January 20, 2021. Playa Royale, Mexico. Another Cold Night.

As I was reading Travels with Bobby about camping in the mountains of the west, I was reminded of all the times Ken and I camped in North America. I was thinking of the time we camped in a National Forest in the mountains north os Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the three years before the boys were born, Ken and I travelled as much as possible. On alternate weekends, Ken was off duty so we headed out to explore Texas. We camped in every state park in Texas within 4 hours drive from Galveston. We had a new fancy car and we kept our camping gear in the trunk of the car. The weather was perfect and the state parks were empty. We had a grand time. We travelled to New Mexico for a week, camping going and coming. One day we spent the day in charming Sana Fe, then drove north from the city into the National Forest, which was huge. Our plan was to just poke around, seeing what we could find. But it got dusk and we had no place on the map we could find with a camping spot but all of a sudden, while driving in the forest we spotted an open hut. Two sides of the hut had walls, making it into a room, with a fireplace in the corner. And there was a roof over half of the room. The other two sides were open with the floor open to see the sky. We could find no signs so we decided to stay the night. Ken made a fire in the corner and we ate dinner and we watched the sky. We were at elevation and it got cold but we laid out our sleeping bags beside the fire. Ken said we could stay warm with two side protecting us from wind and the coals of the fire keeping us warm. So we went to sleep. I woke up in the morning and was warm and cosy all night. The fire still had coals in the fireplace, which surprised me. Turned out that Ken had woken up every few hours to keep a fire going while I stayed asleep. Once again, Ken had looked after me..and also himself. Pretty good system we had going.