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A crackling-cold 19 degree pre-dawn start. We’ve gotten considerably better at leaving quietly in the morning. There is a lot we can do before we fire up the engine. If we need to do an extended idle to warm up, we can idle off to somewhere away from the rest of the campground to do that. The night before, I expressed my concern to Judy about bothering our nearest neighbors. They came in after we did last night, and were assigned the spot right next to us. Judy explained that they were all shut up tight with heater fans running, and probably wouldn’t even hear us if we sat right there and ran it. Her point was well taken when I opened the drapes, looked outside, and found our neighbors were already gone. So much for bothering the neighbors with an early startup. In the winter time anyway. We crept out of Raton and popped over the pass into Colorado. A clear-sky spectacular vista greeted us. Snowy mountains to our left. Endless plains to our right. We slid through a sleepy Saturday mooring in Trinidad before anyone even began to stir. Right after, we were greeted by the painfully brilliant sunrise over the plains. Good thing for us we were not headed southeast this morning. I’ve adjusted to this engine/transmission combination. It used to bother me to see the engine rpm drop below two thousand, so I would override and manage the shifting to keep the rpm up. Up, at least over two thousand. But know what? It doesn’t really matter. It might drop to 1700 rpm before it hits the shift point on a hill, but you don’t really gain anything by shifting early and popping it up to 2,500 rpm. It all pulls about the same. And above 2,500 rpm, it doesn’t pull as hard. By then we’ve passed the torque peak. I still manage our speed with the engine brake. When we’re in hilly terrain, I leave the transmission alone, but leave a finger on the engine brake button. The engine brake doesn’t do much at high speeds. You need to be going slower before the transmission can do any constructive downshifting. Approaching an extended downgrade, I need to slow it down to 45 mph, to catch the first big downshift. Then I can ride a 6% downgrade without applying the wheel brakes at all. For 7%, I have to brake occasionally to hold it at forty-five. I love the cruise control. I’ve never had cruise work so directly and so smoothly. On hills, with every gas engine I’ve had, the cruise always disconnects after a given decrease in speed, about ten miles per hour. That happens a lot while driving around Colorado. Lots of long hills to get up. Lots of managing the cruise control. That’s not just a characteristic of motorhomes, it happens on all the cars too. But this cruise control doesn’t do that. Hook it once and you’re done. No lag. Just immediate and solid. It doesn’t overshoot the speed much coming off the top of a hill, or wait to long to accelerate at the start of a hill either. I think they got it just right. Back when we were in cold foggy weather, the windows and outside mirrors got a little hard to see through. Then I remembered! Heated mirrors! I have heated mirrors! Maybe this is what they’re for! It could be that they’re just for melting snow and ice, but maybe they will clear condensation too. I flipped the switch. It worked! The mirrors dried right off. My rear view cleared right up. We’re home. The Bounder has landed. The snow hit when we were three miles from home. Nice timing. Cold and snowy. Colorado. The heaviest weather is projected for the I-25 corridor we just came through. Final bird count: 292.
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Raton

This sucks! We only have one more night on the road. We had a comfortable night and a good dawn start. It was good start, after I got the hose disconnected. We’re back to freezing weather. 27 degrees last night. Judy gave me hot water to pour on the faucet so I could unscrew the hose. Two long sections of hose to reach the water hookup on the other side of the other camper here, a short section, and a water filter. The motorhome water lines are all fine, the heaters ran all night. It was that fifty foot white anaconda we had to deal with. Reluctantly, the hoses all submitted to disconnection, curling up in frozen coils, and stuffing into outside bins, to slowly thaw and dribble down the highway. We drove north. We drove down off the hill, and north from Big Spring to Lubbock and beyond. North to Plainview. There is a town directly west of Plainview called Levelland. We were tempted to divert to Levelland to admire the scenery, but we resisted and continued north to Amarillo, two hundred fifty miles into our day. North from Amarillo to Dumas. Hang a left past the Krispy Kreme donuts, and head west to New Mexico, then northwest, right to the Colorado Border, but still in New Mexico. Raton, New Mexico. An easy two hundred mile day home tomorrow morning, pacing the impending storm. We’ll be home eating lunch, waiting for it to arrive. We finally got out of Texas. Once you get into it, it takes a whole lot of leaving to get back out. Ooh. That could be the tag line of a country song. The hook. “It takes a whole lot of leaving to leave Texas.” We’ve seen a lot of Bounders. We may have picked the most popular motorhome on the road to be our favorite. We may have picked the most popular Class A/tow car combination as well. There are an awful lot of motorhomes towing Jeeps. It’s a little unsettling, this “joining the majority”. The people next to us last night were interesting. They’re in a pickup truck pulling a travel trailer, with two Harleys in the back of the truck. They’re from Michigan, headed for Arizona to ride for “a month or so.” Then they’re going to go to South Padre. Guess it’s true. When you ride a Harley you “live to ride”. What is it with motorhome showers? When you shower in a motorhome, you take a “marine” shower. It’s efficient. You start the water, get the temperature adjusted just right, get all wet, then turn the water off at the shower head. You do all the soaping and scrubbing you want, then turn the water back on at the shower head to rinse off. IT’S COLD! It’s always cold. It always returns to the correct balance, but if the temperature is right when you shut it off, no hot water can flow, no cold water can flow, what changes the balance so it blows cold every time you turn it back on? Huh? Can anybody answer me that? Even if you just bump the switch inadvertently and switch it right back on in a second, it does it. Nice sensible dinner. Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee for dessert. Okay. We didn’t actually drive right past the donut shop in Dumas without stopping. A 450 mile day. Got the dishes done, the showers over with, the water disconnected, and hoses put away. Tonight’s low is expected to be ten degrees. Tomorrow morning all we have to do is stuff one stiff cold cord back into its bin, and drive away.