Camel ride?

[kernow]

When the kids were younger they used to love going to a farm park, they had a llama for the kids to pet. It took one look at my mother in law and spat right in her face. At least it stopped her talking for five minutes!

That is too tempting!! I wonder if my mother in law would like to go on an easter visit to a farm park?

 

[countrychick]

I've never been on a camel, but I did get a ride on an elephant years ago. It was at a fair so not really all that exciting. But and experience nonetheless.

 

[Chris]

Is it true that at one time the US Cavalry used camels out in the western US? I've heard they tried an experiment with them but I don't know if it was true or just a gimmick to sell a movie. But it did make me curious.

 

[jason]

Is it true that at one time the US Cavalry used camels out in the western US? I've heard they tried an experiment with them but I don't know if it was true or just a gimmick to sell a movie. But it did make me curious.

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]I[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]n May of 1856, at Powderhorn, Texas, the US Army's most successful experiment in overland transportation before the development of four-wheel-drive vehicles powered by internal combustion engines began. By the end of May, 1866, the experiment was dead.

[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]T[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]he idea of using camels as overland transport in the deserts of the American Southwest was the brainchild of then US Secretary of War Jefferson Finis Davis. Horses and mules, the Army's only transportation at the time, had to be fed on corn or grain to stay alive and functioning, and had to have water on a daily basis. Neither was readily available in the vast reaches of the Southwest. Camels, however, were desert animals. They could survive, even prosper, on desert vegetation. Though they required tremendous amounts of water when they drank, they could go days without drinking, hence they could cross the vast distances between water supplies in the desert without dying of thirst. As beasts of burden, they could carry far more than the 300 lbs that was considered a 'mule load.' They were simply ideal for the purpose-making regular routes across the desert Southwest an actuality rather than a remote possibility.

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