sleeping area the bed got a nice warm sleeping bag pillows and over here the Dickinson heater propane heater and this works really well for me I can keep the camper warm when it gets cold however I'm always trying to save Propane I'd like to be able to use it on the most minimal smallest amount of flame needed to keep it warm and many of my subscribers have asked sorry I should just say viewers have made the comment well why don't you just divide your camper in half put a divider here and just warm this part cuz you know I'm sleeping here I don't need to warm the rest of it and I thought that was a good idea but I just didn't want to get blankets or drapes and other stuff to carry around however I realized I did have something that would work right here this is my summer sleeping bag and uh because I'm using the winter one right now I just put it up here I've got my my hanger up here this is where I put clothes and stuff like that some people call it "the bra"' but what I did is I clipped on this other sleep bag so down it comes like that and that should divide this off so I have a lot more heat in there than I do out here well this isn't too bad it's like sleeping in a tent stoves right here nice view but it's not cold enough yet to try anything so I'll wait till the sun's going down well it's just gone down now and tonight is the perfect opportunity to try it out because it's going to be below freezing in a few hours I'll be ready to go to bed and we'll see how well it works with a crescent moon over calm Waters it looked like a picture postcard moment with only the sound of the neighbors generators to disturb the piece okay I think it's time to start this heating experiment with dividing my camper with this sleeping bag and only heating this part of it now it is getting cool right now it's about 5 C 40° F actually it says 6° now and 41 I think what it is is um now that I'm in here heating up the space it's just raising the temperature a little bit but it's not going to raise it that much so that's why we're going to turn on the heater I do have a uh a temperature sensor here and I'll just sort of show I don't know if you'll be able to see it 40.6 does that actually show I don't know I did go outside and it was 30° f um uh -1 C uh about 10 minutes ago it's supposed to get down to at least -4 which is somewhere around 25° fah I'm converting because I know I have people that they use celsius and they use Fahrenheit and I want to please everybody anyway so that's the temperature now what I'm going to do let's turn on the heater crank'er on there we go a lot of people were concerned about me burning the curtains well the curtains are right beside it and I guarantee you I cannot burn those curtains I would have to open the door and stuff the curtains in the flame to start a fire in here and I'm not going to do that okay that's going but what I'm going to do is I'm not going to have the the flame the Flame's on full right now let me show you that as well okay that's the flame on full but that's not the experiment what I want to do is turn it down when I get up to a temperature and for me that's about 60° F 15° C is very very comfortable and I want to retain that overnight but not on this uh amount of flame I want to put it down to the bare bare minimum I'll just show you what it looks like there's the pillow and I stuffed it into the corners as best I could I even put uh extra clothing up above the net so there is no Gap in the ceiling and then down like that I could probably do a little bit better oh right there we go got that okay that looks pretty good there's the heater and I think we're all set well I got the temperature up to 15 C 60° F so now I can go to bed good night let some light in here it's just before 7:00 still relatively warm in here however I do have to tell you at about 2:00 it got down to um about 50° f 10° C so I did turn the heater up just a notch hey you can tell I just got up! Sun's just coming up it hasn't uh got up over the mountains however this is all about temperatures so let's see divider still up what temperature is it right now let's just do it right there at the divider okay now hopefully you can see that and I'm just going to turn it as I do it it says 62.8 F which is 16.1 hopefully that reads so it's still around 60° however what is it outside and this is going to change the temperature drastically I'll do this quick okay out there whoa in the rest of the uh the camper 32.5 f
it is cold out there it is just at freezing in the rest of the camper in here it is well it I wouldn't say it's t-shirt weather actually I'm going to put my uh jacket on here it's a little cool but uh for sleeping it was perfect okay there's the flame right there so it's a little bit it's not full actually I'll just show you I'll put it on full so you know the difference enough fooling around what is the temperature outside? well what I'm going to do is I'm going to open this window here let me just uh see if I can open that window one two three okay windows open pointing It To The Ground okay outside right now is 14.9 f which is -9.5 C so that's a huge difference uh it was only supposed to get down to I think minus 4 but it got I'm just going to try it again again here - 9.6 c 14.7 f it's super cold out there it's nice and warm in here because I used this sleeping bag as a divider so as far as the experiment totally a success however now I got to warm up the rest of the camper or I'm not going to be able to have breakfast woo that is cold the frost still glittered on the camping shell and on the truck when the Sun finally Rose above the mountains later in the day it was time to do a very short road trip well okay I think I found a spot with not a million people around let's check out a dune it's a little uh steep but I can do it lot of sand here it's a harsh environment to live in and not all survive it sunglasses sunscreen and water are essential here whoa that wasn't too bad now if ever there was a shot that would benefit from a drone this would be one unfortunately drones are banned here as they are in all national parks the best I could come up with was just spin the camera and show I was surrounded by 360° of sand this is cool this park is truly unique but my video is not going to do it justice you have to experience it for yourself see my camera way back there yeah I got to go back for it as the sun was quite intense I didn't stay too long and headed back through the Sands towards camp well it's rare that I would find a free camping spot and give it a negative review but this place makes me nervous and it's all because of that what's in that water these are the Hollowman settling ponds it's between the uh White Sands Missile Base which is right there the uh Holloman Air Force which is right there and if you want to put it in reference way over there is Trinity site where they dropped the first atomic bomb so it's not what I would call an area that uh has that natural feel to it and uh I guess what they do or have done in the past is use that firefighting foam for whatever they're doing over there and it goes into this water and the issue with that foam and I'm going to read an article well I can't read it exactly because uh it's copywritten but I will give you the title you can find it "New Mexico wants to close Lake on Hollowman Air Force Base" this is the lake it's a lake and it says that they allow camping which is exactly where I'm at but the problem is the concentrations of hazardous chemicals that pose a risk to both public health and the environment and the chemical okay they're known as PFAS which is p.f.a.s,
and the long name is perr and poly floral alkal substances scary stuff you know it's one of those things they call I hate that word but "forever chemicals" my own concern however goes beyond the headlines and to my own observations although it looks beautiful and natural at times when the winds blow the problems appear as it brings the chemicals to the Shoreline thick masses of white foam are turned up with the consistency of shaving cream now it's bad enough that this toxic mess is so visible on the shoreline but more alarming is how close it is to the campers and I've seen it airborne floating right into the camps do these people even know what they're camping in? but my biggest concern is what effect this poison has on the local wildlife the birds that migrate here would not have the benefit of news headlines and warning signs they are merely looking for food as they dive below I observed several times Ducks who are constantly trying to clean something off their feathers if that stuff is on their bodies I can only deduce it is probably inside their system as well and affecting their health and the final blow is the amount of garbage including improper disposal of human waste that litters the ground why would anybody want to camp here? they are nasty they are toxic and I've seen people here and there's a lot of people around here right now why talking their dogs and can you imagine what would happen if your dog starts swimming and uh and drinking that uh and so I can't recommend it uh it's probably okay if you're just doing an overnight stay and go in the morning to spend a few days here especially if there's wind and it's bringing up you know the moisture from that Lake I don't think it's good for you so sorry but there's other places is I'd recommend around here more than I'd recommend this one until they clean it up and I really hope they do it's definitely unique to have two opposites right beside each other I mean here's the Desert Sands untameable they're always going to be here but next door is a lake that is poisoned ah it's not untameable it has to be protected and I really hope they clean it up and as I head out for my next adventure be assured that not everywhere I camp is disappointing it's Times Like These that just make you appreciate the good spots even more and while looking back gives you experience looking forward brings hope Happy Trails everyone
2024-03-06 02:32
