More to Come....

Yesterday I drove the Tioga over to a nearby RV park and did the final cleanout of the sewer tanks. Then I dropped by Costco to fill up the gas tank so I can tell how much we used on the trip. Still to do is the winterizing process where I blow out the water lines with compressed air. I haven't done that before, but I have two different people offering to teach me, so I should be good to go there. I'll try and update the blog readers on this process when I learn it.

Ciao.

Packing, packing, packing.

Here's a thought for those of you who would like to sally forth into the great unknown in your brand new RV: LEARN HOW TO PACK! That's right, there's only so much room for your stuff in one of these aluminum boxes. You absolutely must pack effectively if you want to bring along everything you'll need on the road.

Our thirty-foot Tioga motor home is what they call a "basement model." That means the manufacturer has jacked the floor level of the coach up off the truck frame far enough to create a vacant space between the frame and the floor. This vacant space is then devoted to storage. Sometimes, it even runs clear through from side to side. Naturally, between the wheel wells is where you get the tallest lockers. Into these you can pack fairly large items, things like my galvanized tub in which I packed all the "wet" items like hoses, filter units, and hose fittings or the plastic tub for all the sewer-related items. In between these large lockers, in places like over wheel wells, you have several low-profile lockers. Into these I would store things like the drive-up blocks, a fiberglass ladder for adjusting the awing, and a set of folding chairs if the provided picnic bench seating looked too grungy. These low-profile lockers tended to extend from the left side to the right side of the coach.

I studied these various lockers for some time before I began to pack things into them. I'm glad I did. From what I saw on the road, many people don't do any planning at all. They simply stand five feet away and throw things into the lockers. When you have a compartment that is, say, fourteen inches high, twenty-four inches deep, and four feet wide, you want to make the most of that space in three dimensions. But when you just chuck items into the space, you end up with a jumble of goods that don't make full use of the height.

To counter this problem, I went to home depot and purchased heavy duty plastic tubs normally used for mixing mortar (photo top left). They measure approximately two by three feet. In my largest locker, I was able to fit two of these, one on top of the other, which largely filled the space, with enough room left over to fit extra oil, camp stove fuel, antifreeze, and a camp lantern standing up. In the bottom tub went the camp stove, the barbecue tools, a bag of charcoal, two 100-foot ropes, and the steel barbecue grill-top that we used when that essential item was absent on the RV park's barbecue fixture, which usually consisted of a large, rusty truck wheel laying flat on the ground.

Into the top tub went every gizmo and widget I could think of that would make my life easier in a pinch. Here you would find a level, a basket of WD40, light-weight oil, lock lubricant, Silcone sealant, etc. Also here was the 110v extension cord, the TV cable, the heavy rubber hammer for testing tire inflation, an axe, jumper cables, picnic tablecloth hold-down clips, plastic table cloth, and lots more.

Between the two tubs I stored the rubber-backed 4'x6' industrial carpet that I would throw down in front of the RV door (where allowed by the park). The carpet sitting on top of the first tub made it easy to slide tub 2 into place on top.

One locker I packed completely full of firewood. That, in retrospect, was a bad idea. Did you know that some states have a law against hauling wood in from other states? Well, I was duly informed of this fact when we were getting our tires changed in Minnesota. The tire jockey told us that it was like a $500.00 fine to do so. Needless to say, the firewood stayed at the tire shop for their next weenie roast.

One thing you need for stabilizing your RV are wooden blocks. These blocks go on the ground under the rear scissor jacks so the jacks don't have to extend as far. Mind you, more modern coaches often have built-in jacks and you don't bother with the wood. But if you do need these little gems, I found a great way to keep them organized. Since I wanted to keep my blocks in the rear compartment with the drive-up blocks, a compartment only about two feet wide and six inches high, I devised a drawer to put them in (photo right). The drawer is about 13" wide and six feet long and has a set of single-direction wheels mounted on the rear of the box and a handle on the front. Just pushing the blocks into the open locker would make it difficult to retrieve them when they had been pushed out of your reach. But with the blocks in the drawer I merely have to grab the handle, lift slightly over the lip of the locker, and pull it completely out until the wheels in back catch on the lip. I then set the handled end on the ground. Nothing could be easier. In the drawer, along with the blocks, I keep an army shovel, a kneeling pad in case the ground is wet or rocky when I get down to lower the scissor jacks, and the combination socket and handle that you use to lower the jacks. When I'm done with the drawer, I simply pick it up and roll it back into place in the locker. Very neat and tidy. And by the way, the army shovel came in very handy in Minnesota when I had to dig a hole for the tire jockey to remount the tire after the old one had blown out beside the freeway. Not sure what I would have done without that shovel.

So, that's all for now on the subject of exterior storage. The big thing to remember is to not only use all your width and depth in any given locker, but the height of the locker as well.

Home At Last

Well, folks, the Tioga is finally back in the driveway, the home furnace is fired up, and Concetta is fixing dinner in her own earth-bound kitchen for the first time in five weeks. Wow! Five weeks. It's hard to believe we've been that long on the road. It just went by in a flash. The Tioga racked up just a tad over 7,000 miles and still runs like a top. We did lose a set of tires in Minnesota. But other than that bit of foolishness, not another thing gave us trouble. We wanted to take the coach on a dry run before our departure date, but it never came to pass. We never tried the water heater, the furnace, the air conditioner, the water systems, the sewage systems, the generator, or taken a shower in that swiftly disintegrating plastic enclosure whose flaws I gummed up with waterproof silicone and prayed.

To reward us for our blind faith, absolutely everything worked like a champ. Even the CD player that I had never tried worked for literally a hundred hours or more with our books on tape. We did burn out a couple of low-voltage lights. Both the on-board clocks gave up on the same day. And we came home with one running light dark out of the handful I replaced before we left.

At one point on a bumpy road in Missouri the coffee maker came lose from its moorings, tumbled out on the counter, and bounced to the floor. We just replaced it in its rack, loaded it with coffee, and brewed up our next pot of java.

For those of you who have been following the blog throughout, you know that I asked everyone what the little switch under the sink did. Flipping it on and off did nothing. I dismantled it before we left and shinned everything thoroughly. Still nothing appeared to come on when the switch was flipped. Finally, just a few days ago, I discovered the answer when Concetta was complaining about the heat in the kitchen. "There's a fan right over your head," I said. "All we have to do is crank up the vent lid and turn it on. The unit had it's own on/off switch on this particular ceiling fixture.

But as I performed the operation of getting the fan on line, it suddenly hit me that the designers of the coach were probably diabolical enough to put a second on/off switch for the ceiling unit down by the sink. I reached over and hit the curiously-located switch and, voila, the fan overhead shut off. Jeeze! To think I had even emailed the previous owner of the coach and asked him what the switch did. He didn't know.

So, it appears that we'll be keeping the RV for future adventures. I wasn't sure we'd adapt, but we not only adapted but enjoyed the experience immensely. I, for one, can't want to start planning the next trip.

For now, we're home. While we unwind, I'd like to finish out this blog with some things we learned that might help others in their adventures into the RV world. Until then, I wish you good food, good wine, and exciting destinations -- and a warm house when you come home.

Ciao.

From rainy Richfield to rainy Ely

Today we moved from one rainy city to another. In between, we saw some of the finest Great Basin desert country the West has to offer, all of it, incongruously enough, bathed in sparkling sunlight and unseasonable warmth.

All of our highways today were narrow, two-lane affairs which meandered from one tiny, one-horse town to another. We passed turnoffs to towns with names like Aurora, Sigurd, Oasis, Oak City, Holden, Hinkley, and Deseret, farming towns of which we'd never heard nor ever had an occasion to visit. Even the towns we cruised through at 25mph like Scipio and Salina seemed curiously stuck in an earlier time. We stopped in just one town, that of Delta, which proclaimed an interesting museum. Delta showed up on the itinerary an hour or so prior to the lunch hour so we thought it would be a good leg-stretching opportunity before we stopped for our sandwich and chips.

Much to our delight, the museum turned out to be so much more than a leg-stretching opportunity. Still, to view the museum from the street it certainly didn't look like much. In the front yard sat an old, woefully dilapidated frame house from the 1920s, the location of the original museum we later learned. Set well back from this house and the street was a sort of concrete block building with the entrance door barely discernible from where we stood. Since we'd seen the museum's road sign, we knew the entrance had to be back there somewhere so we set off to find it. Moments later we discovered the entrance hidden from view behind the 1920s house.

As you know if you've been reading this blog for any time at all, Concetta and I just love museums. For an hour or two we consider them just the finest entertainment you can have. The museum in Delta proved no exception. And, this time, our museum experience came with our own personal guide and interpreter. What could be better?

When we first entered we found two elderly ladies waiting to greet us. The older of the two, a one-time surveyor's wife turned docent, simply beamed at the prospect of showing two newcomers around her facility. We couldn't have been happier. The museum's collection runs to everything from rocks and minerals, to western art. From mining and railroading equipment, to a authentic example of a Japanese internment camp barracks. Everything was a bit crowded, but very artfully and tastefully displayed. LaWanna, our guide, reassured us that the museum collection, though it contained substantially more in its collections than we were seeing, was destined for a brand new museum building in the very near future. Certainly we should make time to come back and see it some day.

As it turned out, we thoroughly enjoyed the museum and LaWanna. I even got her to pose for a number of photographs. She good naturedly complied, though I suspect I was probably the one and only person who had made such a request. Several displays took my eye, but none more firmly than the switchboard that, according to LaWanna, was still in use into the 1960s. The reason that I was drawn to the switchboard was because my Dad spent much of his career at the Western Electric Company installing them. Can't you just hear all those switchboard operators in all those old black and white movies say, "Number pleeeeeeease!"

As usual I tried stumping the resident docent, LaWanna with some of the rustic antiques in the section of the museum devoted to more primitive tools and such. I pointed to a couple of ice saws and dared her to tell me what they were used for. Darn if she didn't know exactly what use was intended for the six-foot saws. I couldn't stump her at all. Pretty smart cookie, she was. I did find one tool that I couldn't identify (photo lower left). Oddly enough, they had two of them, as did Rick in Saguache, Colorado. Rick hadn't known what to make of the tools, either. I have included a photo of the sort of hook thingy here in case you know.

After the museum at Delta, we set out again, only stopping when we found a wonderful flat section beside the highway some miles out of town. The lunch spot came complete with a terrific view of the mountains to the west (photo below right). The rest of the day we just cruised, listened to our book on tape, and enjoyed the bedazzling array of cloud formations and as they scudded across the blue vault of the sky. Virtually no towns or habitations of any kind do you find between Delta and Baker, Nevada, so the scenery just had to do. Every once in a while I'd just have to stop and photograph the stunningly empty landscape. Everything felt so remote and untouched by humans, I just loved it. This particular stretch of road, Highway 50 from Utah to Nevada, has escaped my notice until this trip. Oh, I've been up and down Highway 50 in Nevada on numerous occasions, but east of Ely always looked like venturing a little too far into the wilderness for my tastes. On the contrary. This little stretch of real estate is just fabulously wild and beautiful. The towns, where you can find them, are full of friendly, welcoming folks who would like nothing better than to help acquaint you with their hidden secrets. I for one intend to take them up on their offer.

As we approached Ely, perhaps from a distance of fifty miles, we began to notice a tumult of slate-gray clouds piling up against the foothills and peaks of the Egan Range. After cruising in the soft fall sunlight of western Utah and eastern Nevada all day, the promise of rain in the very hours that we would be arriving and setting up in camp certainly did not excite us. Still, it looked ominously beautiful and we couldn't turn our eyes away.

Just as we suspected, just a hand-full of miles from the Ely KOA, the rain began in earnest. Great. Just what I wanted was to get soaking wet again. But, as fate would have it, this time the rain backed off to a half-hearted drizzle once we had checked in and were assigned our spot. Then, by the time I had put the front wheels on the blocks and hooked up water, sewer, electric, and cable TV, the rain stopped and the afternoon sun began to struggle through the cloud cover. Wow! The sun on the wet landscape, the voluminous storm clouds, the stark look of the sun-glinted distant peaks was too much to ignore. I grabbed the camera and disappeared for a half hour while I prowled around through the dripping sage and juniper trying to get the perfect shot of it all (photo below left).

Tomorrow we are faced with perhaps the longest day of our trip at just over 300 miles. We almost never attempt to drive more than 175 miles in one day, usually far less. Were we to drive more miles than that, we would inevitably sacrifice any opportunity to stop, be distracted by some interesting museum, park, antiques shop, or photo opportunity. Fortunately, much of the Highway 50 corridor that we will be traveling tomorrow we have traveled numerous times before in our exploration of America's first transcontinental artery, the Lincoln Highway. So tomorrow, we'll probably zoom right by Austin and Eureka, ignore the turnoff to the scenic 722 bypass, and turn our heads away when antique shops loom on the horizon. This is not to say that I'll be ignoring the inevitable photo ops, I know there will be some of those. But in all probability, I'll spend so much time driving tomorrow that I won't be sitting down with the computer to finish this particular saga tomorrow night. Hopefully, I'll catch up in a day or so be sure and tune it to catch the wrap up.

Until then, we wish you good food, good wine, and exciting destinations. Oh, yeah!

Ciao.

Under the wire -- Almost

We just got into camp today in Richfield, Utah, ahead of the rain. Only problem, just getting to the front door does not get the plumbing and electrical set up, the sewer line run, and niceties like the TV cable connected. Those things, unfortunately, I had to attend to just as the clouds parted and a very determined downpour began. For a moment I thought that perhaps that I'd just get back inside and wait out the rain. But then I thought, what if it doesn't stop all night. So, I continued the setup and within ten or twelve minutes had finished and dashed back under cover. Back inside, I stripped off the soaking clothes, jumped into the shower, and minutes later was sitting all nice and comfy inside watching the rain pour down. Even though we had ended our day in a sort of anticlimax, certainly the rest of the day had been darn enjoyable.

Last night, we had not been able to locate a regular campground, the ones that come complete with picnic tables, barbecue facilities, and lots of elbow room between the RVs. Yesterday, Price, Utah, had been our afternoon target city and the only AAA recommended spot with regular RV hookups was an older motel on the fringes of town whose owners had set up a couple of dozen hookups behind the motel. This type of setup is never one of my favorites simply because they often seem to skimp on the amenities considered standard by more bonafide camp grounds. Still, once we had set up and connected, we soon discovered that it wasn't a bad place. It was certainly quiet and lacking in any traffic. Only one chap arrived after we did and, yes, he did take quite a long time to position himself. But after he settled down we didn't hear a peep out of anyone.

The reason for picking out Price on the map was many-fold. For one thing, I have a ton of relatives on my Mom's side living in and around Price. She used to keep track of them and I, unfortunately, have not. But I remember her talking about them and visiting them while my son, Robert, was a child. Dad and Robert and the local family members would prowl the deserts, stopping along the way to go prairie dog hunting. Someday I have to come back and try and re-establish those connections. In lieu of that future quest I wanted to drive the local roads, visit the local museums that I have known about for decades, and just try and capture those still vivid feelings I have for the place that Mon, Dad, Brother Cliff, and I first visited back in 1962 or so.

Today, Concetta and I had decided to spend the first half of the day doing museums, then head south, tour through the town of Cleveland where my maternal grandmother's brother lived fifty years ago, then head on south to eventually grab Highway 50 toward Nevada. The first museum we wanted to visit was known simply as the "Prehistoric Museum" on the map. The thing to keep in mind about Utah, and especially the territory south of Price, is that prehistoric finds, both paleo-Indian from thousands of years ago AND dinosaur-related from tens of millions of years ago are as plentiful as left-over hippies in Key West, Florida.


I have to tell you that most times I don't get overly excited about either of these topics. Museum displays that light my fire tend to be devoted to the historic rather than the pre-historic. I'd much rather look at accoutrements from General Custer's 7th Calvary or an old stagecoach from the Butterfield Stage Company. Still, I have to say that this pre-historic museum in Price is just about as good as museums get. I found myself actually getting excited about the paleo-Indian displays, especially the ones devoted to their crafts, which abounded on both levels of the museum. I especially liked a display devoted to teaching the viewer exactly what steps were necessary for turning a big block of obsidian "cobble" into a tiny, finely crafted arrowhead. I just starred at it for many minutes, trying to memorize as much of the process as possible. Some things don't photograph well and this display was one of those. But I'd love for you to see it.

Another display that just blew me away was the reconstruction of a Ute Indian pit house -- actually half the house. I just loved it. Obviously, American Indians were just darn smart people. This house was just perfect for keeping cool in the summer and warm in the winter without using a lot of lumber. I have included photos for you to see (above left). The structure is round and has supporting timbers of, I think, of something like juniper. Then they used a wattle and dab technique to bridge the gaps between the timbers. Over this they piled about five inches of dirt. This whole structure sat atop a round pit about two feet deep lined with stones. Everything looked very sturdy and weather tight and I expect that the home maintained a fairly constant temperature inside. Very, very impressive.

One of the things in which this particular museum specializes are dinosaur "footprints." Yes, you heard right. Because they mine for coal in Utah, coal miners often come across footprints of long extinct creatures in the coal strata. You can see from the photo at left that the museum has four of only six known stegosaur footprints in existence in the whole wide world. Incredible.

The museum contained two wings, one devoted to the paleo-Indians on two levels, and the second devoted to dinosaurs on both levels. We learned about arrow shaft making. We learned about basket making. We learned how to heard rabbits into a semi-circular enclosure set up in advance with a sort of fishnet made out of plant fibers, usually from a plant called "dogbane." We learned how the Indians would start a fire in a certain area, then tribe members would fan out and "herd" grasshoppers toward the fire. Then, when the fire died down, the Indians would collect the roasted grasshoppers, pound them into a sort of meal. With the meal they made tortilla-like cakes. These grasshopper cakes are very high in protein, we know now, and substituted for protein when animals could not be procured.

Our next museum lay six miles to the north in the little Utah town of "Helper." Wikipedia says "Helper is situated at the mouth of Price Canyon, alongside the Price River, on the eastern side of the Wasatch Plateau in Central Utah. Trains traveling westward from the Price side to the Salt Lake City side of the plateau required additional 'helper' engines in order to make the steep (2.4% grade) 15 mile climb up Price Canyon to the town of Soldier Summit. Helper was named after these helper engines, which the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad stationed in the city." I have an interest in the Denver and Rio Grande because my maternal grandfather worked as a bridge builder for them in, I believe, the 1920s. In 1924 I know the family was living in the town of Clear Creek west of Price because that's where my Mom was born, that being a very important event in my life.

I hoped that a trip to the museum would improve my education on the railroad and its history. Unfortunately, when we arrived we discovered that the facility is closed on Mondays. So Concetta and I set off down main street to look for any interesting photo ops. I shot the photo at right of a largely untouched art deco theater just up the street from the closed museum. I'm not sure if the 1935 film classic, "The 39 Steps," is playing there now, or whether the marque was made up in 1935 and they've never showed another movie since. Either way it was fun to see.

After our walk around Helper we had lunch on the edge of the Price River, then began our long trek south toward the town of Richfield, Utah. We did stop briefly in the town of Castle Dale to take in another museum which specialized in some very fine taxidermy. Their stuffed big (and small) game animals were so realistically done that at one point when I told Concetta to be careful, the bobcat she was bending over to look at was alive, she actually jumped back.

After Castle Dale, we sat back, put in our book on tape, and just enjoyed the desert scenery rolling by. Off to the south the rain clouds were building, but our immediate world consisted of a wondrous pallet of pastel colored skies, moody white clouds, and speckled sunlit hayfields. I was really hoping we'd make camp before the rains came, but you know how that turned out.

Anyway, tomorrow we're hoping to make the border crossing from Utah to our home state of Nevada and, if we're lucky, to the town of Ely on Highway 50. We don't have any cultural sites in mind at this point, but I'm hoping that something will turn up. Until then, we wish you good food, good wine, and exciting destinations.

Ciao.

Running for Utah, the edge of the Great Basin

This morning in Grand Junction, Colorado, we awoke to the same sounds we fell asleep to, that of a legion of pet dogs, both tiny and massive, announcing that their human caretakers were still remiss in their duties, much as they'd been for the several hours before we turned the lights out. I kid you not. If you combined all the dogs we've seen on this voyage, in every camp site from Washington to Illinois, and from South Dakota to Colorado, they would not in their entirety add up to the menagerie present at the Grand Junction KOA yesterday. I thought at first we had wandered into a dog convention, since virtually every RV seemed to contain one to several. One traveler had set up, I'm sure with the park manager's permission, a dog grooming salon in the door yard outside her fifth wheel. I was dumbfounded! I swear that I saw everything from the tiniest hood ornament-like dogs to a pony-sized St. Bernard stroll by our windows. Most people out walking their charges had anywhere from two to four on leashes, the existence of which I was certainly glad for. Had all of these carnivores gotten loose at one time, I, as a non dog aficionado, might have been devoured before I could retrieve my shootin' iron. So it was that Concetta and I cleared out of Grand Junction this morning as fast as we could to put the barking din behind us. Our present camp in Price, Utah, seems to be entirely devoid of creatures, at least so far. Let's hope it remains so.

Okay, well, enough of that rant. Today our goal was to leave Grand Junction on Interstate 70, a necessity for moving on toward Utah though, as you know, we always try and stay away from the Interstates. This time we needed I70 to get to the turnoff to the town of Moab, Utah, which lies south of the Arches National Park. Our intention was to skirt to the east of the Park, have lunch in Moab and stock up on supplies, then take a more westerly road, Highway 191, which skirts the park on the west side and drive north toward the Salt Lake City area.

Let me just say, that even though we had to skip the Arches area this trip, the country we saw as we drove to and from Moab was nothing short of stunning. Huge mesas of massive sandstone layers and interspersing volcanic layers stood out against the azure sky like rubies on a blue satin cloth. I stopped for photographs so often I think our average speed today was probably about 20 miles per hour.

Moab is a very interesting town. My earliest memories of Moab are derived from reading Edward Abbey's, Desert Solitaire in my youth. If you haven't read it, make it your goal to do so before you visit Moab. Abbey was one of the very first "vocal" environmentalists. He wrote many books on nature and man's misuse of it, Desert Solitaire being only the first. In that book Abbey is a park ranger stationed in the Moab area, though if I remember right, he lived in a mobile or travel trailer in the Arches National Park. His perceptions of the average park-using tourists were just wonderful, and made him an icon in the environmental movement overnight.

So, why do I bring Abbey up? Well, it's because Moab has become the outdoor adventurer's nirvana of the West. Everywhere -- and I mean EVERYWHERE -- you look all you see are twenty-something kids driving Rubicon Jeeps piled high with, bicycles, kayaks, and camping gear. Every other business proclaims that they are THE best place to sign up for your raft trip on the Colorado. There are ATV and Humvee tours to the back country in case all you have is a city-sized motor home and want to get out and tear up some real estate before you get back to the suburbs. Bike rentals, outdoor gear for sale, and adds for vacation packages are plastered everywhere.

And I was astounded to see how healthy everyone looked. Even the guy slicing Virginia Ham for me at the deli counter at Moab's "City Market" looked lean and fit, like he taught distance swimming or downhill skiing in his off hours. Most of the customers in the store appeared to be just taking a necessary break before they did their next 10 mile hike into the wilderness. The parking lot of the store was jammed with tourists, many driving rented motor homes. Two different couples I passed in the super market isles were speaking foreign languages, one I put down as Swedish, the other, well, my best guess was one of the ex-eastern block countries. Just exactly who comes from the old Soviet Bloc to go biking in the Utah desert? Well, if you take a look at Moab, you'll decide that it's probably lots of folks.

Anyway, I think if Edward Abbey wasn't already dead he'd probably have thrown himself off one of the arches the first time he encountered this modern onslaught of tourists. I can almost hear him -- I was probably 18 when I read his book -- and complaining that we're making the wilderness far too easy to access for the wildernesses own good. Man, back in 1968 he just had no idea, no idea at all.

Okay, enough of that rant as well. I don't want to discourage you from going to Moab and having fun, though I would surely pick an "off season" vacation if you can. Concetta and I thought that the Utah wilderness that we saw today was some of the most awe-inspiring yet. Personally, I just love those lofty mesas you see out here that tower above the valley floor, knowing that they rose straight up out of the surrounding terrain. I find it fascinating to note the different strata of rocks and sandstones, soft layers followed by hard layers, back and forth. It makes for some of the most interesting geology you'll ever see. And imagining the forces that were necessary to thrust those mesas skyward always makes me appreciate the awesome power of earth's internal mechanisms.

Speaking of mechanisms, I had a chance when we landed in camp this afternoon to photograph the drive-up ramp that I spoke of in yesterday's blog. If you haven't already caught the update, you might want to go take a look.

And while I'm on the subject of mechanisms, I was presented with a different sort of problem when hooking up the sewer line today when we got to our present camp. Let me say first that at every camp that offers "full hookups," you will find a sewer outlet next to your space accompanied by an electrical connection box and a faucet for your fresh water connection. The sewer is usually a four inch plastic pipe sticking out of the ground anywhere from zero inches to four or five inches. Those heights are best. Those heights allow you to use what I call an "accordion" unit, a contraption that is much like an old-time string of paper dolls, all hinged together, that you extend out from the coach sewer outlet to the standpipe in the ground. Unlike the paper doll metaphor, the "accordion" extends out in a steadily decreasing height so that it's highest next to the coach and lowest next to the sewer stand pipe. The interior of the "accordion" is rounded so your flexible plastic sewer hose snuggles right down inside and is held firmly. So, you hook up one end of your sewer pipe to the coaches' outlet pipe, one end to the standpipe on the ground, lay the whole thing in the "accordion," and you're good to go.

But if you find a stand pipe, as I did today, sticking out of the ground a good ten inches? Now your "accordion" is way to low at the standpipe end. I'm sure you know what they say about s**t running downhill. You just have to have a downhill slope to get things moving in the direction you want them to go. Of course, I've seen other campers who don't seem to care about this aspect of gravity one bit. Those are the guys who tend to lay their hoses right on the ground and then at the standpipe end the hose suddenly has to make a four or five inch leap into the air to do its job. I just shake my head trying to imagine just how that technique is able to completely clear the pipe before the pipe is stowed away in the coach.

Fortunately, the previous owners of this coach solved the problem of what to do when park owners don't know s**t from Shinola (as my Dad used to say) about how far above ground to construct their standpipes. Those previous owners bequeathed to me a couple of lengths of six-foot plastic home gutter material, the kind that's sort of U-shaped. I've only had to use them a couple of times but they are absolutely essential when you encounter the too-high standpipe problem.

In my basement lockers I have a variety of "containers" for storing things. For all the water-related gear I have a galvanized tub about thirty inches in diameter. For all the sewer related gear I have a rectangular plastic tub normally used to mix mortar for doing brick work. I think I found both at Home Depot. Today I dumped everything out of the containers, upended them next to the coach, and, along with some wooden blocks, used them to support a length of the gutter material. Since the galvanized tub was taller than the plastic tub, they formed a natural incline for the gutter material to rest on. That done, I installed the plastic sewer pipe, resting it inside the gutter, and voila! My sewer connection was at the right height for the standpipe, inclined perfectly to ease the flow of, well, whatever, and looked neat in the bargain.

So that's it for now. In future issues of the Blog I'll try and address other problems we've encountered and, hopefully, conquered. This trip is drawing to a close, unfortunately, but we've had so much fun that I predict that we'll soon be on the road again. Today we listened to some of our treasure trove of music from Wally World as we ate up the miles between Moab and Price, Utah. Two of the CDs I grabbed were America's greatest hits and Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water. Predictably, both albums contained songs about traveling. I think that we can safely assume that more travel is in store for the Happy Wanderers. Not sure when, and not sure where, but it's on the horizon as we speak and will hove into view before we know it.

Tomorrow we're going to kill a few hours here in Price before we hit the road and head west. It's reported that they not only have a prehistoric museum hereabouts for Concetta, but a railroad museum for yours truly. What more could anyone want? So stay tuned. We're not done yet, not by a long shot.

Until next time, we wish you good food, good wine, and quiet pets (Concetta told me not to say that last part).

Ciao.

Movin' on down, Movin' on down the road

This morning Concetta and I arose to a wonderfully bright and clear morning in southwestern Colorado. The air was cool, but not so cool it required a jacket to be outside working on the RV. Of course, last night was a different story. 'Bout froze before we went and retrieved the comforter off the floor where it had fallen from the bed. Even with all the windows closed, we couldn't keep out the Rockie Mountain fall air, which is giving us fair warning of coming winter temperatures.

The camp last night, if you've been keeping up with the blog, is one we stumbled upon when we really didn't have any idea where we were going to tether for the night. It was sort of isolated and forlorn without any proximity to a city or even a small town. Most of the camp sites were empty, save the ones being occupied by full-time residents. I think only one other camper checked in for the evening, a nice old guy who had his sights set on the local "white-rump" antelope for his winter dietary needs. We had a nice chat while I was out wandering the grounds looking for promising photo ops.

But the thing I liked best about the isolated camp was, in fact, its isolation (see photo above right). I don't think I heard so much as a twig snap the whole time we were camped there. We were far enough from the highway to muffle those sounds, and all the permanent residents appeared to be off somewhere, at least I never saw one of them. The grandeur of the view was breathtaking. Only a distant arm of the Rockies, way to the west, and the endless sky full of fluffy white cotton gave you something to focus on. Otherwise, it was just miles and miles of sage and rabbit brush, framed by the pines and aspens of the RV park itself, as far as the eye could see. Like John said, "Almost heaven." Certainly better than our KOA tonight in Grand Junction where the barking of a myriad of yappy dogs is about to make me nutty.

We lingered longer over coffee this morning since we didn't anticipate stopping for any cultural activities today. All we had to do was make Grand Junction by a reasonable hour and the KOA would probably have a space for us. Actually, I'm glad we were just motoring, for the scenery today was perhaps the best we've seen on this trip. I know I keep saying that about every place we visit, but today we had the colossal mass of the Rockies to cross -- some of it at 35 mph. Naturally, since we had lots of time to enjoy the scenery we just sat back and marveled at the sweep of oranges and reds of the aspens through the deep green of the fir forests, the reds and creams, and oranges of the sandstone roadcuts, and, above everything, the wondrous vault of the sky filed with fluffy white clouds. It was just achingly beautiful.

Much of what we covered today seemed to be forests in transition. Little by little the aspens seem to be taking over from the conifer forest, probably due to fires and bark beetle infections. I'm always amused by the talk of protecting the forests in their "natural state" since their natural state has been ever-changing since the beginning of time.

The one "chore" we set out for ourselves today was to find a beautiful, unspoiled aspen grove where no other humans had taken up residence and stage our photo for the annual Christmas card cover (see above photo). This we did, though the steep and rutted dirt road I followed to reach said unspoiled photo spot had Concetta sitting on the edge of her seat at times.

We arrived in the town of Gunnison just about lunch time. As we cruised into the eastern edge of town the first thing my eyes fell on was a display consisting of a very early narrow gauge Denver and Rio Grande locomotive and string of freight cars. Attached to the train display was a large museum building surrounded by grounds full of all kinds of antique equipment. I rubbed my hands together. This was going to be a very GOOD lunch stop. So it was that I could hardly wait to finish lunch and dash across the highway to the promised land. This we did only to find out that the museum had closed for the winter...YESTERDAY!Now that was just not fair. It was so hot in Gunnison today that we were both in t-shirts, but the museum was closed for the winter. Sadder but wiser, we glumly walked back across the highway and, a short time later, motored out of town without trying to scare up any other form of amusement.

For the rest of the day we just enjoyed the scenery. I would have "enjoyed" it more if I could have taken more photos, but very few highway shoulders have sufficient space to park an RV, even temporarily. So, we just had to let all the magnificent vistas drift by the windows while we oohed and aahed from the comfort of our Captain's chairs.

You tend to think about a lot of things while you're motoring for hundreds of miles at a stretch. Of course most of the time we have a book on the CD player cranking away with what have proven to be some pretty riveting tales. But, when we're not listening to one of our favorite authors, I often think about how I could improve this type of adventure for next time, at least logistically speaking.

Take the drive-up blocks, the things you use to level the coach fore and aft so the refrigerator will be happy. Taking as my guide some battered hunks of wood I found in one of the "basement" compartments of the Tioga, I crafted a set of drive up blocks using some 2"x8"x8' lumber that had been treated against moisture. To construct a drive-up block I cut the 2"x8"x8' lumber into three pieces. I cut one at 48",one at 32", and the last at 16". Then I beveled one edge of each piece at a 45 degree angle. Once that was done, I stacked the three pieces one on top of the other with the shortest on top and the ninety-degree, unbeveled edges all lined up at one end. This resulted in a stair-step affair. Once all three pieces were screw-nailed together, I added a strong strap handle on the side of the longest piece at the balance point of the finished ramp. The handle allowed me to pick up the ramp with one hand which keeps my hands cleaner. You've probably already figured out that each step left a 16" area on which the tire could rest, which is all the room you need. And each ascension to the next higher level adds 1 1/2".

These ramps have worked splendidly. The only problem I've discovered is that when I have to put the rear of the coach on the ramps instead of the front, I really need four ramps for the four rear tires. I tried balancing the rear on just two, one on each side, engaging only one of the dual wheels. But that made me nervous that putting all the weight of the rear of the coach on one tire per side might actually damage the tire. So, for next trip, (you knew there had to be a point to this, right?) I'm going to construct a couple of two stage ramps, which will be shorter than the three-stage ramps by sixteen inches. This will make them easier to store. The shorter ones will easily fit in one of the smaller lockers.

The reason I've determined that I won't need four of the four-foot sized ramps is that normally when you have to level fore and aft, you really need different sizes left to right. Since that's true most often, I can just put the shorter ramps on the uphill side of the rear and the longer ramps on the downhill side of the rear, thus maintaining level both fore and aft AND left to right.

Now, if you followed all that, you probably should go buy yourself an RV 'cuz you're already in the groove.

Unplanned, Unexpected, and downright Wonderful

Ever have one of those days when everything you did seemed to segway off the previous thing you did, though none of it was what you planned? Well, that’s precisely what happened today, our second full day in Colorado.

Last night, we landed at the Royal View Campground (named after the Royal Gorge of the Colorado) after wandering northwest out of Colorado Springs on Highway 24, which was the wrong direction, for some fifty miles. Then, as if tracing an inverted “V,” we drove back to the southeast on Route 9 to where it intersected Route 50, our original destination between Salida and Canon City, Colorado. The Royal View Campground occupied the land just south of the Highway junction and proved ideal since we really didn’t want to go any further.

When we started out this morning our intention was to drive east ten miles to Canon City and spend a little time looking for the John Denver CD that we had been wishing for most of yesterday, as well as a couple of books on tape. I figured that our best bet was to find a thrift shop selling used CDs since finding a John Denver CD in a store offering the latest in music might prove impossible. We also stood a decent chance of finding books on tape at such a store.

So, when we reached Canon City (photo above), we drove down the main street of the old part of town scanning left and right for thrift shops. To our surprise, almost immediately we saw one. Stashing the RV one block north under a spreading cottonwood tree, we walked back and found the shop. The clerk behind the counter gave us a cheery “good morning” as we entered and we drifted over to the books, records, and CDs section just inside the door.

Unfortunately, though the thrift shop had a few CDs, both music and books, there were no Denver CDs and their collection of books on tape trended toward evangelical subjects, not really our cup of tea. So, we went back to the sales clerk’s desk and asked if her local library had an area where they sold books and CDs, much as our Carson City library does. She looked at us and wrinkled her nose. “Gee,” she said, “I’ve only been to the local library once. I really don’t know.” Not a reader, we decided, though we personally can’t even imagine such a state of being.

Our original quest thwarted, we decided to check their electronics section for any interesting cameras. They had no cameras, but I did manage to stumble over what I thought might just be the find of the day: a vintage, almost ancient-looking Lionel transformer for electric trains. I had never seen this particular transformer before, for it was capable of supplying not just a fixed current to your trains and accessories, but a widely variable current. I haven’t had time to do any research, but I’d say this transformer is as old as the Lionel company. It cost me all of $7.00.

After leaving the thrift shop we set off down main street looking for anyone who might have the CDs that we desired. At first we had no luck, but soon we stumbled over a used book shop. Thinking perhaps that we had hit pay dirt, we rushed inside. The proprietor, who only reluctantly put down her paperback novel, in response to our inquiry about books on CD, walked us back to the shelf where, I swear, she had more used books on TAPE than I’ve seen in years. She said, “If I have any they’ll be here.” With that she turned abruptly and hurried back to her novel.

Fortunately we did find a few books on CD hidden beneath the dozens of books on tape. Okay, job one accomplished, though I must confess that the price the lady wanted for the three books we chose made us gulp a bit. She probably needed to pay the rent that afternoon.

That left John Denver.

Continuing our walk down main street, we had tried a couple of other stores without success when we came upon another thrift shop, this one, unfortunately closed. But as we stood there contemplating the closed sign in dismay, the sales clerk appeared from inside, unlocked the door, and told us that she really wasn’t ready to open yet but if we’d like to come in we were welcome. “Great,” we said together, and hurried inside.

The clerk had hair dyed the color of Cabernet wine, but was pleasant enough and extremely friendly and helpful. She led us over to a rack full of CDs and Connie spent several minutes browsing through them. Meanwhile, I let my eyes drift around the room to see if the store contained anything I might be interested in buying. “Have any cameras?” I asked.

The purple-haired girl pointed to a shelf behind the register. “We have these,” she said, and reached up and pulled one off the shelf. The camera she brought down was a Kodak Brownie 2A, probably just under a hundred years old, in what I took to be absolutely brand new, unused condition. The camera came with its original instruction booklet AND price tag, both in mint condition. I think you’d have an easier time finding a sabre-toothed tiger in J.C. Pennys during the Christmas rush. A bright orange store tag announced the price: $20.00.

“Will you take $15.00?” I asked, never happy unless I can bargain. She had, just at that moment, picked up the phone to talk to her boss and she asked him. Then to me, “Yes,” she said, and the deal was forthwith struck. I hadn’t found John Denver, but our quest for him was beginning to net me some very nice collectibles. I could do this all day.

However, we actually couldn’t do it all day if we wanted to make any miles before dark. So, we traced our way back to the truck, first stopping at the library which we serendipitously strolled right by, and checked to see if they had a sales shop like our library in Carson City. No luck there with Mr. Denver, either.

Once on the road we made good time and just before lunchtime pulled into Salida. Almost immediately we stumbled over another thrift shop, but our luck there was no better than before – with one big exception. The owner suggested we try the local Walmart. I had my doubts about finding such outdated music at a store that specialized in staying up with all the newest trends, no matter how silly. But we went anyway since we needed a few groceries.

Once we had collected the list of supplies we headed over to the music section. It didn’t take long to see we were in trouble there. I found a “John Denver” divider where his CDs might have been located once upon a time, but in his designated space rested a fist-full of Def Leppard CDs. Evidently someone either couldn’t read, or had a playfull sense of humor.


For awhile we thumbed through the various artists looking to see if John had been misfiled by the same undereducated clerk who filed Def Leppard in Denver’s spot, but no luck. Finally, we sighed and were about to walk on when we spotted a rack full of really OLD names in the music business. Names like Simon and Garfunkle, Bread, America, Gladys Night, Willie Nelson, were all represented among host of other old artists. We started frantically thumbing the oldies but still no John Denver. We were about to give up when Concetta suddenly yelled and thrust her arm skyward in triumph. She had found the one and only John Denver tape, his greatest hits.

When we left Salida it was with the expressed purpose of finding the prettiest spot we could find near the highway and have lunch (photo 2). So it was that just scant minutes later we were parked underneath a canopy of quaking Aspens, just walking distance from a icy-cold Rockie Mountain stream, and were kicking back over a sandwich and a cup of coffee. We looked at each other and, almost without words, we knew it was going to be a very unpredictable day.

My intent for wanting to go south out of Colorado Springs was to visit the tiny town of Saguache that my mother had introduced to me back when I was a child. My mom’s father, James Franklin Jones, grew up in Saguache and his uncles were two of the earliest residents and business owners in the town. I didn’t have a really good reason for wanting to go there, but I just felt that Mom would want me to. The town lies quite a bit south of our eventual intended route west, which will force us to backtrack a bit, but I just felt it would be worth it. I also wanted a chance to photograph the headstone of my great Uncle, Benajah Stubbs, who fought in the Indian wars of 1864 and who was, I knew, buried in the Saguache cemetery (third photo from bottom).

If we had gone for the scenery alone, the road to Saguache would have been worth the drive. We had to surmount a pass of over 9,000 feet, which made for slow going, but the easy coast down on the other side was a dream and afforded us vistas that only the Rockies can provide. Since Saguache is only 45 miles from Salida, we were soon there. I told Concetta that my primary aim was to stroll around the town a bit, take some photographs, and soak up some of the tiny Colorado town’s atmosphere. We parked the RV on a side street in the shade, grabbed the camera, and were off.

Moments later we stumbled into a junk shop on main street and met Rick (seated guy in pink hat). Of course we didn’t learn his name until an hour had gone by. Almost as soon as we entered his shop, Rick said in an unmistakable New York accent, “you guys take your time and look around. I’m going to the post office. You guys are in charge. You can look in any of the cases you want.” And with that he was gone. Concetta and I looked at each other, shrugged, and began our search for treasure.

Before long, more folks appeared in the shop and we gave them the same instructions. Before Rick returned we had pretty much covered every aspect of the antiques and collectibles that the shop had to offer. Truly, I had seen things in there that I had never seen anywhere else. I later told Rick that if I were in my pickup and not the RV I’d just have to take some of his treasures home with me.

As you probably know from reading this blog, I like to try and stump experts on antiques. This time I had seen the perfect object that I knew would stump Rick. Out in his back yard he had a device used by railroad builders to ensure that the track remained a consistent width, rail to rail. They have a special tool for this task and I had spied one in Rick’s side yard. Turned out I was right, he didn’t know what the tool was used for and I scored a big hit with him. Then it was Rick’s turn. He showed me a measuring device that I was not able to identify. “Used by lumbermen for measuring cut timber,” he said, with a big smile.

We went back and forth this way for the next few minutes, forming that special bond between lovers of antiques that only they appreciate. Finally, letting him know we just had to get on with our walking and picture-taking, I asked if I could take his photo. “Sure,” he said. “Most people tell me I look like Peter Falk,” and he proceeded to act out a passable impression of Peter. I have included his photo so you can be the judge. Rick is, in fact, a sort of new age John Denver. He came to the Rockies sixteen years ago and never left. He's living in a tiny town with just five hundred residents. Quite a change from New York.

After leaving the junk shop, Concetta and I walked around town a bit, just photographing some of the older houses and commercial buildings, finally ending up back at the RV. There was just one place I still wanted to see in town – the print shop. As some of you may know, for just under a decade of my life I worked as a printer in an old-time print shop in Carson City. Our equipment back then was a mixture of old and new. The new handled our modern offset printing. The older equipment tended to be castoffs from the local newspaper and harkened back to the days when printers either handset individual letters in a “chase” to print newspaper columns, or set entire lines and paragraphs using "hot type cast from molten lead.”

The Saguache print shop (yellow building), as I well knew from earlier visits going back to 1962, still used the old fashioned hot type and individually-set type just as Mark Twain had done in Hannibal, Missouri in the late 1840s. As I told the owner when I walked in, I just came here to "smell" the place. A vintage print shop has a smell found nowhere else, a mixture of centenarian oak type cases, special inks, acrid solvents, gear oil, and the dust of decades. It can’t be duplicated in modern shops. I loved it thirty-five years ago when I was a printer and I love it still.

The owner, Dean (standing in front of yellow building), and I spent the next half hour talking printing and reminiscing about printing in days gone by. Dean’s shop probably hasn’t been measurably altered in the last 100 years. He has type cases that go back even further than that. I wandered the shop as we talked taking pictures and asking questions about his business. Dean good naturedly put up with me and actually seemed to be enjoying himself. But after thirty minutes Concetta, who had gone back to the RV, called me on the cellphone. “Where the heck are you?” she asked. I knew it was time to go. I'd had a great time, but I was burning daylight. I asked Dean to come out on the porch so I could take his photo. I could tell Dean loved his work, just as I had loved the printing business. He told me that he usually worked alone, most often seven days a week, putting out the local newspaper. I knew he'd never get rich, but I envied him.

When I finally got back to the RV I noticed immediately that for the previous two hours I’d left the lights on. Still, the trusty Ford fired right up and we were off on our next quest – to find the cemetery. As the sun sank toward the mountainous horizon, Concetta and I soon found ourselves on a windswept hillside looking for the headstones of the Stubbs family, three of which I immediately found, as if Mom were guiding me all the while, I thought. Two of the markers had been made simply out of wood and had been sandblasted almost to illegibility by the wind. Benajah’s, made out of stone, had weathered better. Trying to remember what they had looked like when I saw them fifty years ago, I snapped the photos, hoping that something of the writing on the wooden ones would show up.

Then, the photographs captured, we were on our way again. It had been a long, but oh so fruitful day filled with weird and wonderful people, wildly successful treasure hunting, and the beautiful scenery of the high Rockies. We only had one more task to perform: find a place to park for the night. Based on advice we heard in town, we tried two different locations without success. Resigned to driving into the twilight hours, we started north again in the direction of Salida. Incredibly, as if someone was still guiding our steps, we quickly ran across a tiny, almost deserted RV camp just a dozen miles from Saguache. We rolled in with daylight to spare, enough, in fact, for a few photographs of the vistas outside the RV windows (second to last photo). Before the dust had settled, we were hooked up, dinner was cooking, and, once again, everything was right with the world. The final photo is of Concetta, plotting our trek for the morrow.

So, until next time, we wish you good food, good wine, exciting destinations, interesting people in your life, and, when the occasion is right, a John Denver CD to sing along with as you motor through the Colorado Rockies.

Ciao.

Rocky Mountain High

Back in 1962, when I was about 13 years old, my Mom took up the hobby of genealogy. She had inherited a large box of old family photos, most without any identification, and had come to the conclusion that she'd have to make it her life's work to find out who those folks were and where they had lived their lives. Thus began our annual pilgrimage to a whole list of tiny, largely obscure towns in Utah and Colorado; towns with names like Clear Creek, Skofield, Colton, Salida, Canon City, and, most memorably, Saguache.

You might think that a thirteen-year-old would have yawned, crawled onto the nearest horizontal surface, and gone to sleep. Not me. Not hardly. I was immediately enthralled by all the old cemeteries my mother wanted to visit. I watched with eager anticipation as sleepy gold rush towns would hove into view around bends in the narrow, two-lane highway. I scanned the horizon for signs of vintage vehicles I could photograph, ancient head frames that would mark the location of long-dead gold mines, or rusty railroad tracks curving their way along the river bottoms. In short, I was immediately, and, as it would turn out, forever hooked on western history. BIG TIME!

My parents were not wealthy folks in the 1960s. To accomplish these exotic vacations (at least I saw them as such) my dad had to borrow a travel trailer, probably about a sixteen footer. It was white and aqua marine blue and was pretty darn cute as I remember with it's varnished interior woodwork and diminutive cooking area. I think Dad traded use of the trailer for a parking spot in his yard, since the owner had no room to store it on his own property. The biggest problem with the tiny trailer was, as I remember, that it only had sleeping accommodations for Mom and Dad. Cliff and I were banished to the bed of the pickup truck each night. I don't think we really minded, since we had each other. Plus, I suspect that it seemed reckless and adventuresome for two kids 11 and 13, which served to heighten its appeal. Most of the time the weather was mild, though I do remember waking up one morning to find my sleeping bag covered with a light dusting of snow.

Because it would have been pretty uncomfortable for the four of us -- Mom, Dad, brother Cliff, and me -- to ride in the cab of his '56 Chevy truck, Dad hit on the idea of having Cliff and I ride in the back of the pickup as well as sleep there. Naturally riding out in the open would have been pretty hot and uncomfortable, so dad fashioned a camper top out of aluminum to protect us from the sun. The sides only extended down about a foot from the roof which afforded us unsurpassed views of the surrounding scenery. To provide Cliff and me with a place to sit, he purchased on old Studebaker bench seat from a local wrecking yard and affixed it to the bed of the truck with its back against the cab.

From the beginning Cliff and I would ride back there, isolated from any parental influence or control, and watch enthralled as the wild west rolled by. Well, actually my brother would often nod off with the rhythmic rocking mile after mile, but I would sit transfixed, obsessed with soaking up all the western vistas I could.

I'm telling you this story because Concetta and I are now in Colorado, the historic stomping grounds of my mother's father's people and the destination of the aforementioned family vacations nearly a half century ago. Colorado has, since the tender years of my youth, felt like coming home. My family criss-crossed these mountains and valleys in that old white Chevy pickup, towing that borrowed travel trailer, until Mom had mostly fulfilled her research goals and then we quit. Of course by then I had gown "too old" to be going with my parents on vacation, anyway. But I never forgot. Not by a long shot.

Now Concetta and I are camped on route 50, part way between Salida and Canon City, and right in the thick of my mother's favorite ancestral haunts. I can feel her with me as I type this, looking over my shoulder, encouraging me to explore it all again, breath it in as we did together so many years ago. I feel a tremendous need to hold that history in my hands, rub my fingers over those century-old gravestones as I did back then, walk those streets and capture it with my camera. Yes, I'm back and I think the spirits are with me.

As you're probably aware, Concetta and I try each day to not only cover enough miles to get us back to Nevada sometime before the snow flies, but to "accidentally" stumble over some cultural activity that we will find mutually rewarding and, more importantly, educational. Today, since we had chosen the wrong road and headed west when we should have been heading south, we happened upon a site that I have been intrigued with since I was a youngster and would run across images of it on vintage postcards. It's called Manitou Springs and as far back as 1908 it has been a popular tourist destination for motorists, both cross-country and in the Denver/Colorado Springs area.

I sort of knew it would be a tourist trap, but what the heck, we were right there. The gate price was fairly reasonable at $17.00 (senior rate), the achingly blue skies and the vibrant red sandstone cliffs looked inviting, and, just ahead, the promise of ancient cliff dwellings beckoned. We paid our money and drove in.

Just inside the first turn we discovered that the parking lot was NOT built for thirty-foot mobile homes, but had tiny diagonal parking for equally tiny cars as far up the hill as we could see. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, I u-turned our beast and parked it back near the entrance where the ground was level and the refrigerator would be the most happy while we were gone.

Incredibly enough, when we had hiked up the parking lot hill for several hundred feet, we arrived at the cliff dwellings to find a sixty-five-foot charter bus parked with its nose headed outbound. I looked around. There didn't seem to be enough room to u-turn a large SUV let alone something as large as a charter bus. I couldn't resist. I walked over and asked the driver if he somehow was able to levitate his coach to make that 180 degree spin. He just smiled.

Concetta and I actually enjoyed the cliff dwellings, though if you're interested in seeing the finest of such ancient dwellings you should visit instead the Mesa Verde plateau in southern Colorado. Though comparatively small, the Manitou folks had a pretty thorough set of explanatory markers as you toured the ruins, which made it very educational and fun. We even found the Museum/Gift shop pretty informative. Naturally, you have to be careful anytime somebody combines the words museum and gift shop, however they really did have some interesting pottery and paleo-Indian skulls to see in between the dozens of racks of trinkets. I wasn't tempted by much of their tourist wares, but we did manage to snag a couple of CDs, one of John Denver instrumentals, and one of Indian flute music.

After our adventure at Manitou Springs, we set off on Highway 24 (we should have been on Highway 115) and enjoyed some magnificent vistas as we crested the Rockies near Pike's Peak and dropped down into the evergreen and Aspen-choked canyons on our way to Canon City. It was so beautiful I could barely keep my eyes on the road, a fact that Concetta insisted on pointing out throughout our drive. The aspens are all golden and the evergreens are as deep green and vibrant-looking as we've ever seen. With John Denver tunes melodically strumming in the background, it was a drive that I hope to replay in my mind for years and years to come.

So, here we are. We didn't make it to Canon City (pronounced the Spanish way as if the n has a tilde above it -- thus, canyon) As we dropped over the summit on first Highway 24, then Highway 9, we came across this nice little campground as we intersected with highway 50. They have full hookups, they have a nice level piece of ground so I don't have to use blocks, and they have WiFi. Pretty much all a person needs in this world. Concetta has just dazzled me with a chicken and rice dish, I've had a nice vodka cocktail, a glass of wine, and if the world ends tomorrow I'll be content.

If it doesn't end, I wish you good food, good wine, and, above all, exiting destinations.

Ciao.

Rocky Mountain High -- Colorado

Well, no Rocky Mountains yet, just the eternal prairie. Actually we can't even SEE the foothills of those towering peaks here in space 10 of the Limon, Colorado, KOA. Everything in every direction is as flat as the proverbial pancake. They do have a nice breeze blowing, thankfully, since it's been hot-hot-hot today as we drove across the final miles of Kansas and eased into John Denver's old stomping grounds. Speaking of Mr. Denver, did you know that his real name was John Deutschendorf, Jr? Still, Denver or Deutschendorf, Concetta and I were doing a lot of humming of Denver tunes as we rolled up highway 40 this afternoon. We hadn't counted on making it all the way to Limon, but the fates were with us today. Not only did everything go pretty smoothly, but we benefited from the time zone change which gained us an hour at the Colorado/Kansas border.

You've probably noticed, at least the three of you who are regularly reading this treatise, that entries have been a bit sparse since we entered the state of Kansas. Since there are no KOAs on Route 36, we were totally dependent on the mobile device. But I suspect that Virgin Mobile has no cell towers or whatever makes my mobile device work, since all the way across we had no connectivity. I guess it's possible that Homer Simpson is running the Virgin Mobile operation and he just fell asleep, but no firm evidence as yet. I haven't tried the mobile device now that we're in Colorado, so the jury is still out on whether Homer's influence will extend beyond Kansas.

So, what did you miss? Well, you missed the intrepid travelers visiting the fabled geographic center of the United States. That's right, there's patch of grass full of picnic tables, park benches and an American flag atop a stone monument that occupies that one-and-only point in the United States of America which, were you to have something to balance a uniformly sliced piece of the U.S. upon, would be the balance point. The point was established in, if I remember correctly, 1940. At that time they optimistically built a motel right on the edge of the little balance point park thinking, as most of us would no doubt, that multitudes of folks would be beating a path to see this balancing act in progress.

I guess, if you believe the literature, the site was never as popular as the world's biggest ball of string, or the baby rattlers as so often advertised on roadside attraction signs back then. Consequently, the motel folded and the Geographic Center park rests serenely in the shade most days as cars rush by unabated on Highway 36, their occupants completely oblivious to what they're missing. Should you want to go, you'll have to travel route 36 and look for signs for the town of Lebanon. Take your lunch and spend a quiet hour. It's a nice place for listening to the sounds of silence. I think the crunching of my lunchtime Sun Chips was the loudest sound I heard there.

Last night we slept in Prairie Dog Town, a wonderfully kept state park near Norton, Kansas. Concetta found it in the camp book and it sounded like just our sort of place. As much as we liked our camping arrangement in the Marysville city park, we discovered once we'd gone to bed that the night was filled with train sounds. Near ceaseless train whistles and the clickity-clack of train wheels went on, literally, all night long. The next morning, when it was time to leave, we discovered that just a block or so away from the park -- you won't believe this -- were NINE railroad tracks arching through the city. I assume that the tracks were not all main lines but a staging area for building trains. Oh, well, win some, lose some.

So Prairie Dog Town turned out to be perfect for a short-term or long-term camper. Everything was kept very clean and orderly and, except for a few muted voices at one point, I didn't hear another thing the whole time we were there. We had a nice site in the trees, easy to access with the RV, and we even had an opportunity to sit outside and have a pre-dinner cocktail before the bugs found us and told their friends. The park didn't have a sewer connection for each camp site, but the general-use dump station near the entrance was very easy to use. In just a few minutes we had dumped the tanks and were on our way.

But the question was, which way to go. If we continued on Route 36 that headed right across Kansas and Colorado all the way to Denver, we didn't see any camp sites listed, public or private. So, we decided to head south on route 383 from Norton, then catch Route 40 toward, well, Denver as well, but on Route 40 we could stop at the KOA in Limon. The route we chose was somewhat circuitous, granted, but we were hoping to avoid any contact with Interstate 70 and maybe discover an out-of-the-way gem of some sort.

And we did. The best point of interest we stumbled over today was the town of Wallace. In the 1800s Wallace was a vitally important point on the overland stage route as well as being located near Fort Wallace which figured prominently in the Indian wars of the 1860s. Even General Custer had occasion to spend time in the Fort Wallace area in the mid 1860s. As fate would have it, Concetta and I decided to spend some time in the Fort Wallace area, too, as we reached it just about lunchtime. Granted, I didn't expect much from the town's little isolated museum, located, as it is, out in the middle of the Kansas prairie, but boy was I wrong. The museum was just top notch. Everything was skillfully and carefully done throughout. They had everything from a prairie schooner to their own railroad station, from a myriad of tools from every frontier craft, to women's and men's fashions from 140 years ago.

But the wing of the museum that I liked the very best was devoted to one man's collection of "dug" artifacts from the various military forts, camps, stage stations, and battle sites throughout the area. This chap had retired and taken up the hobby of metal detecting. Before he finally donated the collection to the Wallace Museum, he had collected thousands and thousands of artifacts which he carefully researched, cataloged, and displayed in framed site-oriented collections. (Note: there were at least thirty of the framed presentations - see photo for one).

I was so taken with this collection, I tried photographing it all. I was totally dismayed to find out that no one had made a photographic record of the collection, complete with the collector's notations, which would help future historians identify other found artifacts. I did find one item at the museum that I hadn't expected to find: a book on the archaeology of the Sand Creek Massacre. The subject of Sand Creek is close to me because my great grandmother's brother was a participant. Probably none of you are familiar with the topic, but the Sand Creek massacre will go down in infamy as one of the country's most unnecessary tragedies. The story, in short, concerned Chief Black Kettle's village of largely friendly Cheyenne's that was attacked by the Colorado 100-days Calvary in 1864. Over 150 Indians, mostly women and children, were cut down, though they posed no threat to the surrounding population and, indeed, were flying the American flag over the Chief's teepee. Very, very sad.