Thursday, January 14, 2010
El Rancho Mobile Home Park, Albuquerque, NM: Nov 1-Jan ??
We continue to do the same activities here also: line dancing 4-6 times a week, playing bridge 3-4 times a week; visiting Doug's dad 2-3 times a week, and visiting Doug's brother Bob and other friends. We continue to make friends here, which makes it even harder for us to pick whether to "settle down" in the Boulder area or in ABQ. There are pluses and minuses to both, and as long as we can't decide, I guess we'll just keep on traveling!!
We had to winterize a short fresh-water hose in order to have running water during the colder months. Doug got it done in the nick of time. The weather has been "colder than normal" (as the local residents have been all too eager to point out) and it has not been the most desirable place to be living in an RV, but it's better than a lot of places! The lowest temps have been in the teens, but the highs are rarely over 45. We have also gotten a new (more BTUs) ventless propane heater and two new larger-capacity electric heaters. Now we are waiting for a shipment from Amazon containing three small dehumidifiers to help with the moisture that is produced from the ventless propane heater. It produces a cup of water vapor an hour, and it really condenses up the windows and makes it damp in all the closets and cupboards. We will have to do a thorough spring cleaning when it is warm again to get rid of all the mold hiding in corners.
We have enjoyed being with Doug's family for the holidays, and despite the cold we'll probably be back here next year, although only for November & possibly December, not January. We decided to stay this January so we could play in the Regional bridge tournament. Regional (and higher) tournaments are the only places to get Gold Masterpoints, and you need 50 of them to become a Life Master, so we thought we should start trying for at least a few. We currently have 1.45! However, if we don't get enough of them at the various tournaments we attend this year, we'll just find warmer places to get them in the future!!
One of the highlights of our time here was a brief visit from our friend GB Cornucopia, ranger from Chaco. Since our rig is getting so old, we are reluctant to take it down the bumpy road to Chaco, so we think our days of volunteering at Chaco are over. Luckily, GB has friends in ABQ, so he has many reasons to visit occasionally, and he managed a visit while we were here. With luck, we'll get to see him again before we leave. Our friend Susan LeFever (from Boulder) also visited us and stayed at our place for a night. She would have probably stayed a bit longer, only she was traveling with her cat Pippin, and the cat situation was a bit tense in such a small area!
We managed to find many concerts to attend, including an outstanding program of Arias, Songs and Carols by the Santa Fe Opera soloists, with the Young Voices of the Santa Fe Opera. We attended holiday concerts by the New Mexico Gay Men's Chorus, Polyphony: Voices of New Mexico and Las Cantantes (both women's mostly a capella choruses), and de Profundis (a men's chorus). We attended a UNM student production of "Rent" and enjoyed it thoroughly. We have attended two Lady Lobo basketball games in the (in)famous Pit, a small and very loud basketball venue. We have managed to find plenty of delicious places to eat out and also several wonderful chocolate stores!In addition to the above, we also found time to attend several performances of the Metropolitan Opera Live HD broadcasts, seeing Aida, Turandot and Tales of Hoffman so far. We have tickets to Carmen in January. The broadcasts are almost as good as being there, with some parts being even better. The close-up views and the behind-the-stage interviews are more than you would get at a live performance. The acoustics are outstanding and the large screen gives you a good enough view.
Our travel plans when we leave here will be to go to Carlsbad, NM, for about a month and then head for our co-op lot in Benson, AZ, arriving the second or third week in March. We will spend the first two weeks of April in Apache Junction and play at a Senior Regional tournament nearby, teaming up with a couple from Rapid City. After that, we'll probably go to Canyon de Chelley, visit ABQ briefly, and head for the Boulder area for a month or two starting in mid-May. We hope to see a lot of you along the way or in Boulder.
Jan 1 was our 18th anniversary. We celebrated by seeing Avatar in 3-D, which we both enjoyed a lot, and eating out at a local sushi restaurant.
The cats are doing fine. Trixie just had her fourteenth birthday, but she seems a lot more feeble than our other cats have seemed at that age. She enjoys the cat bed in front of the heater most of the time, and the other cats seem willing to let this be her place. Pandora still gets into anything that we don't remember to put away. She plays with two catnip mice and her "special rope" (a piece of clothesline that we tied a few knots into) a lot and that seems to reduce her need to tear up other things. Jasmine is trying to take the place of Amber, who was a very vocal cat. Jasmine does not have a very loud voice, but she uses it a lot! She seems to get lonely in the middle of the night and need a little extra attention, which doesn't help in getting a good night's sleep!We have both had our major annual doctor visits here, and our health seems to be quite good, too, so we are starting out the new year with good health, happiness and managing to keep warm. We hope you are all doing the same!!
Santa Rosa Lake State Park, Santa Rosa, NM: Oct 30-31
This may seem like a strange way to come to Albuquerque(ABQ), but it's hardly any longer, and this state park is a nice break. It's a lot more pleasant to enter ABQ from the east, since there is less traffic and it is closer to our destination. This is a nice state park and the weather was warming up, so we took a nice hike on our layover day. Part-way through our walk we spotted a large, brightly colored bug that we later IDed as a giant desert centipede.Raton RV Park, Raton, NM: Oct 27-29
We made it here just in time for falling temps and falling snow. It's a minimal RV park, that took some effort to find. It took some sleuth work to even find out who to pay! We finally found someone to take our money who worked at the nearby restaurant. We received a WiFi signal from some unknown source and just settled in to wait out the storm and stay warm and spent lots of time playing on the computer.
Junction RV Park, Ordway, CO: Oct 26
As we were getting ready to leave Boulder, we heard a storm was on the way, and decided to make this a one-night stop. There really isn't any reason to stay longer unless we just need time to "decompress" from all the social life in Boulder. It's a fairly dumpy park but the best/cheapest option if we want hookups.
Skylark Mobile Home Park, Lafayette, CO: Sept 26-Oct 25
This is the best option we have found for camping in the Boulder area. Hopefully, it will continue to be a possibility for as long as we need it. It is a very nicely managed, clean & friendly mobile home park with a few spaces for RVs when available.There's not much new to write about being in the Boulder area. We did the same things we always do: concerts and an opera, line dancing, bridge (both at the local duplicate games and with friends), eating out, visiting friends, taking cats to the vet, and a few doctor appointments. We were able to fit in an amazing number of visits with friends and enjoyed it immensely.
One highlight of our time here was getting to attend the wedding of our good friends Heather & John at the Oxford Hotel in Denver. Despite our having no "dress-up" clothes, we were not ostracized and had a wonderful time. It was a small tasteful gathering, with delicious food & champagne. We took the bus down, which was a wise choice (it was snowing when we left the reception). We wish them many years of happiness.Riverside Park, Fort Morgan, CO: Sept 24-25
Previously, when traveling this route, we stayed at the city park in Brush and came to Fort Morgan for shopping. This time we decided to try out the free city park in Fort Morgan. We will not make that mistake again. While the park in Brush is free for only the first night, it is far from the interstate and has nice level parking spaces. It took all the leveling blocks we own to get the trailer almost level at Riverside, and it is right next to I-76 (a popular truck route). It was quite close to Walmart and Safeway if that is important to you. We'd rather drive the 10 miles and have a more pleasant camping experience.
Riverside Park is home to the Rainbow Arch Bridge, which we strolled across & back a couple of times. Built in 1923, this open-spandrel, multi-span arch bridge is an architectural jewel. It is the only one of its kind in Colorado, and at 1,100 feet in length, is one of the longest in the nation. Currently, it spans the South Platte River and serves as an entrance to the Pawnee Pioneer Trails Scenic Byway. Shortly after we arrived a young man, a photographer for the Tucson newspaper, rode in on a bicycle and started setting up a tent. He was on his way to a wedding in Nebraska & was spending the night there. In the morning he told us that some undesirables had parked with their headlights on his tent, so he moved over close to our trailer.Thursday, September 24, 2009
Sunset Motel & RV Park, Alliance, NE: Sept 20-23
We had planned to travel from Rapid City to the Boulder area with 3 stops, but after examining the map, we discovered if we did it in two longish (for us that means 170 miles) days, we could spend the first night in Alliance at a Passport America park and finally get to see Carhenge, something that had been "on our list" for many years. We planned to stay 3 nights, visiting Carhenge one day and Chimney Rock, about 50 miles south, the second day. However, the weather continued to be awful, with much wind & rain, so we have opted for yet another day. Hopefully, we will leave tomorrow.We were a bit worried about this RV park since we read a really negative review of it online that said there were hundreds of incredibly loud trains each night, plus a loud garbage truck. In fact, we only paid for two nights to start with. We found minimal train noise, no whistles just a bit of rumbling, some fairly minimal highway noise, none of it louder than our RV furnace. The cats love the small trees full of birds that are near our spot. We were happy to stay here two more nights and avoid the bad weather and do more sightseeing.
Carhenge was all we expected it to be -- but different. Carhenge was built by Jim Reinders, who was captivated by Stonehenge when he called London home in the 1970s. He planned the project as a memorial to his father, and his family enthusiastically agreed to help. Built in the summer of 1987, the schedule involved 7 8-hour days of work, utilizing a backhoe & a forklift and 12 relatives. They positioned 38 cars in accordance with Stonehenge's modern appearance. The cars, including several classic Cadillacs, an AMC Gremlin & a Willys pickup, were painted battleship gray. For some reason, I had pictured the cars in color, but the gray was quite stunning. The day we visited, the sky was full of clouds with blue showing through and it was an awesome setting -- a great day to visit. They say about 80,000 people visit Carhenge each year, just slightly fewer than the number that visit Chaco. It brings a lot of tourist money to this small town. We had wished for cooler temps but what we got was a lot cooler than we wanted. We are never satisfied!! The fierce wind and rain made us happy to not be traveling.
Alliance turned out to be a more pleasant little town than we had expected. The historic downtown area was still paved in brick, which is great for ambiance but rough on vehicles. There are a number of interesting buildings. 
In Central Park, constructed in the 1930s by the CCC & WPA, there is a fountain, created in 1935 and listed on the Natl Register of Historic Places, which has multi-colored light displays nightly, weather permitting. We enjoyed watching it and were joined by a local fellow who told us many items of "local color".
Chimney Rock, about 50 miles southwest of Alliance, was a landmark for nearly half a million westbound travelers on the Oregon, California, Mormon Pioneer and Pony Express Trails in the early to mid-1800s. It was mentioned in many journals of the time. Many travelers etched their names in the structure; however, the fragile outer layers soon wore away, and names rarely lasted longer than a few days. The central shaft is topped with very hard sandstone, so the surrounding softer layers have eroded away, leaving a majestic monument that can be seen for miles. It signaled the end of the boring plains and the beginning of the very difficult mountainous area that remained for these travelers.
While walking around town, we found out there was a JV volleyball tournament here Tuesday afternoon, so we timed our outing so we could attend that. We hadn't been to a college game in years and wanted to see how the JV players did. As you may know, Nebraska has long been a finalist/winner of the NCAA Women's Volleyball tournament, and when you see the level of play at the JV (mostly sophomores with one junior) level, you can understand why. Alliance played two nearby towns and were clearly the better team. It was quite enjoyable to watch and we learned there had been some major changes in scoring since we had last watched a game.Three Flags RV Park, Black Hawk, SD: Sept 5-19
On our own again, we opted to spend the rest of our time closer to Rapid City in order to visit with Dave & Diane and play bridge at the club. This is a very nice Passport America park where we have stayed before. It is right along the interstate, but the noise didn't seem too bad. Everything worked well, including the WiFi, which always makes us happy (more Facebook time!!). We went to a sectional tournament the first weekend and did fairly well (by our low standards). We had an outstanding showing in the Swiss teams game, which made up for several mediocre results. We had many nice visits with Dave & Diane and honed our skills at 4-person Cribbage. We also connected with some other Escapee friends who happened to be in the area: Paul Martin, from the Freethinkers BOF, and Gary & Eloise Cunningham, whom we met at line dancing at Benson.
We spent a day visiting Badlands Natl Park. After getting there, we again realized that this is a place that needs a longer visit to enjoy it properly. We did some short trails, attended an interesting ranger talk on fossils, and observed from many overlooks. The ranger who gave the fossil talk turned out to be the person in charge of their newly-developed Night Sky program, and we got information on possibly volunteering here in the future. 
It was a hot day, and we were exhausted so we enjoyed stopping at Wall Drug for some "free ice water" and ice cream on the way home. The temps were well above average our whole time in Rapid City, and we were hoping for some Fall weather soon.
Game Lodge Campground, Custer State Park, SD: Aug 31-Sept 4
Our good friend Sue Horne has visited us 3 other times since we've been on the road -- twice at Chaco at once at Grand Tetons. She was in desperate need of a vacation & we thought she would enjoy Custer State Park & the Black Hills, so we made reservations for 5 nights & made arrangements for her to come stay with us (she brings her own tent, so is ultra-nonintrusive). Well, her visit was an unqualified success -- she loved seeing South Dakota (and us) and we loved seeing her. We had stayed at Game Lodge CG 2 years ago so were pretty familiar with the sights -- the main problem was how to ration our time so that we didn't knock ourselves out trying to see too much!
Our first stop was Wind Cave NP, famous for the formation called boxwork. Wind Cave contains some of the best examples of boxwork in the world. We were also able to find some short hiking trails and drive the majority of the Wildlife Loop on this outing. We saw pronghorn, whitetail deer, bison, burros & wild turkeys. Another day we took the scenic loop road, famous for its "pigtail" bridges which curve around over themselves, and the old tunnels that were made by the CCC, with views of Mt Rushmore through some of them, to Mt Rushmore, where we visited & hiked for about an hour. 
We drove back the other part of the loop through the Needles area. It is all lovely. Our third day-trip was to Spearfish Canyon, which has several waterfalls and some nice trails. We got in a lot of gentle hiking & saw a lot of sights and even managed to relax a bit and play our special game, Skippy Bridge, which is our own version of 3-person bridge that we three like a lot.Wyatt's Hideaway, Belle Fourche, SD: Aug 28-30
Wyatt's Hideaway is a very charming Passport America park set in a group of cottonwoods. For some reason, the electricity was out on the pull-through loop, so we backed into a spot that was lovely except for the fact that it was right by the railroad tracks. Fortunately there were only two trains -- one the day we got there & the other the day we left. They didn't blow the whistle but just rumbled along very close, making the cats very nervous. We never saw the husband of the couple that ran the park, but mentioned the electrical problem to the wife (who was from Brazil & had the most charming accent). We drove into Rapid City one day to do some shopping, play bridge and meet friends Dave & Diane West for dinner. We also met them Sunday night in Spearfish. Visiting them was one of the main reasons we came to this area.Twin Butte Campground & Antiques, Bowman, ND: Aug 27
This may be the only combination RV park & antique store in the country. They also sell large concrete yard decorations for all of you RVers who aren't carrying around enough weight. This was a good place to spend one night, in that we would have hated to spend another night here. The high point of our stay was being asked where Valley City, ND, was by a couple of (probably drunk) females in a car when we were out for a walk. Valley City is at the east end of the state, over 300 miles away. I don't think they found it!Red Trail Campground, Medora, ND: Aug 24-26
Medora's sole reason for existence seems to be as a gateway to the South Unit of TRNP. Red Trail CG is Passport America and is a very pleasant park to use as a springboard into TRNP, though also on the pricey side, even at half price. They have a couple that stays there all season and sings & plays "classic country" every evening (yes, 7 nights/week without break -- I don't know how they stand it!).
There is a 29-mile Scenic Loop Drive that we drove twice. The badlands of North Dakota are beautiful, and we never tired of seeing them. We were also talked into seeing the "Medora Musical", presented as a "must see" by one and by all. Except us. One woman we talked to had seen it every year since she started coming here & that was 16 years ago. As for us, suffice to say once was enough. The small part with the Chinese acrobats was the only saving grace for us.Watford City Tourist Park, Watford City, ND: Aug 21-23
Since the weather had been hotter than in Michigan, we felt we needed hookups instead of dry camping at Theodore Roosevelt Natl Park (TRNP) North Unit. We researched the area and found this little city park with electric & water hookups and a dump station that was close to TRNP North and other interesting areas we wanted to visit.
Our first day we went on a scenic loop drive. Our first stop was the Fairview Lift Bridge & Cartwright Tunnel, completed by the railroad in 1913 to cross the Yellowstone River. Local business leaders initially opposed the bridge, fearing it would halt boat traffic on the river, so the Great Northern Railroad installed a 271-foot section that could be lifted vertically to allow river traffic to pass. Ironically, the bridge was lifted only once, during its operational test, because traffic on the Yellowstone River ceased in 1912. 
The tunnel is 1456 feet long, built with a curve so it is impossible to see straight through. The city of Fairview adopted the bridge & tunnel in 2001, adding decking & railing to the bridge. It was an easy, enjoyable walk across the bridge, but there is no lighting in the tunnel, so we turned around when it started getting dark. A man & his two boys walked all the way through (without flashlights) and we could hear their voices ahead of us.
We then drove to Fort Union Trading Post Natl Historic Site run by the National Park Service. The original trading post was built by John Jacob Astor in 1828 and was dismantled in 1867 when the US Govt bought it. During most of that time the post employed over 100 people who were kept very busy trading furs with the Upper Missouri tribes of native Americans. 
For most of this time, a balance existed between the two cultures: the traders did not try to restrict the Indian way of life, instead trying to utilize what the indigenous people were already doing -- producing brain-tanned buffalo robes & furs for their own use. Each culture felt that it was superior to the other: traders had superior technology, and Indians thought they got the better of the exchange since whites overvalued the robes & furs. The Historic Site is a replica of the post built on the original stone foundations, built & furnished as it might have looked in the early 1850s.
Our last stop was the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Center and Fort Buford State Historic Site, which are run by the State Historical Society of North Dakota (one fee buys admission to both). 
We ate a picnic lunch at the M-YCC, snapped a couple of pictures of the confluence (visited by Lewis & Clark) and walked through the two galleries. In all, we spent less than an hour there. Fort Buford was more interesting. Established in 1866, it was the site of Chief Sitting Bull's surrender in 1881. 
Also, Chief Joseph and 400 Nez Perce Indians were held there after their surrender. When the US Govt dismantled Fort Union Trading Post they used the wood to expand Fort Buford.The next day was our first of several visits to Theodore Roosevelt NP. TRNP is located in western ND in what is called the badlands, which were carved by the Little Missouri River. The North Unit is near Watford City and the South Unit is near Medora. TR came to the area in 1883 to hunt bison and other game and became intrigued with the ranching industry. He became partners in a ranch near Medora. Many attribute his time in the badlands of ND as forming his interest in land conservation in the form of National Parks and Monuments. We drove the North Unit's 14-mile Scenic Drive, which was truly gorgeous, and then hiked the Little Mo Trail which begins & ends at the campground. We were surprised to run into a couple that Willie knew, from her job in Boulder, birdwatching near the end of the trail.
