Steve and Judy's Travels!

We did a two-day job in Carbondale. It took three days. While we were
finishing up on the third day, Rags the cat made his escape. Before we
left, we opened up the windows and vents of the motorhome, so the pets
wouldn’t get too warm in our absence. We opened the windows, but left the
screens closed. Rags opened the screen. Right after we left. Rags spent
four hours in the wilderness. Unsupervised. He was waiting by the door
when we got home. He was exhausted, and his bladder hurt. Rags normally
spends most of his time sleeping. Rags of the Jungle probably can’t sleep
much when he’s alone in the wilds. And he certainly can’t pee. Rags could
hardly wait to get back inside to his cat box. Since he had just spent four hours not running away, we left the door open
while we were in and out doing some chores. Rags didn’t care. He put his
head under the skirt of one of the chairs up front, went to sleep, and paid
no attention at all to the open door. Later, we left the door open again,
and he joined us in the campsite. He walked over to the next door to talk
to the neighbors with us. He headed through the bushes for the stream.
Guess he was hitting all his favorite places. It was fun to let him hang
out with us, without his leash on.
Fishing results: We fished the Eagle, and caught nice big rainbows. 12 to
15 inches. The small water of the upper reaches of the Roaring Fork
produced a mixture of small rainbows and browns. The Crystal, right next to
our campground yielded one nice size brown trout. The upper Crystal gave us
several nice sized browns and a really big whitefish. The Frying Pan holds
big brown trout, and leaping rainbows. We caught a bunch there. Fishing the Frying Pan is a magnificent experience. The water is cold and
clear and fast. The wading is mostly knee deep. Standing in the water,
casting upstream, you can pick out fish holding in the water within ten feet
of where you are standing. They will often be actively feeding. While you
fish for targets a little farther away, you can see the trout right in front
of you rising to pick bugs off the surface, then falling back to watch for
the next morsel. You can’t catch these fish right next to you, but you know
that the whole river is filled with fish like this. All you have to do is
make the proper presentation to the ones that don’t already know you’re
here. It is my favorite place to fish. There are sometimes difficulties involved in fishing the Frying Pan. Judy
is recovering from the beating she took on our last visit. I got her rigged
first, and off she went. I stayed at the car and got my gear ready to go.
By the time I got to where she was fishing, she had tumbled down the bank
getting to the water, had gotten herself back together, and was standing in
the river bleeding from her banged up knee. We fished and fished. She
caught the fish of the trip, a beautiful rainbow trout. She hooked it,
played it, netted it, and held it for a picture. She released it unharmed.
We fished until our legs and feet were numb from the cold. Walking back to
the bank, on numb legs and feet, she stumbled on the rocks in six inches of
water and did a face plant. This one I got to see, so I hurried over to
save her flyrod from floating away downstream, then helped her over to the
edge, and out of the water. She finished the day understandably stiff and
sore, but proud of the good job she’d done to land that beautiful fish. Now
her arms and legs and knees look like Matt’s used to when he was a kid.

We fished the Frying Pan.

For those of us who want less length, we just saw something interesting: a
34 foot Bounder Pusher. Imagine the power of a smaller motorhome with the big engine. Course, you’d
have to give up six feet of cabinets.

The motorhome got a little messy dry camping for a week. We have hookups
here. We’ve got two out of three, anyway. We have water and electric. No
sewer. It’s too close to the river. We won’t have to move to dump, though.
They bring a truck by whenever you need and pump out your gray tank. We’ve
never run into that before. I’m interested in seeing how that works.
Anyway, we’re hooked up to power, so Judy got out the vacuum. Turn the
vacuum on, and out comes the cat. You can’t get past him until he gets his
belly vacuumed. Now the fishing prospects don’t look good at all. Afternoon thunderstorms
have blown the Crystal. It’s running the color of hot chocolate. That will
take a few days to clear up. Did I mention the rare bird? We’re on the Audubon Societies rare bird
alert. For several days before we left Louisville, we had an unusual
visitor to our yard. We get mourning doves every day, but after ten years
of feeding birds, a white winged dove showed up. White winged doves have no
business being in Colorado. They live in the Sonoran Desert. A birder who
doesn’t travel much would not get many chances to see a white winged dove.
So we have visitors to our yard hoping to catch the daily afternoon dove
visit. Then this last week: the magpies. There are always magpies hanging around
the Physics Center. We enjoy them. They make a nice chatter. There was
one that looked different. Magpies are iridescent black and white. This
one had a gray brown head and a yellow bill. Magpies have black bills. I
took it to be a juvenile, and didn’t think much of it. Juveniles often look
different from their parents; often, remarkably different. Judy and I got
to talking about it and looked it up in the book. Magpies don’t go through
a change in bill color. There is one kind of magpie, that has a yellow
bill, but it only lives in the central valley of California; a long way from
the Colorado High Country; and even then, they don’t have gray brown heads. Judy put another call into the rare bird hotline. They’re sending someone
up from Glenwood Springs to take a look at it. A yellow billed magpie in
Aspen doesn’t make sense. A magpie with a gray head doesn’t make any sense
at all.

We’re camped at the foot of Mount Sopris.