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FW: trip25

Sunday Another leisurely leaving. A leisurely day. All of fifty miles. Now we’re
at the Pagosa Riverside RV Park. Rather rustic, but right on the river. It’s funny. I was talking to a guy this morning at the RV park in Durango
we stayed at, who is driving a coach that cost four or five times what ours
did. Tonight, we’re definitely the upscale rig in the park. There is an
upscale park down the road. Class A motorhomes only. They have to know
what you’re driving before you get to know whether you can stay there or
not. We cruised it. It’s all landscaped and cement. Very clean. We’re
happy at the funky one down on the river. We’ve seen a lot of birds here already. This is the best yellow warbler
place we’ve ever been. There is a bird here we don’t recognize, either. I
think it’s a warbler, but I can’t get it to match any of the warblers that
are supposed to be here. I thought it might be a Verdin, but it’s not the
right color and they don’t live here anyway. Solved a fragrance mystery. Off and on this whole trip, there has been an
unidentified aroma in the motorhome. Not all the time, but at least once a
day on most days. Tonight we figured out it coincided with the heater
coming on. That was scary. Something decomposing in a heater vent
somewhere? That could only get worse. But tonight it got really obvious,
so we went after it. Determined. Hand and knees. Sniffing. And then ….
There it was…. Pet food. Dry pet food. The pet dish had gotten pushed
right up against an inconspicuous heater vent under the refrigerator. It
was a really handy place for the pet food, but it was right in front of some
really hot air. Throw some pet kibble in the hot air popcorn popper and
you’ll see what we were dealing with. Passed the turn to Chama. Fifty miles away from here, in a different
direction from Durango, there is a town on the New Mexico border that has a
narrow gauge railway station, and steam locomotives, and train rides along
the border all the way to Antonito, Colorado. Maybe we’ll get a chance to
go check them out before we leave here and go back up to Silverton. Silverton. While we were there, Judy was in a shop visiting with the shop
owner, if you can imagine that. Turns out he’s also the president of the
board of a small nonprofit theatre group right in Silverton that is unhappy
with their current auditor. We’ll visit with them next week when we go back
up there.

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Aspen

Next day, a drive through Glenwood Canyon in the morning light, an early
arrival in Aspen. We had the choice of staying in a trailer park in Basalt,
with full hookups, and a very congested 20 mile commute to work each day; or
a campsite in Difficult, a forest service camp, with no hookups, no dump
station, no spots really big enough for us, and a very easy 5 mile commute
to work each day. We opted for a campsite at Difficult….. as soon as we
could find one we could get into. The space itself is plenty big for us. Problem is, the access road is
narrow and heavily forested. I drive past the spot. I put the motorhome in
reverse. I back up until the rear axle is at the left edge of the space. I
crank the wheels, but cranking the wheels left moves the front end of the
motorhome to the right. There is nowhere to the right for the front end to
go. I can’t crank the wheels to get into the space. We try other angles.
We try another spot. While we were trying and failing to get into the spot we wanted to get into,
someone vacated a spot we could get into. The campground host said they had
seen a forty-footer in there before, so the challenge had been issued. We
were going to get it into this spot. It took a few tries, but we made it. When negotiating a tight spot, there are eight motorhome corners to keep
track of. To do this, we have two side mirrors and a backup camera for the
driver. We have Judy on the outside with a walkie-talkie. It’s a good
system. It almost always works. Seven out of the eight corners of our
motorhome remain unscathed. Difficult. The campground. Deer, fawns, streams, beaver ponds, birds,
butterflies, stars, milky way, quaking aspen, chipmunks, rainbow trout,
brown trout, yellow warblers outside our window feeding their chicks. We’re
at eighty-five hundred feet. Warm days. Cool nights. It’s all good. Did some littlefishing on the stretch of the Roaring Fork that goes by the
campground. Shallow water. Pocket water. No graceful drifts. It’s fast
fishing. Rainbows and browns. The big fish in the pockets are twelve
inches. Smaller fish in the shallows. Caught a bunch. With no hookups here, we’re dry camping. The critical components of dry
camping are propane, fresh water, electricity, gray water holding, and black
water holding capacities. We have thirty-five gallons of propane, that’s
enough to camp all summer. We have a hundred gallons of fresh water. We
can last a long time on that. We have four house batteries to provide
electricity. We don’t need much electricity, and if we need more than we
have, we can run the generator once a day to recharge the batteries. The
black water holding tank, for the toilet: capacity is not the problem. We
dump it every two weeks before it gets too smelly. One of these components
is going to be the limiting factor. It’s going to be the gray water holding
capacity. This tank is about fifty gallons, to hold dishwater, bathroom
sink water, and shower water. Our dry camping will be limited by how much
wastewater we put into the gray water tank. Judy fed us on paper plates.
She saved any silverware and cooking utensils in a tub of water until it was
time to wash them once a day. Showers were brief. Judy washed her hair
once at the outside faucet to keep the water from going into the holding
tank. Since I’m working, I have to wash my hair every day. Carefully. Five days. Sunday through Thursday. The job is done. All capacities are
fine. The fresh water tank is still half full. The gray water holding tank
is three quarters full. It requires living carefully, but it looks like we
have the capacities to dry camp for a week at a time. If we’re not working,
we could stretch it even farther.