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Trip02

Thursday. Right in the middle of the rainstorm, I looked at the humidity gauge and it only read 35%. I can understand how it would be less than 100% humidity. The air outside the motorhome is full of water, but there is some space between the water drops, so maybe it could be 99 or 98 or even 95%. But 35% inside? That just doesn’t seem right. Got ten hours of sleep. That’s a good start. Drove off into more rain. I had my oatmeal for breakfast. Judy nuked an egg mcmuffin kind of thing, put her feet up on the dash, leaned her seat back, and went back to sleep. Drove south out of Colorado and over Raton Pass. By the time we got to the town of Raton, we could see out underneath the clouds to the south. We drove the rest of the day, just flirting with the south side of the storm. Intermittent showers. We don’t have to drive very far each day. We left ourselves three days to cover the nine hundred miles to Phoenix. We kept driving and driving, trying to figure out where we wanted to stop today, until we realized we were in danger of driving a 500 mile day. We didn’t want to drive that far, so we pulled over at a rest stop picked a level spot, settled down, and cooked a nice dinner. We didn’t really want to stop there for the night, so we drove on to complete our 500 mile day at a nice State Park Campground, Bluewater Lake, west of Grants New Mexico. I got a picture of Judy air-drying her hair the next morning. The legs felt better today, but I’ve been good about taking my blood pressure medicine, so I couldn’t get much of a heart rate going.
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Trip01

Wednesday. We’re off again. We drove off in a light rain. We decided to leave the night before. We got all of a hundred miles before we stopped for the night. Not wanting to be left out of the adventures of our brothers, we stopped for the night at a Wal-Mart. Now we’ve racked up that cultural experience. There were several other motorhomes there, but nobody came out to play or talk with us. I had a nice big loop for my evening run. Patrolled by security. I’ve played hard at racquetball lately, and my legs are pretty dead. We got to listen to rain on the roof all night long. We got a new bed. In the process, we figured out that the guy who had this rig before us had substituted a full queen mattress for the short queen mattress the platform was designed for. I’m not that big a guy, so the short queen length ought to be just fine. It’s as long as a double bed. Since we got the new mattress in, it is remarkable how much more walk-around room we have around the bed. It really is a walk around. I have a question. How can it be 35% humididy while it’s raining?
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Weekend

Not a very ambitious weekend. Did get the north garden shoveled and the tomatoes planted though. Water teepees around them. Got the back garden shoveled for the corn too. Didn’t plant the corn. Just weeded and shoveled, and admired the freshly turned dirt.

Got my work done on four different jobs without going in to the office too. Brought the work home. Just a few more weeks to go in busy season.

Drove the Jeep.

Watched a movie.

Sat outside in the fading light, drank coffee, and talked about retirement.


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Tow cars

Exploring tow car options.

We’re not happy with the Windstar. It still works, but we’d like to move on. We have been considering the Honda Odyssey. It has walk-through room to the porta-potty, but that doesn’t get us four-wheel drive. We think the ultimate tow car should have four-wheel drive.

We’re looking at the Jeep Liberty. Access to the porta-potty would be from the outside rear, but we would love the improved access to the back country once we park the mother ship.
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Trip

I made a mistake. I sent the trip report without mentioning the white-throated swift encounter. And David and the cat. Rags the cat went bonkers over brother David. Just as I was explaining to him that Rags wasn’t really all that affectionate: that he was not a lap-cat, Rags jumped up onto David’s lap, made himself comfortable on David’s chest, and settled down to purr and get his head scratched. Nevermind that part about not needing people. David is different. So Uncle David is now Rags’ favorite Uncle. David takes him for walks in the desert, waits while Rags rolls upside down in the desert dirt, and stands in one spot as long as Rags wants while he’s pouncing on bugs and lizards. Rags the Hunter. It’s an awesome sight. And Rags and David together. It was great. Rags ran over to the door to greet him every time David came over. At the Colorado National Monument, we, David and I, had a close encounter with white-throated swifts. While sitting at the edge of a two thousand foot vertical cliff, we watched the white-throated swifts swoop and swirl in the currents, wreaking havoc on an insect population unseen by us. At least I think the birds were eating. I guess they could have just been flying around having fun. We watched through the binoculars when we could lock on. They’re so fast, they’re hard to follow. Then we realized we could just sit quietly and listen to them as well. It’s a thin little cheeping call they make as they fly around. Subtle. Then suddenly, from high above, and at a speed we can’t even guess, we got dive bombed by one. He buzzed close by our heads with a roar. It was a tiny roar, appropriate for such a small bird, but it was a roar nonetheless. He was going so fast, it must have been the sound of his feathers fluttering in the extreme speed. It startled us both. We continued to sit and listen, and it was a delight.We did hear some more wing-noise from the birds flying around, but nothing like that one roar happened again. To us. Later, when we ran into the young forest ranger, out to Grand Junction for firefighting school, he told us a story about watching those little birds flying around, swirling and swooping through the canyon, and suddenly, one of the little buggers buzzed him. Startled him, in fact. Sorry for the oversight. I didn’t mean to leave out our cat and bird experiences.