Day 10 -- Cortez to Durango, Colorado -- 51 Miles

Today our destination was a short hour away, but an action-packed hour it turned out to be.

Just down the road from our camp in Cortez lay the entrance to the historic Mesa Verde National Park where 900 years ago the ancient ancestors of the Puebloean Native Americans lived in mud and stone dwellings high up on the sandstone cliff faces. In our younger days, Concetta and I drove to the top of the mesa where we could take the trails to the cliff dwellings. While there, we were privileged to climb recreations of the ancient wooden ladders that the Natives used to climb to the cliff cavities. We climbed and explored the ancient dwellings ourselves.

Well, those ladder-climbing and exploring days are long gone. Today we contented ourselves with the vistor's center where Concetta closely studied the various exhibits, and I purused the book displays for anything pertaining to Colorado's flora. When we're exploring roadsides for desert plants and wildflowers, we just love to try and identify the various plants we find.

When we're traveling, I always wear my U.S. Navy ballcap because it seems to prompt complete strangers to approach me for a chat. Today was no different as a couple stopped me in the gift shop and asked about my Navy service time. The man and woman told me that they were BOTH U.S. Navy people, he during the gulf war, and she a spent time as a medic (I didn't find out where). We had just the nicest conversation for ten minutes and parted like we'd been friends for years. Great fun!

The other thing I was trying to find was a Mesa Verde T-shirt that was 100% cotton, which seems to be harder and harder to find nowadays. Over the last dozen years I have purchased such a t-shirt from most of the cool places we've visited, and now my collection probably numbers better than two dozen. But just as happened in the last several of our stops, no such 100% cotton t-shirts were to be purchased at any price. Darn!

Concetta spent her time not only intensively studying the diaramas and other displays, she also took quite a few photos of them. You can see several of those photos in the blog for today. I found just the perfect book, "Wild Flowers of Mesa Verde," to buy. And, since the store had an extensive collection of books devoted to all aspects of Native American cutlure, I purchased a book co-written by the last Navajo code talker still alive. I've been trying to read a book by Joseph Heller, but it's been putting me to sleep so I needed something to replace it.

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When our visit to Mesa Verde was over, our next task was to find a propane fillup station for our RV's tank. Here we got luckier than my t-shirt-buying failure as right across Route 160 from Mesa Verde was an RV camp that came complete with a propane filling station. So we rolled right over there, stopped at the office, and arranged to get an immediate fillup.

This seemingly boring routine resulted in my meeting a truly interesting 68-year-old man who came to fill the tank. He was so personable that we immediately got into a conversation about our work history, our retirement activities, and life in general. Turns out that Ricky was born and raised in Long Beach, California and worked his whole career for none other than Cisco Systems, the company that produces such gear as computer routers. Naturally, I told him about my career in computer support, and we had a high old time chatting about the computer business.

Next we switched to our respective retirements, and I learned that he got bored being retired so now he travels the country working as a maintenance man for RV parks. He told me it keeps him busy, happy, and healthy. He said that if it develops that he doesn't like how a park is being run, or he has problems with the other personnel, he just moves on. One humorous thing he told me was that he had to stop putting his Cisco Systems work history on his applications because the camps expected free computer help even after he told them he gets $150 an hour for such help.

Once again I was very grateful for all the people I meet on the road in America. Each and every person I encounter has an interesting story to tell, maybe more than one. The camp host last night didn't exactly strike me as the camp-host type, so I asked him about his history. Turned out that he was a carpenter and home builder. He said he builds homes until he needs to take it easy for awhile, then he and his wife travel the country being camp hosts. When he gets tired of hosting, he applies for a carpenter job wherever he happens to be living and he runs a nail gun for awhile. Amazing!

Our prime objective today once we got to Durango was to see if there was any hope of obtaining train tickets for the Durango and Silverton train trip. I was under the impression that one must buy tickets at least a year in advance to have any hope of success. Still, the camps have been so lightly populated with RVs that we thought there might be the smallest chance of buying a couple of tickets.

Downtown Durango is a pretty small and crowded area to drive a thirty-two foot rig through, but we decided to risk it. Concetta navaigated us right to the temporary parking area for ticket buying. I asked her to jump down, take the credit card with her, and see what success she might have. In the meantime, I nervously blocked all the temporary ticket-buying parking spaces so no one could buy tickets but us -- at least for a few minutes.

Pretty soon Concetta emerged from the Depot with a smile on her face, and announced that she had been successful. She was able to purchase two tickets for ride on the 5th of May. She jumped back in the rig, and we were off before any officers of the law noticed that we were a menace to the ticket-buying public.

The camp that my Navigator (Concetta) found for the evening was located about seven miles southeast of Durango which turned out to be easy enough to find. But our major discussion along the way was just how we were going to make sure we arrived at the train depot at or before 8:30 a.m. Would we have to hire an Uber or a taxi? Or would we find an RV park resident who was going as well. We knew the latter was extremely iffy, and we'd never taken an Uber before, so I approached the office with a great deal of park trepidation.

Before I reached the door, an older chap on a golf cart rolled up and asked me if I had a reservation, and if so, what site number was I given. I told him I had no reservation and would need to secure a site for the next two nights. It was at that point that a light bulb went off in my head and out of the blue, I asked the guy, whose name turned out to be Henry, if he would be interested in a side job? What sort of job Henry asked. Well, I told him, I'd like to hire him to take us to the train depot at 8:00 a.m. the next morning.

When I say Henry looked skeptical, that would be an understatement. Finally he said, "Well, I have to be at work at eight." I told him thanks anyway and moved toward the door. Unexpectably, Henry got out of the golf cart and came with me.

When we both got into the office, the clerk was on the phone with a potential client, so I turned to Henry and asked him if I could hire him to take us to the depot at seven or seven-thirty so he could be back to work on time. At that point Henry's interest seemed to perk up a bit, so I added that I would pay him for the ride to and from the depot.

The clerk got off the phone then and she proceeded to check us in. I asked her about rides to the depot while mentioning that I had offered to pay Henry to take us and bring us back. The clerk, who turned out to be Henry's wife, Terry, looked at him quizically and mentioned that Henry didn't really start until 11:00.

A bit flustered, Henry mumbled something about being wary of taking the job so he told me that he started at eight. But now that he'd thought about it he'd decided to take me up on my offer.

And to sort of cement the deal I decided to throw a bit of wifely pressure into the deal. I turned to Henry and said, I'll tell you what, if you bring Terry when you come to pick up us up, Concetta and I will buy you both dinner in town so Terry doesn't have to cook.

Henry sort of protested that the cost would be prohibitive. But I responded that he and Terri would be doing us a huge favor, and we considered buying them dinner the very least we could do.

At that point we left off further discussion and Henry guided us to our camp spot and helped us back in. In parting, I reiterated my suggestion of dinner just to give him something to think about. But at least for the time being, I think we can count on Henry to pick us up from our camp and deliver us to the train depot on time, and that's a huge load of our minds. We haven't ridden the Durango and Silverton in many, many years, and I hope it proves to be as fun an adventure as we've had in the past.

Ciao for now and happy travels of your own!