Author: Steve

Then, it’s back to the land of the high desert sunsets.

The first night out. A cold look at a full moon rising.

An uneventful day. An easy drive down Interstate 25 to the middle of New
Mexico: Albuquerque. It was a good raptor day: a golden eagle, two
swainson’s hawks, and many red-tailed hawks. Saw a falcon fly over tonight,
probably a prairie falcon. Have you ever noticed that some of the trees at the top of Monument Hill
aren’t really trees? They stand out over the top of the forest. They look
like trees, but if you look carefully, you can see they’re full of antennae.
I can’t really look too carefully as I’m driving past, it’s not a place to
pull over. Military monitoring devices I suppose. The Montezuma quail. Only lives in a few places in Arizona and Southwest
Texas. Secretive. Prefers grassy oak woodlands. Sits motionless when
alarmed. How hard could that be to find? Sounds like a slam-dunk bird to
me. Here is a picture (I didn’t take) of what it looks like. Looking forward to a football game tomorrow: the Broncos at the Bills. The
Bills have hardly won anything this year, so that should be a really easy
win for the Broncos….. unless maybe something totally unexpected happens,
like it’s cold in Buffalo or the weather is bad. But, hey, what are the
chances? C’mon Broncos. Let’s see that offense this week. Today’s crockpot torture: beef stew.

What I really like about these big pusher motorhomes is that there is so
little to go wrong with the motor. They are very simple and reliable. It’s
the same motor the over the road truckers use, a million mile motor. We
have 10,000 miles on ours. That’s how many miles on ours when it lost power. Cruising down the freeway
at sixty-five miles an hour and we lose power. Wait! We have 990,000 miles
to go! It happened gradually, the power loss, just after crossing Monument Hill.
It didn’t sputter or blow smoke like a fuel problem would. It just wouldn’t
go when I pressed on the accelerator, like we had a governor, like a
computer needed to be reset or something. We pulled over at the next exit
to a truck stop. We let it sit for a few minutes and fired it back up.
Perfect. So off we went again. Until the north side of Colorado Springs.
Loss of power. We pulled off on the shoulder and called for help. We have
a 24-hour service line to Monaco (who owns Beaver Coach). They found a
repair shop for us on the south side of Colorado Springs. They told me if
we could get there, they could look at it tomorrow and we couldn’t stay in
the coach on their property. We limped there. Judy went inside to talk to them. They said they’d get to
us as soon as they could, and in the meantime we could park in the next lot,
put our slides out, and stay there as long as we needed to. Things always
get better after Judy goes in to talk to people. They got to us by one o’clock. We were done by dark, drove a few more miles south, and hooked up for the
night at the KOA. A ninety-mile day. The problem didn’t have anything to
do with the engine. It’s a Caterpillar C9. It’s not going to break down at
10,000 miles. A duct in the air cleaner system had come loose. Sensors
detected conditions they didn’t like and powered down the turbo. When we
pulled over and shut it off, the abnormal conditions went away, the sensors
relaxed, and everything would work fine again until the sensors realized
there was a problem again. We were parked stern-into-the-wind during that
last storm in Golden. Maybe the hurricane force wind blew it apart. At any
rate, an easy fix. We’re set to continue on our way tomorrow morning. Two temperature zones
south, to West Texas and Montezuma Quail.

Enough of the deep freeze and record-breaking mountain snow. Tomorrow
morning we’re off in search of warmer weather and the elusive Montezuma
Quail. We’re not through with work for the year yet. One more job, a week
from now, in Las Vegas, New Mexico. We could lurk in Golden, a day north,
until then, or we could drive down to West Texas and lurk there, a day’s
drive south our client. Our motorhome has been in Golden for a month.
We’re back to single digit weather here. We’re headed two temperature zones
south. And that’s where the Montezuma Quail are: West Texas. Not many people get
to see Montezuma Quail. They aren’t very many places, but they’re in West
Texas. I looked them up on the internet. We’ll pop down to West Texas,
pick off the Montezuma Quail, then back to New Mexico for the job. How hard
could it be?