Day 6 -- Cortez to South Fork, Colorado -- 146 Miles

Today was the event for which Concetta and I had looked forward in excited anticipation since we left Carson City. Not since the summer of 1977 had we visited the incredible anthropological/archeaological site of Mesa Verde, Colorado, one of the premier such sites in all of America. We two have been married for more than 44 years, and not since the days when we both were single did good fortune bring us to Mesa Verde.

So today, it was with a tremendous sense of bouyancy that we reached Mesa Verde's exit on Colorado Route 160 and rolled into the parking lot. The first thing we noticed was that the park now had a visitor center very near the highway exit and, wonder of wonders, they had thought to provide parking for RVs.

Unfortunately, that's where our euphoria began to ebb. The spaces provided for RVs were in no way even remotely level, a feature we always seek if possible. RV refrigerators function much better when you keep them level.

Our next bit of disappointment came when we saw the line in front of the visitor's center. Perhaps twenty-five people are standing patiently in front of the door which made it all too obvious that they were limiting access to the visitor center to a few individuals at a time.

I motioned Concetta to grab a place in line while I went over to where a young female ranger sat actively acquainting a young man with where he could and could not visit while in the park. It didn't take me long, as I listened to their discussion, to realize that we would NOT be going to parts of the park that we had explored on our 1977 visit.

When the young man left, I stepped up and asked if the ranger recommeded the trip up the mountain for large RVs. "Sure," she said with a smile, though she sort of wrinkled her nose when I told her ours was thirty-two feet long. She asked me if I was towing a car that we could drive up the mountain instead and I told her no.

"You can go most places," she said, "but the museum is closed at the top. You can drive the road to the museum, but you have to skip the Wetherill Mesa Road on the right here." She pointed out the road on the map. "It will take you about an hour to reach the top and an hour back," she finished.

Right about then I began to realize that two hours of driving to see a mesa full of junipers and distant cliff dwellings was not going to fulfill all our dreams of adventure, and I suspected that Concetta would feel the same.

About that time it was our turn to access the visitor center which, as we soon discovered, was not open for business either. Only the gift shop was open, and we dutifully took a turn through the racks of t-shirts and books on Native American culture. We didn't really get to ask any questions or visit with anyone. I picked out a couple of small picture books on edible plants and medicinal plants so that I could make my contribution to the upkeep of the park, and we quickly left to give someone else a chance to do the same.

After leaving the visitor center, Concetta and I discussed whether two hours of driving to accomplish little else but driving was going to make us happy, and she said no, it wasn't. So, we took a couple of photos, helped along by a chance passerby, then trudged back out to our RV and set off for points east. It should be pointed out, however, that had we been interested in a bit of hiking out to some of the distant visita points, we could have made better use of our two-hour drive. But since my knees won't allow such hiking activities anymore, we had to pass.

Our next port of call was the once sleepy, now bustling town of Durango, Colorado, where the famous Durango and Silverton train rides can be had. We already knew that the train wasn't running, or we might have sought tickets or at least standby status for such a ride. If you haven't ridden the Durango and Silverton, you have missed one of life's truly magnificent experiences. It's been many years since we rode up to Silverton, but on that occassion it was our anniversary and we stayed the night in a Silverton B&B, strolled the town after the tourists had left for the day, and enjoyed some great honky-tonk music pounded out by an octagenerian at one of the local saloons. My God that was high times.

This time, rather than ride the train, all we wanted to do was find a tree-shaded back street and have our lunch. But first we had to get some gas for the rig, so we eased into a tiny station not quite big enough for us on the west edge of town. There wasn't much business in the station, thankfully, and in a short time I had topped up the tank, replaced the cap, grabbed my receipt, and headed back to the driver's seat.

Have you ever watched that scene in “Back to the Future” where Marty McFly hurriedly jumps into the DeLorean, turns the key, and instead of hearing the engine roar to life, all the electronics in the car just die right there on the spot? Well, our RV decided to try that same stunt on us today.

When I got back in the cab after filling the tank, I fastened my seat belt, stuck the key in the ignition, and turned the key. Briefly the dash lights came on, then all the electronics just died. Concetta and I looked at each other dumbfounded.

“Do you think it’s the same problem we had in upstate Michigan last trip,” she asked.

I tried to imagine a worse place to break down than the busy gas station where we were parked blocking not one, but two pumps. “I guess it could be,” I told her. I pulled the hood release and got out to take a look.

Back in 2019, I had tried to troubleshoot the rig's running lights one morning when I discovered they weren’t working. We drove the rig to the nearest town and stopped at an auto parts store to buy fuses. It was there I somehow ended up accidently disabling the truck for a whole day. Not even the men who the Ford dealer sent to our location could figure out what I had done. After having the rig towed back to the dealership, we learned that the Ford folks "thought" they could get to us in a day or so.

That night we got to sleep in the rig in the Ford Dealership parking lot much chagrined by the whole turn of events. The next morning, schematic in hand, I popped the hood again and managed to locate the spot that I thought should contain a fuse and didn't. I wondered if perhaps the missing fuse was causing the problem, so I popped one in just to see. Incredibly, the truck instantly fired right up when I turned the key. Soon we were back on the road, but not before I got a job offer from the Ford crew for fixing the truck on my own and without any help from them.

This time I hadn’t been fooling around under the hood. In fact, I hadn’t been working on anything at all. With the hood now open, I located the fuse that had caused us so much grief in 2019, but a quick inspection showed nothing abnormal. Now I was really getting apprehensive.

It was at that point that I accidently brushed my arm against the positive terminal of the battery and I felt the battery cable move slightly. I took a closer look. Sure enough the terminal cable was loose, as was the nearby negative terminal cable. Guessing that when I had cleaned the terminals in anticipation of the trip, I had obviously neglected to tighten the cables on the terminals again. We had motored all the way from Carson City with those cables loose. Holy Cow!

Well, reseating the cables in the gas station brought the truck back to life, and with satisfied sighs we motored merrily away. And when I say merrily, I mean tremendously, unequivocally, uproariously M-E-R-R-I-L-Y! Then, as soon as we found a suitable lunch spot and parked, I grabbed my trusty crescent wrench and tightened those pesky cables down firmly. Yet another disaster averted.

Since there was nothing we planned on seeing in Durango, we soon jumped back on Route 160 east and quite enjoyed the rest of our day just lazing along, marveling at the magnificence of the Colorado mountains and forests, and heading toward our camp for the night in South Fork, Colorado.

There was only one impediment in our path -- that of Wolf Creek Pass, elevation 10,857 feet above sea level. Now if any of you have owned an RV, you know that you better have a decent engine in that RV if you plan to tackle the lofty passes in Colorado. Our first rig, a 1996 Fleetwood Tioga had a nice, large Ford motor, about a 460 cubic inch monster if memory serves me correctly. But that truck would still drop down to 30 miles per hour over some of the highest Colorado passes.

Our new(er) Ford rig sports a V-10 motor which is just the greatest thing ever. I'm not sure of the cubic inches, but for some reason our Fleetwood Jamboree climbs giant hills -- like Wolk Creek Pass -- like there's nothing to it. We even passed a heavy duty Ford pickup hauling a small, light-weight travel trailer as we climbed to the summit.

So it's four-thirty and we are all set up at the Peacock Meadows RV park on the far side of the pass and have just learned that their internet connection is on a fiber-optic connection. Now that's way cool. I'm here typing the blog while outside the window a herd of deer are browsing in the sagelands, and all seems right with the world.