I've spent the last few days out in West Texas working on a survey in an area that looks like the photo below (no, that isn't Central Iowa, but is actually a part of Texas looking uncharacteristically green and lush for July)
The tracts were mostly unimproved land, but there were two structures out in the thousands of acres. One showed up quite well in aerial imagery, so I thought I'd better at least drive over to see what it amounted to. "30' x 40' WOOD FRAME SHACK" wasn't completely descriptive and sounded a bit more grand than the actual thing. Through the windows, I could see that the "shack" had been built to enclose two RV's and did so sufficiently completely that walls would have to be torn down if the RV's were ever to be moved. "30' x 40' WOOD FRAME SHACK BUILT AROUND 2 RV'S" is the present candidate, but a bit wordy. True, "OKLAHOMA MANSION" would be shorter, but not everyone who may see the map will have been to Oklahoma.
"NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS"
This droll notice was posted at the Catholic cemetery in the town nearest the ranch. I had to stop and take a picture.
"NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS"
Or spelling mistakes?
Around here the spelling is 'CemetEry'
30' x 40' WOOD FRAME STRUCTURE Is Sufficient
No social commentary is neccessary.
Paul in PA
Some RV's and RUVs get up to 6 figure$ value easily and some got onto 7 $ figures. You may need to go back out there and ID the make and models.
"NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS"
I guess Jerry McGray never sang his little cemetery jingle out there.:-)
"NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS"
> Around here the spelling is 'CemetEry'
Yes, it is in American English as well. I had thought maybe the "A" was carried over from Spanish, but the Spanish dictionario reminds me that "cementerio" is the word for cemetery.
> Some RV's and RUVs get up to 6 figure$ value easily and some got onto 7 $ figures.
If you can get more than $100,000 for a 1970's-vintage Winnebago, you're wasting your talents practicing surveying. 🙂
Kent is kind
Kent is kind with his composición fotográfica. Just around the corner from the cemetery in Sanderson is a sleepy little border town 'hood:
This guy's worldly wealth consists of a rusted carcass of a '71 Pinto.
I would take offense to Kent's remarks about Okies....but if you'll look in the pic, you can see his satellite dish. A true sign of this inhabitant's Oklahoma ties.
BTW Kent: I have an old friend from Weslaco, Tx. that found an enterprising opportunity in importing goods from Mexico. Before the ATF and IRS took exception to his business practices he was a familiar sight in Brewster, Terrell and Western Val Verde Counties. There was apparently enough unpatrolled border for his commerce to flourish..for a while.
From listening to some of his stories of the border country it makes me wonder what kind of heat that you pack under your driver's seat. Un anglo viejo by himself out there might be easy pickings for some criminales fronterizas.
I'm thinking you might be a Glock kinda fella...but then again, with that sombrero and your love of the arts, you might prefer a revolver. Hopefully .40 caliber or larger...
Kent is kind
I had the pleasure of shooting a friend's WWII vintage Colt 45 Auto, give me one of those. :-). BLAM!!!
Kent is kind
> Kent is kind with his composición fotográfica. Just around the corner from the cemetery in Sanderson is a sleepy little border town 'hood:
Sanderson bills itself as the "Cactus Capital of the World" and with good reason. Here's a local example of Opuntia engelmannii:
> BTW Kent: I have an old friend from Weslaco, Tx. that found an enterprising opportunity in importing goods from Mexico. Before the ATF and IRS took exception to his business practices he was a familiar sight in Brewster, Terrell and Western Val Verde Counties. There was apparently enough unpatrolled border for his commerce to flourish..for a while.
I drove out to the ranch in the morning and usually passed a couple of Border Patrol vehicles creeping along the "drag" on the south side of US Highway 90 to see if any sign of people on foot showed in the surface that yesterday had been smoothed off with some old tires drug on chains behind their trucks. Much of the fence alongside it was 8' high mesh wire fence that showed where a foot had used the fence as a ladder. Cormac McCarthy set the beginning of "No Country for Old Men" in Terrell County, but it was obvious from his land descriptions that he had never been there.
Kent is kind
> Kent is kind with his composición fotográfica. Just around the corner from the cemetery in Sanderson is a sleepy little border town 'hood:
BTW, Sanderson is definitely in the Borderlands. In the twenty or so years I've worked in Terrell County, Sanderson has slowly emptied as a victim of the Union Pacific Railroad and the economics of sheep and goat ranching in the surrounding county. The train crews that used to change at Sanderson now make the switch in Alpine. The ranches that were marginally profitable with wool and mohair commodity price subsidies in place have now mostly become hunting preserves.
The restaurants in Sanderson have dwindled, leaving the Town and Country and the Dairy King as about the last candidates standing. The Town and Country serves as a combination truck stop and convenience store for Sanderson, selling breakfast tacos in the morning and other stuff into the evening.
While I was waiting on a hamburger one evening, an old vacquero in his eighties (I'd guess) came in with his wife to see if they had any burros left. They had sold out, but the counter guy who looked as if he should speak better Spanish than he did told the fellow that the chimichangas were a sort of burrito that might work. The old guy looked like he had probably worked ranches in Terrell County most of his life, but chimichangas were a new one on him.
The old man had a shaky hand on the tongs and one of the chimichangas dropped to the floor instead of entering the smallish paper bag waiting for it. We both looked at the thing lying on the floor and at the exact instant shrugged philosophically as to agree that what else was one to expect?.
"El burro se escapó," I said.
"Sí", he chuckled, "escapó."
Winnebagos in the Ocotillos
Here's a screen shot from Google Earth. This is approx. 6.1 miles NE of Dryden. Sitting out in the middle of nowhere is a good sized motorhome, what appears to be a cab-over camper (sans a truck) and a commercial fiberglass outhouse on a trailer.
The hulk of a storage tank could no doubt be used from a distance as a landmark. Ruts in the floor of the desert reveal recent vehicular activity. What do you figure is going on?
Could be deer hunters, the image was reported as taken in Jan. 2013. That's a really bad place to "deer hunt" in my opinion. Maybe they were just plinking at 'cans.
...can you say "Breaking Bad"?
Kent is kind
Why would you want to shoot someone's gun? I'll admit it is a rather small target. But hitting something that hard and irregularly shaped could result in a ricochet doing damage that is unintended. Of course, a rifle or shotgun would be a much easier target than, say, a midnight special.
Winnebagos in the Ocotillos
> Could be deer hunters, the image was reported as taken in Jan. 2013. That's a really bad place to "deer hunt" in my opinion. Maybe they were just plinking at 'cans.
Actually, the deer that live in the country are amazingly good looking whitetails and mule deer. I'd think that what you're almost certainly looking at is a ranch that was subdivided into "hunting tracts" in the last decade by yet another man with a plan. It takes a bit of time for the purchaser of 200 acres to realize that he and his neighbors have just shot all the deer off the entire subdivision, but in the meantime, it's Winnebagos and trailers parked for hunting cabins.
The soil in the area is an adobe-type soil in which ruts persist, so what look like fresh tracks probably aren't. In fact, if that site you've posted is North of Bendele Road that runs East from Hwy 349 toward Meyers Spring, some of those ruts could have been made by my truck about twenty years ago when we were surveying two other ranches in the vicinity.
