I must say, I never really thought much of the whole “living history museum” thing. Heck, I didn’t even know what one was until we discovered Shelburne Farms when we stayed at the city campground in Burlington, VT last year. But we didn’t even pay that one a visit.

I have to thank our new friend Roger for opening my eyes to how cool it would be to work as a docent or interpreter at one of these living history museums. Roger volunteers as the 18th century miller at Rancho de las Golandrinas.

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Please allow me this brief moment to shout out to the entire world just how much I love my wife. Isn’t she beautiful?

Living together in a trailer on the road, it’s hard to surprise someone with anything. But since steel is the traditional gift for an 11-year anniversary, and Rene isn’t really into jewelry – the modern choice – perhaps I can steal her heart once again with a few heartfelt words.

I recently expressed concern to René about her dancing on the precipice at Black Canyon National Park. OK, she wasn’t dancing. But her scrambling made me nervous nonetheless.

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As real estate prices drop, we keep thinking about where and when we want to buy. As much as we like this mobile lifestyle, we do want a piece of land where we can park the rig for a while and not have to pay rent. And we’ll need something to leverage when we’re old. So there are two ways we’re thinking of approaching a purchase whenever experts say prices are at rock bottom:

Property Idea 1: Buy two separate, smaller cheaper pieces of land (around 5 acres) in different regions of the country. Say, one piece in Colorado, and one near Luckenbach. Winter in Texas, summer in Colorado.

• The advantage: Staying mobile, and keep on living an internet-based self employment lifestyle.
• The disadvantage: Fuel prices. Moving around won’t be cheap. How long can we sustain a lifestyle like this?

Property Idea 2: Throw all our eggs into one larger piece of land, say an old ranch, that backs up to BLM or Forest Service property. Park the rig, settle down for a while, and utilize that land for some kind of outdoors-based business.

• The advantage: We would have a larger piece of real estate that we could sell off little by little as we get older.
• The disadvantage: Getting tied down again. Property taxes. Ugh!

I like to get other people’s ideas about situations like this. What would you do?

When you visit New Mexico, whatever you do, don’t get New Mexican culture confused with Mexican culture. The two are very different, and the locals will let you know it. For starters, the Mexicans I know never eat Sopapillas like this one I had in Albuquerque.

But it goes deeper than the culinary differences. As a California Mexican, I always heard about New Mexicans who insisted they weren’t “Mexican,” they were “Spanish.” Even in my own neighborhood, some fair-skinned kids came from families who preferred this label. I don’t know if their parents came from New Mexico or what, but it didn’t matter; we insisted that by preferring to call themselves “Spanish,” they were in denial about their ethnicity, ashamed to be linked to the Mexican Indian blood that many western Latinos share.

It’s a complicated issue, but ultimately, whatever label we Latinos choose to use, the fact is, we all have our unique ancestral histories, some that we relate to more than others.

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Our workamping gig at Riverbend gave us the opportunity to meet so many interesting people from all over the world. Two regulars were Ann and Roger, a couple from Santa Fe.

As longtime volunteers at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, a living history museum, Ann and Roger graciously invited us to the museum’s annual “Civil War Days.”

Did you know, the Civil War was fought in New Mexico?

“On July 23, 1861, Confederate soldiers mobilized out of Texas invading the New Mexico Territory… so began the American Civil War in New Mexico, a battle lasting 12 months, leaving 1300 dead, with no territorial gains for the Confederate Army.”

Every May, the museum holds Civil War Days, when hundreds of volunteers dress in costume and hold battle re-enactments, life and culture demonstrations and more.

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I never thought living history could be so much fun. Thank you Ann and Roger, for your kind invitation and friendship.