The Escapees Ranch - Lakewood, NM

Tuesday, December 6, 2011
The Escapees Ranch - Lakewood, NM 5 degrees’ and sunny to 23 degrees’ and sunny. The snow stopped sometime over night with dawn breaking into a sunny cold day with our water line frozen.

Nice seeing this sunrise today

Nice seeing this sunrise today, even though it was cold morning, there was no more snow than what I saw last night after playing dominos'.

Buster iced

Mens coffee at the Ranch House today Ron went to Artesia for doughnuts, in the cold snowy morning and was back by eight-thirty. Then a water committee meeting for me, mostly talking about the cold and frozen water hoses and pipes. Then later we went to Artesia for propane gas and Walmart. I use two portable tanks one normal twenty pound (needed filling) and a thirty pound so as to not use the main tank installed in Buster. Busters’ installed tank is full, and will be used if needed.

When we returned the temperature out side was over twenty and our left neighbor was outside to tell me there had been water gushing from Buster. He did turnoff the water when realizing what was happening. Turns out the water filter in the compartment froze and broke out the bottom of the filter (plastic). The short hose in the water compartment was also frozen. I removed them both then connected the water line with heat tape directly to Busters inlet, the water worked fine. I had purchased a small heater for that compartment while at Walmart. A lot of people use 100 watt light bulbs for this purpose, Walmart was out of 100 watt bulbs and the clip on fixtures with the aluminum reflector.

The five of us played Mexican Train dominos' George & Bonnie and Don and Doris with a visitor Audrey joining the game. Girls against Boys, tonight Girls win, when the boys go out one of the girls remaining tiles is not counted, the score sheet is only counting two against two.