relo from Capitan to Alamogordo (Nov 2025)
radio silence
I’ve been pretty quiet during the stay at Capitan because I’ve been doing other things
- mesh
- received and installed the PeakMesh solar node. It works great but I’ve only seen 2 nodes in 12 days: a vehicle passing on the nearby rural road and an airplane at 37k feet.
- flashed V3-02 with Meshcore companion. Will see if it can find any nodes as I move around.
- reddit assigned me and two others to mod the modless /r/CamperVans. It had been neglected for years and had hundreds of reports that took me a few days to triage. We are working on new rules and directions for the sub. Right now a high percentage of posts are xposts from other subs, or complaints about rental companies. Ugh.
- etc
camp host
I passed the Jagger camp host on a trail and talked to him a bit.1
I asked him if he was affected by the shutdown and he said he wasn’t getting paid. I don’t know what the stipend is but it sounded like the free spot with hookups for his RV was more important than the pay.
He said he wasn’t going hungry because he and his wife were retired and had social security coming in to cover the basics.
I asked if water was still a freebie at Jagger and he confirmed it. I’ll take on ~20 gallons on my way out of camp. My tank is down to about the 1/3rd mark because I didn’t take on water in Santa Fe. One benefit of a larger tank is you can skip or delay a fill if required.
I’ll also stop at the public library in Capitan on my way out of town to update/download.
relo
Next stop looks like Alamogordo, as there are two functional boondocking spots within scooter distance of the city. The 14th day would be Tuesday, but it will be be windier and warmer then so I will leave a day earlier (Monday, tomorrow).. This will be more comfortable for Muffin when I’m away from the van (discount grocery, walmart, Planet Fitness).
The two spots on different types of federal land will give me up to a month to decide when to make the drive to ELP. After that I think there’s a 90% chance I’ll be headed to Arizona for the winter.
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The camp host over there that services this little BLM camp, picking up trash and resupplying toilet paper in the pit toilet. ↩