Lake City, Florida to Ruby Mountain Campground, Nathrop, Colorado –May 12 thru June 4, 2013
Hey!! We bet ya’ll thought we plum forgot about you. Not the case as we’ve been regularly chastising ourselves for not continuing the blog sooner. We’re using the excuse that we’ve been so busy having fun that we just couldn’t squeeze it in. The truth being, neither one of us are morning people, and when the evening gets here we’re both to tuckered out to start anything anyhow, which leaves the middle of the day when we’re busy having fun (or doing chores).
Today, however, we are stuck in Loveland, Colorado awaiting repairs to Big Guy’s air conditioning system, but that’s another story. We can’t go anywhere so now is as good a time as any to kick this thing in gear and resume the blog.
As you remember. we left on our 6 month journey May 11. From there our journey took us to Lewisville, Texas for a few days to visit the new President George W. Bush museum at Southern Methodist University. We came away with a newfound respect for President Bush and his wife Laura.
A visit to see Frank’s Dad was long over due so we pointed Big Guy westward and aimed for San Angelo, Texas. Our spot by the power pole was waiting for us so we could plug in and run the air conditioning as the temps were going to be in the 100’s.
Dad was in the midst of buying and selling utility trailers so we helped him unload one and load up another with his stored goodies. Never can have too much storage space, you know. Even though Dad’s apartment has two walk in closets, space was a little tight, and a 10’ x 6’ utility trailer solved that problem nicely.
Of course at the end of a hard days work a proper social hour is a necessity. Tall tales are told, news is announced, and maybe a little imbibing goes on too. It’s a good way to wind down the day.
Dad is a true geek. There’s no other way to put it. He has a computer for the bedroom, one for the living room and even one to use when he’s in the recliner. That’s not even counting the Kindle Fire and iPad. In fact, while we were there he got another package of electronic goodies from Amazon.
After spending 11 days with Dad, visiting and helping out with things he just couldn’t fit in his busy schedule it was time to get on with the theme of this trip and that is “To find cooler weather”.
As we wandered north from San Angelo we discovered that the small Texas towns are very RV friendly. In fact many communities have small RV parks that invite you to stay a day or 3 at no charge and even throw in free electricity to boot. And while we’re enjoying their hospitality, we may as well have a little cookout. Who says you have to rough it while living on the road.
But even as friendly as these little towns were, it’s still too hot and it’s time to continue north. We finally began to see the snow capped mountains in Colorado when we decided to get off the road and stop at an abandoned New Mexico rest stop about 20 miles south of the Colorado border on US285. It was to be our first dose of near freezing night time temps.
The next morning we received a phone call from our friend Sheryl wanting to know where we were. We told her and she said “Well, my brother and I are right up the road! Let’s meet for lunch.” I have to say we were definitely surprised as she was supposed to be in Kentucky! So we met for lunch at the Boat House Cantina in Salida, Colorado.
Now begins a trend we haven’t experienced on previous summer trips. It’s called the “Linger Longer” effect. For instance we had only intended to stay in Salida long enough to have lunch with Sheryl, Billie and George. We ended up staying for 3 days. That this is a trend will be explained more later on in this blog.
Here I’ll insert a little foreshadowing. It was during this period that we noticed Big Guy’s air conditioning wasn’t quite right. We didn’t know what was wrong, we just knew it wasn’t right.
We moved on to Ruby Mountain Campground near Buena Vista, Co. It was a primitive campground in that it had no utilities, but it was in a beautiful setting. The road to the campground was a little scary, but Frank wasn’t worried (the dropoff was on EJ’s side). The ride was worth it as we had the area almost all to ourselves and we were right next to the Colorado River.
And wildlife was plentiful on water and in the air.
After staying several days longer than intended (once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. We haven’t yet established a trend) we decided to keep moving higher into the mountains. We also really thought that by drawing out our elevation gain, the oxygen depravation effects wouldn’t be as dramatic. Naivety doesn’t help a bit when reality kicks you in the butt. Despite our measured gains in elevation we would soon be wheezing and gasping for air like the flat landers we are.
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