Well, we’re back again. The Monte Vista trip went well. Got to drive down I-25 and turn right into the mountains. A one-turn trip. Monte Vista is a small community in the San Luis Valley. A down home farm and ranch community in a wide-open desert at seven thousand feet. Normal rainfall for them is seven inches a year. They’re having a drought here too, but we drove down into the valley in a rainstorm. The first rain they have had in two years. We located the Mountain Trails Youth Camp, our new client. We parked down the road at the Movie Manor Motel RV park. By being in the RV park, we don’t get the full benefit of the Movie Manor Motel. If you stay in a room, you get to look out over the adjacent drive in theatre and watch the movie right from your room, with the sound piped in. But, alas, we can see the screens (there are two) from the RV park, but we’re not really close enough to get the full treatment. We’re told this is the only motel of its kind in the country, maybe even the world! Imagine that.After our dry-camping adventures, it was nice to hook up and have unlimited electricity and long hot showers. Haven’t been flyfishing yet, but we’re asking around. Everybody loved Annie, although the cowboy guys seemed more stunned than impressed. They acted like they’d never seen a dog with her own carrying bag before. The Youth Camp headquarters are in an old stone and brick church right in town. That’s where we worked. The actual ranch is thirty miles outside of town, half of that on dirt roads, in a beautiful mountain valley on a stream. Three hundred eighty acres, eight cabins, one A frame, two train cars, a new bathhouse, and a new dining hall. Horses. Dogs. And challenge courses. There is a low rope course and a high rope course. They are all really interesting and challenging events that require patience, trust, cooperation, and teamwork. Everything is set up in the forest, strung between the trees. Years of work on the Executive Director’s part to get this all set up. Following him though all of it for the tour was enlightening. Almost everything he showed us got described as “one of his favorite challenges”. Clearly a labor of love. Annie accompanied us on the tour which involved dirt roads, stock gates, barbed wire, mud, hills, trees, horses, and cow patties. Guess which was Annie’s favorite part. Go ahead. Just try to guess. We made it all the way to the end of the tour in pretty good shape. Then Annie lagged behind. Usually she reserves the full, rubbing the shoulders on the ground routine for dead things. Some distant relative passed on the compulsion to grind the scent of dead things into her own coat. This time was different. This thing was never alive. She passed all those other cow patties until she came to this one. This was the cow patty of all cow patties. We looked back up the hill to see her on her back in the grass, all four legs in the air kicking, as she ground her entire body into a fresh, wet, gooey, green, cow patty. We yelled at her to stop. She did. She stopped, stood up, looked at us, looked really pleased with herself, then fell over on her back wiggling and kicking again until forcibly restrained. I should mention that Judy did the restraining. I didn’t get anywhere near her. She stunk. She really stunk. Luckily for us, we had Annie’s bag along with us on the tour. Annie stayed in the bag stinking until we got back to the motorhome for the night. We had to stop at the grocery to get some doggie shampoo. Annie got a midnight bath and blow dry. Not much in the way of birds around here. Once in a while one flies by, but none seem to land. The campground is pretty much just a parking lot in the desert. Tested the satellite system again. It worked perfectly until that big gust of wind came through and blew everything down. So far we’ve just left everything on the ground. It’s so quiet and nice in the evenings we don’t really need any noise from a TV. Not until football season anyway. This time it all worked without Judy having to drive down the road and hold the cell phone up to the walkie talkie again. Did I tell you about Solar Man? We met him last trip when we stopped at a park in Carbondale to dump and fill. He had an old Bounder with six batteries wired in up front, and fourteen solar panels to keep them charged. Said he never had to hook up. He was so proud of it. I mentioned something about the control panel for my setup and he exclaimed: “Oh. You must have a voltage regulator then.” His whole system consists of lamp cord, clamps, duct tape, and half a dozen batteries with a ton of electricity flowing into them. No voltage regulator. No meter. Just half a dozen batteries bubbling away. The cat got out in the motorhome park today. Judy forgot to attach the bunji to the screen door to keep him from opening it. If she is in the house and sees him going for the door, she zaps him with the squirt bottle. Just water, but he hates it and stops whatever he’s doing. Annie stops what she is doing too, if you squirt her with the bottle. But otherwise, the reaction is completely different. Annie stops whatever she is doing to charge the bottle, growling and biting the water. She loves it. So when Rags got out and took off across the parking lot, there wasn’t much Judy could do, except go for the squirt bottle. When she got close enough to threaten him with it, he ran and hid. In the motorhome. Overall the cat is being pretty good. No Giardia the last couple trips. He has been quiet and comfortable. He guards the house all day and plays with us in the evenings. Wednesday is Judy’s normal day to volunteer, so she found a veterans home and an assisted living house. She and Annie were well received. We really like the San Luis Valley. It is a giant desert valley, fifty miles by eighty miles, with water flowing through it and under it from snowmelt and streams from the mountains that ring it. We took a side trip to San Luis Lakes State Park. It was quiet. It was so still we could hear the pelican’s wings as they flew over us. It’s like Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, but with a lake. Lovely. I want to go back. Shamu sure handles a lot better since we had the air bags in the front suspension replaced. We finished the job and moved on to Lathrop State Park outside Walsenburg. Two lakes. Birding opportunities. Nice campground in the pinion/juniper. Picture attached. We had a quiet evening sitting around the campfire, admiring the milky way, watching for satellites, and spotting the occasional shooting star. It was quiet until that crummy cat overpowered the bunji latch on the screen door, slammed it open, and burst out into the night. Oh well. On to plan C. Never did go flyfishing. We did go home, though. Eventually. Here we are.
