Hello! It’s been awhile, I know! Sorry! I’ll give you a quick wrap up of where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing so we’re all caught up….. 🙂
After we got home late fall last year from our second season of RV living, we enjoyed holidays at home in Ohio with family and friends. Always great to see everyone and the RV went to indoor storage. I have learned it’s very hard to find indoor storage for RVs, but that’s another story.
We had planned to return to Port Saint Joe, FL (in the panhandle) again for January and February in the RV, but, they had a big hurricane in the area and were still recovering. So we decided to go the other direction and instead booked a house in the mountains of New Hampshire. We left the RV in storage and drove to Littleton, NH and stayed in a winter wonderland. Lots of snow, and we did all kinds of winter activities: snowshoes, skiing, cross country skiing, hiking with spikes on our boots. Gerry even got his own set of boots and a special winter coat – the snow was deeper than him most of the time and he really didn’t enjoy the cold all that much! Guy and Katelyn and Samantha came for a visit too – we drove through a snow storm in the mountains to get to the airport to pick them up. And then our car wouldn’t make it up the steep driveway at 3:00 am when we got home, so all the kids had to push the car in the snow. That was an exciting way to kick off their visit! But lots of fun in the snowy mountains including snowmobiles while they were there.
Gerry in his new coat and boots!
We spent all spring in Ohio, and the RV went to the dealership for routine maintenance and repair of a few little things. I have to say (and I hope I’m not jinxing us!) the RV has been just great, and very few issues, and nothing major. We got a new truck in the meantime, exact same as the first one – Ram 3500 diesel, dually. Steve felt it was best to be sure we didn’t have any problems down the road so we got the 2019 version of what we already had.
We did take the RV out for a short trip to North Carolina in late May – early June. About 3 weeks in the mountains of North Carolina. We got out for several hikes and our friends Dave and Jeannie came for a stay with their dog Roscoe too!
Our official 3rd RV season got underway on July 21, 2019! A little later than we’d like, but Steve needed to be in Ohio for work. This season we’ll be out until about mid-November, and are going west again – after visiting with Guy in MN and Samantha in CO, we’ll spend time in Wyoming, Montana, the San Juan mountains in Colorado, and northern New Mexico. We’ll be visiting some new places and also going back to some favorites in the San Juan mountains and New Mexico.
So we headed straight to Minnesota to see Guy and Katelyn (who are engaged!!!!) We closed on the second house for Aspire Sober Living. You may recall we launched Aspire Sober Living last summer with Guy, and the one house we have is operating smoothly and we wanted to expand. After months of looking, Guy found the perfect house and we were able to be there for the closing and spent about a week helping out with projects to get the house ready for occupancy. City of Saint Paul licensing should be approved in a few weeks and he’ll be off and running with house number 2. So happy and proud of him, and we had a great visit with Katelyn.
Aspire Sober Living expands to 2 houses!
Then it was off to Denver to see Samantha. She moved to a new apartment in June, started a new job in April, and bought a new car in June…lots to catch up on with her! We spent a lovely week with her, and took in a few spectacular sunsets at her apartment – she has a great view of the mountains and the sunsets are amazing. We also made it to Rocky Mountain National Park and a short hike near her office in Boulder with Gerry.
We arrived here in Dubois, Wyoming after a 2 day drive from Denver. A nice little town about 45 minutes outside Grand Tetons NP. We’ll be here for a total of 9 days, then we’re off to Cody, WY. We’re visiting Grand Tetons National Park and enjoying mountain hiking again! It feels like it’s been a really long time since we’ve been in the RV and in the mountains. We love it! And yes, the campground internet is still crappy everywhere and makes doing things like this blog difficult. But, hey, if that’s all we have to complain about, then life is good indeed! The RV feels like home and we are so happy in the mountains. We love the big sky and the air is clear. Lots of wildflowers here too, which is a nice surprise. We saw a mama grizzly with her cub along the road the other day, and inside Grand Tetons National Park we saw a moose and an eagle.
Here’s some pictures of this year’s adventure so far, hope you enjoy! I’ll keep you updated as our trip moves along…I’m sure there’s plenty of hikes and adventures to be had!
As I write this we are in Oklahoma City, OK, wrapping up some business Steve needed to do here, and leaving in the morning for Ohio! It will take us 3 full days of driving to make it back to Columbus. Wow…can’t believe how fast time goes sometimes. We’ve been on the road this time for 5 months. It will be great to be home again and see family and friends and enjoy the holidays. At the same time, it will be a little sad moving out of the RV. We love it so much and love our life on the road.
Our last couple of weeks were spent in northern New Mexico. We left Santa Fe and went to Taos for a few nights, then to Angel Fire for about 2 weeks. We really enjoyed our time in both places. Angel Fire is only about 30 minutes from Taos, in the mountains, near a ski area. AND best of all, we had visitors! Samantha was able to drive down to see us for several days, it was less than 5 hours from Denver where she is living now. And our very dear friends Shawn and Julie made the long trip from Ohio to spend several days with us. They had to fly to Albuquerque and then drive 3 hours to Angel Fire. That is dedication!! 🙂
We had a great time with everyone, and enjoyed hiking and exploring the area with them. We also were able to go to a hot air balloon festival in Taos with Shawn and Julie. It was super cold that morning but a beautiful, clear blue sky which made the balloons really stand out in the sky. The RV resort we stayed at in Angel Fire was one of the nicest we have been to. It was only a couple of years old, beautifully done with lots of amenities like a very nice hot tub which we visited several times and watched the stars come out.
Sharing our RV experience with family and friends means so much to us. Catching up on each other’s lives, sharing coffee in the morning then heading out for a long hike up the mountain, coming home and preparing dinner together….how can it get much better than that??
We’ll be taking the RV in for service a few days after we get home. We have a list of mostly pretty minor things to be tended to like the trim that has fallen off and the fresh water tank that keeps filling up when it shouldn’t. Then it will be off to storage until I don’t know when….we haven’t planned our next trip yet. I’ll keep you posted! In the meantime, here’s some photos from our northern New Mexico adventures:
Hello again everyone! We have been in Santa Fe for a little over a week now. Today is a rainy, cold, windy day and we’re sitting by the fire (love it), having a cup of Peppermint Tea (are we the most exciting people ever!! 🙂 ) so I thought I would catch you up with our visit in Santa Fe.
We’ve enjoyed our time in Santa Fe. We’ve only done one hike here so far, we’re hoping to get one in tomorrow if the rain stops. We leave here in two days to head north to Taos and Angel Fire. It’s snowing there today! We loved the hike we did, Nambe Lake. It started at about 10,100 feet and went up to about 11,300 feet. Beautiful trail, in the mountains, up to a beautiful frozen lake. There was about 4 inches of fresh snow on the ground. It was about 7.5 miles round trip and we loved it. That’s the good news. The bad news: a) somehow our pictures on our phones at the frozen lake all turned out in black and white. On both our phones. Don’t know what happened. We were so excited to get back and look at our pictures and found that when we got to the lake, they all are black and white or some monochrome color setting. The were in color up until then….I don’t think we are meant to be picture taking people!!! The bad news: b) there was this beautiful stream, clear water babbling over stones for much of our hike. Couldn’t resist drinking the water. We did this often in Alaska with no problem. Well, by that evening, Steve was sick, and has had a fever and tummy trouble for 3 days now. I didn’t get sick, but I only drank a small amount of the water, Steve drank a lot. Note to self: do not drink the water no matter how clean and beautiful it looks! We have since learned livestock live on that mountain in the summer. 🙁 Hard to tell what was in that water! Lots of pictures of our hike in the link below.
We also have caught up with a high school friend of Steve’s, Chris, who lives in Santa Fe with her husband. They were friends all through high school, college and early adult life, but lost track of each other after Chris moved to San Francisco then Santa Fe. She is head of retail operations for several museums in Santa Fe. We had lunch with her one day, and just as we were sitting down, I got a phone call from doggy daycare. It was Gerry’s first visit to the local doggy daycare, and since it was a rainy day, they were playing inside. He caught his dew claw on the indoor turf, and tore it off. So after lunch we were off to the vet. He tore it clean off, so it just needed a bandage and he also got a cute little bootie that kept it dry and clean outside. He’s feeling just fine, got the bandage off the other day and got to go back to daycare for the fun he missed the first time!
We had dinner with Chris and her husband also, at a great local restaurant that has been here for many years. They are both so nice and it was fun to get to know them. Catching up with friends and family as we travel is one of the benefits of this RV lifestyle.
We’ve been tourists here too. They have a great Farmer’s Market here, twice a week, and we’ve been both days. I can report the local vendors revenue has increased significantly due to our visit! It’s one of the best farmer’s markets we’ve been too, and we took full advantage and stocked up on lots of great things. We’ve visited a couple of museums, walked around the historical plaza, and visited San Miguel Chapel, the oldest church in America. It was built in the early 1600’s. Santa Fe is an “artsy” kind of town. Lots of public art along the streets and in the parks, galleries everywhere and vendors selling jewelry, art, pottery and all kinds of crafts everywhere. We’ve enjoyed browsing and buying a few gifts.
Chili peppers – they are a big deal here! And it’s harvest season so they are everywhere! We’ve sampled many – they roast them in these big roasters everywhere. They are good, and I’ve been adding them to my cooking too.
No, we did not make it to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque. We had planned to, and even had a reservation at an RV park outside Albuquerque that we cancelled. We just weren’t sure it was going to be worth all the trouble…big crowds, have to be there at sunrise, weather not great. In fact, our RV neighbors here in Santa Fe made the drive (over an hour each way) twice to see the balloons take off only to have it cancelled each day due to weather…maybe we’ll make it another time when we’re out this way again.
So that’s what we’ve been up to here in Santa Fe. We’re off to Taos and Angel Fire in a couple of days, and Samantha will visit us in Angel Fire for a few days. Then, our friends Shawn and Julie are coming to visit. Can’t wait to see them all and I’m sure we’ll have lots to share from their visits. In the meantime, it’s still raining here and I’m going to get another cup of tea. Hope you enjoy the pictures!
Gerry resting in his favorite chair after the vet:
We hit the jackpot with our stay in Chama, New Mexico…we hit perfect weather, and full fall color. We drove to Chama from Sedona (took us 2 days of driving). What a total different setting. That’s one of the really fun things about this RV living…one day you are in the red rocks hiking in 100 degree temperatures and then 2 days later you are in full fall color in the mountains and building a campfire! Switching from air conditioning to furnace and digging through all your shorts and t-shirts for the long johns!
We had never heard of Chama and had not planned to go there, but one day in Arizona we were watching a PBS show (after Bill installed our new TV!) that highlighted Chama and the surrounding area. We knew it was our kind of place and changed our plans to spend a week there. So glad we did. Chama is in the northwest corner of New Mexico, about 10 miles south of the Colorado boarder and the San Juan mountains. You may remember we stayed in the San Juan mountains in Colorado earlier in our trip. That was on the west/southwest side of the San Juans. Now we were on the south side of the mountains. I think it is fair to say we love the San Juan mountains. 🙂
Chama was a cute little town, and the RV park we stayed at was great. The RV park was at 7,800 feet elevation. Lots of trees and big sites and campfires were allowed! Almost everywhere we’ve been has had fire bans, so we were excited to have a campfire again. We did tons of hiking and exploring the area. You’ll see in the pictures we were totally enamored with the Aspen trees, they are so beautiful. You may also notice Gerry is sporting a colorful outfit in many pictures too. Elk hunting season opened while we were there and we wanted to be sure Gerry (and us too) was very visible while we were out hiking. We also put his bear bell from Alaska on him to help be sure we didn’t surprise anyone.
One of our hikes – Red Mountain Lake – was at a pretty high elevation – we started at 10,500 and went to 12,300. It is one of our favorite hikes yet. It was cloudy, foggy, cold and windy at the top, with a beautiful mountain lake. We also hiked a section of the Continental Divide trail. The Continental Divide trail is 3,100 and runs from Canada to Mexico. This was also one of our very favorite hikes and ranks in the top 5 of all time.
I’m seriously trying to get caught up on my blog posts. I have spent my “computer time” trying, unsuccessfully, to figure out my storage issue and also transfer pictures from the computer to the external hard drive I purchased. All attempts have failed. I have officially given up trying to figure it out until we get back home and I’m going to get help. Cell phone pictures will have to do. Hey! I hear those snickers out there! I admit, computer storage and computers in general are not my strong suit! Somehow I manage to keep our banking and mail handled online, but this whole picture storage thing has me beat. Anyhow, onto much more interesting topics like my sister’s visit while we were in Sedona!!
After I got back from St. Paul, Steve and I did a quick, above the rim only (no hiking) trip to the Grand Canyon with Gerry. A few pictures are included in the below links. It was okay, but crowded and, I guess, we are not that “wowed” by the Grand Canyon. Did I just say that out loud? I guess I did! We kept waiting for that “wow” moment, when we went to the north rim, and again when we went to the south rim. Didn’t happen. And Steve said the same, even when he and Bill hiked the Bright Angel trail a bit. And when Laura, my sister, came to visit, she and I drove up to the south rim and hiked a bit of the Bright Angel trail (pictures below). Still no “wow” there. Glad we saw it, but I don’t expect we’ll ever go again. I guess it’s just not our thing.
We did, however, have a fantastic visit to Sedona. Love it there. We stayed for a total of 2 weeks, however only one week was actually in an RV park right in Sedona. For the week before Laura came, we were just outside Sedona in Camp Verde. It was a very nice campground, and only about 20 minutes to Sedona. BUT, the campground we stayed at in Sedona was fantastic. Rancho Sedona, right in the middle of town, right on Oak Creek. I had tried a few times to get a reservation there with no luck, so had given up. But our new friends Jeff and Lori, that we met back in Colorado and hiked with for a few days, insisted we keep trying, that a trip to Sedona without staying at Rancho Sedona was not the same. So I tried one last time and they had just had a cancellation! We got a prime spot right on the creek. Cool evenings and mornings, sound of the running creek in our windows, beautiful trees everywhere. A great home base for Laura’s visit. Thanks Jeff and Lori!
I had heard Sedona was beautiful (it is); I had heard it was new age-y (it is); I had heard there were energy vortexes (vortices? not sure how to spell plural… and there are). Even though we had heard these things, experiencing them was even better than I had expected. We did tons of hiking. It was hot, but beautiful. We found several vortex spots while hiking. We all (Steve, Laura and I) experienced the energy at the vortexes. Sometimes the energy was moving in counter-clockwise circles, sometimes in clockwise circles, sometimes it felt like it was moving both ways and pulling in both directions. A very cool experience each time.
One hike, at Boynton Canyon, was really great. At the beginning of the hike, there was an old guy with white hair, way up high on a rock point playing a flute. We sat with several other people and listened to the flute echoing off the rock walls. Amazing and moving. As we were leaving to continue our hike, he came down off the rock point he was on and stopped to talk to us. He gave us each a heart he had carved out of the red rocks, and gave us each a blessing. Amazing. We then did the hike and found several vortex spots that were very strong for us all. Quite an experience.
On Laura’s first day in Sedona, we hiked Bell Rock. More of a climb than a hike, you pretty much rock climb to the top. Beautiful, and we also found a vortex spot there. As we were climbing up, there was a young lady with beautiful blue hair, with her boyfriend and her mom in front of us most of the way. When we all got to the top, I noticed she was setting out stones and crystals on the ledge and doing some type of ceremony with them. We got to talking, and she had just the stone I was looking for – a Rose Quartz. I bought (very inexpensive) it from her on the spot! She sells stones and crystals online, and was infusing them with the good energy at Bell Rock before she sold them. Sedona Magic!
We also got to visit with some family we had not seen for years and years. Our cousin, Gina, lives in Phoenix and came up to Sedona for a day to visit. It was great to see her again and to reconnect. We also had dinner in Phoenix the night before Laura flew back home with Gina, a couple of aunts, and assorted cousins we had not seen for years. Some we had never met before! It was great to reconnect with family again. One of the benefits of this RV lifestyle is that we get to visit with friends and family we may not have had the chance to see otherwise.
It was fantastic having Laura visit. As much as we love our RV life, we do miss home and family and friends too. Having visitors means so much, and sharing our adventure is so much fun too! Pictures below, hope the links work. Enjoy!
Wow, September flew by and here it is early October already! We are loving our Southwest adventure…let’s get caught up!
In my last post I mentioned I was flying to St. Paul to help Guy furnish the sober house we are launching. It was a great trip, wonderful to spend time with Guy, see Katelyn again, and to help get the house ready for residents. Aspire Sober Living is officially open for business now and several residents have already moved in. Could not be happier or more proud of Guy and the work he is doing. 🙂
Our friend Bill came to visit Steve while I was gone. They visited the Grand Canyon for a hike and Bill installed a new TV and wall bracket for us (you will recall in my last post how the other one fell off the wall and shattered). All of you know we are completely un-handy and it was so nice of Bill to get that job done for us.
It’s great having visitors to share our adventure, and to have a touch of “home”. A few pictures from Bill’s visit are below. I promise to get more updates out soon!!
Hi Everyone! Do you believe summer is officially over, now that Labor Day has past??? How did that happen so quick? But fall is a great time of year just about anywhere, I think. We’ve been having fun on our tour of the Southwest. I have so much to share with you. Grab a cup of tea and settle in!
I mentioned in my last post how much we were loving our Southwest Colorado location in the mountains. We loved it so much we booked the exact same campground site for the month of September 2019. Not sure where all we’re going to go next year, but we know we’ll be at that spot for September.
We ended up cancelling some of our Utah plans for the first couple weeks of August, and stayed in Southwest Colorado longer than originally planned. A great benefit of traveling this way, we can change our plans and our location when we want to. We moved around to a couple of campgrounds in the same general area, staying in the San Juan mountains, north of Durango. We met a very nice couple at one campground that we hiked with for a few days, which was fun, and they were full of good information about places we were headed. And, on another hike, we ran into a friend of a friend. It was so weird – we hiked up a mountain, in a light rain, to the top where there was a nice little lake. There was only one person at the lake, with 2 dogs. Of course Gerry had to go say hi, and we started talking. The usual, where are you from, where are you staying, where are you going type of talk. Turns out, he was from Delaware, Ohio, their kids went to the same school as ours (different ages, though), and we have met he and his wife a few times at graduation party and wedding of a mutual friend. And he was staying at a campground just up the road from us. So he kindly invited us over one evening for a nice visit, he played guitar and sang while we enjoyed each others company. Small world!
We visited Durango a few times, a nice western town with a lot of services and shopping, and some good grocery stores. We now rate towns based on the availability of good grocery stores. We have changed how we eat fairly considerably in the last year and look for grocery stores with good selection of organic produce and also seek out farmers markets everywhere we go. I have been surprised how many towns and areas do not have access to good, fresh, organic produce. Food deserts do exist, we have found some of them!
Anyhow, we traded a couple of weeks of hot, sandstone bluffs and canyons in Utah for mountains, trees and cooler temperatures in Colorado. So glad we did. When we moved out of the mountains we stopped for a few days in Cortez, Colorado, which is right in the southwest corner of the state. We went to Mesa Verde National Park, where we took a tour into the Pueblo Cliff Dwellings. Very cool, you have to climb up big ladders to get to the cliff dwellings. Amazing how people built these and lived there around 1100 AD.
Then we moved on to Lake Powell in Page, Arizona. Lake Powell straddles the Arizona/Utah state line. Lake Powell was formed in the 1960s, when they built a dam in the Colorado river. Glen Canyon was then flooded and Lake Powell was born. It is the second largest dam, after Hoover Dam. They are in year 8 of a drought, and 52% of the lake is gone – 92 feet down. We walked along the lake every day, our campground was right on the lake. A state park campground, Wahweep, which was very nice. We walked to the shore for sunrise a couple of mornings which was beautiful. But, since the lake is so much smaller now, you have to walk down quite a ways on what used to be underwater.
We did a raft tour on the Colorado river, through Glen Canyon which was very nice and a good way to see the area from a different perspective. We went through the famous “Horseshoe Bend” on the raft, then later went on top of the canyon to take a picture of the Horseshoe Bend. You’ll see it in the pictures.
We also went to Antelope Canyon while in the area. Antelope Canyon is a “slot” canyon (I had to look it up, didn’t know what that meant). It’s a very narrow canyon, more like a “slot” in the ground, that has been formed by water and wind. The result is amazing sandstone formations that swirl all around you with light coming in from the slot over your head. Lots of pictures for you from there!
That area has some famous hiking, most notably “The Wave”, in the Vermillion Cliffs. We were very close to that area and wanted to do some hikes. The Wave is so popular they do a lottery system and only 10 people a day are chosen. So we didn’t even try that. But, we learned of another hike, Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch that started right next to the trail to the Wave, and was promised to be “one of the best hikes in the US”. According to a book I have that I have found to be pretty reliable. So off we go, leaving Gerry behind in the RV in the air conditioning because he really can’t handle the heat. We were loaded with water, healthy snacks, proper clothing, etc, etc, etc. The trailhead is at the end of an 8 mile, very rough, dirt, US Forest Service road. We couldn’t go more than 7 or 8 mph. But we knew that and had planned for it. WELL. At mile 6 we see a tow truck coming the other direction, with a Jeep Cherokee behind it. Not a good sign. The Jeep waves us down and tells us the road is flooded up ahead, they got completely stuck and had to be towed out. We had read about how that was possible, and if a tow was needed, expect to pay $1,000 (yes, $1,000) for it. Seriously, it was 90 and sunny with no shade at 10:00 am. Dry as you can imagine. How is this possible??? But, we received flash flood warnings on our phones every day, they say there are severe downpours, very isolated, and they turn these dirt roads, with nothing to stop the water flow into dangerous situations. SO, we turned around, and did not get to hike One of The Best Hikes In the US. Bummer.
After Lake Powell we went straight north to the Hatch, Utah area. Right between Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park (about 1 hour either direction to each park). A very remote campground, called Wilderness Ranch and probably the strangest campground we’ve stayed at yet. The people owned 500 acres, and the RV sites were at the back of the property, down some long dirt/gravel roads. No bathrooms, no showers, no laundry facility. But, huge RV sites with full hookups in the middle of nowhere with beautiful views. And, there were only a couple of other RVs there so we had the place to ourselves. There was also a golf course on the property. Weird, I know. It needed some work and the owner had plans to improve it and try to make it an area attraction. Anyhow, we enjoyed several days of wondering the property with Gerry, listening to the coyotes at night and oh my goodness, the stars!! We saw the Milky Way several nights, I have never seen so many stars. We also went to Bryce Canyon National Park (lots of pictures). Beautiful there, and we did a great 6 mile hike. Of course we had to leave Gerry behind, doggies are not welcome at national parks. 🙁 We did not make it to Zion National Park (I hear your gasps and shock!) But, we just didn’t want to do another day without Gerry and we loved the property we were on and didn’t muster the energy to go there. We’ll keep it on the list for another time.
Speaking of Gerry. A little update is needed: he developed these warts (2 big ones) on his nose/lip area. We found out it is from a contagious virus. How did we find out you ask?? Well, we were signing him in at a doggy day care in Durango when the owner saw them and said “oh no! He can’t come in here! Those are contagious!!” A phone call to our vet back home, some pictures sent, and they agreed. So we went to a vet in Durango who suggested we get his immune system to kick in to fight it by crushing the warts. They assured us it wouldn’t hurt him. So they did. And we gave it 2 weeks and it didn’t work. All the while we couldn’t take Gerry to any doggy day care, which made it hard for us to go to national parks because we don’t like to leave him alone in the RV for more than a few hours.
So, while we were at Wilderness Ranch, we drove to Cedar City, Utah, about an hour and 15 minutes each way, to see a vet who surgically removed them. Gerry had to have anesthesia, but he did well and we took him home the same day. Happy to report he is healing well and hoping he will be fit for doggy day care again soon.
We moved from Wilderness Ranch south to Fredonia, Arizona, which is right outside Kanab, Utah. This was our home base to go to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Terrible RV park, and we ended up cutting our time there short by a few days. But, we had a great visit to the North Rim, and did a great hike there too. Hard, as we went about 1.5 miles down into the canyon, then back up and it was very steep. We had planned to go about 3 miles down, then up, but, we ran into a Ranger on the way down, who was telling everyone to turn around and go back up, a storm was coming. Evidently, the day before, on the same trail, people were stranded for a few hours during a storm, water floods the trail since it is between high canyon walls and is very dangerous. So, we took his advise and turned around. The weather cleared up somewhat while we walked around the rim, although you’ll see in the pictures there was a storm over the canyon, a few miles out. Beautiful. Lots of pictures for you. We haven’t been to the South Rim yet, that will be in the next couple of weeks. But we loved the North Rim.
While in the Kanab, Utah area, we also visited Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. Thank you, Janet, for telling us about this great place! Best Friends is a 3,700 acre, no kill sanctuary for all types of companion animals: dogs, cats, horses, pigs, goats, bunnies, exotic birds. They have about 1,600 animals on site at any given time. They have a very active national outreach program that works with shelters in cities all over the country to reduce the kill rates at shelters. They have neuter/spay locations all over the country and run many other programs with the goal of reducing the number of animals killed in shelters every day. We did a tour of the property, met some doggies and kitties and had lunch in their cafeteria overlooking a beautiful canyon. Check them out, animal lovers, they do great work! Somehow we left there without another doggie in tow, but it was hard!
RV Update: I told you before about some of the wood trim coming off. Well guess what? On one moving day two or three weeks ago, I opened the door to start my set up process (put slides out, etc) and found our 50″ Samsung smart TV lying on the floor. Yup, the wall bracket had come out of the wall, above the fireplace, and it lay shattered on the floor. The road had been bumpy that day. And perhaps there is a cumulative effect from all the bumpy roads. Who knows? We have never used the TV much, mostly for DVD movies. I’ve mentioned before we never set up the DirectTV, we have never used the cable option that some campgrounds have at the hookups, we do sometimes get “air” channels if we are near a city and will watch a little TV then. But most of the time, we don’t use it for anything but watching DVD movies. We have built an impressive DVD collection, I must say. So, we have no TV now in the living area. We have been using the bedroom TV to watch DVDs. We had never turned that TV on before this happened, but it was easy to figure out how to use it. And, if things get really rough, we still have the outside TV we have never turned on. It is under the awning on the outside, I think people use it for things like football parties, etc. Again, we have never turned it on, I would have to figure out how to use it if we wanted to. One of the best things, I think, about how we live in the RV is that we don’t watch TV. I know some of you may think we are crazy (for so many reasons!) but it is amazing how different life is when time is spent on other things (talking to each other for example 🙂 ) rather than watching TV.
We are also having somewhat of an issue with our water intake valve. When we hook up to the water spigot at the campgrounds, which feeds directly into our water pipes, some water is seeping into the fresh water tank (which you would fill if you were not going to have access to a fresh water hook up). This happens sometimes, not always. My best un-mechanical minded guess is that a valve or flap of some sort separates the fresh water tank from the water hookup and the valve does not hold sometimes. Anyhow, we are keeping an eye on the monitor for the fresh water tank and when it fills up we empty it. The danger is that if we forget to check it, it could overflow and flood the RV somehow. Oh well, all in all, we are very happy with our RV and how it works.
So that brings us up to the present moment. We are currently at the Grand Canyon Railway RV park, in Williams, Arizona. This will be home base for 10 days. Bill is coming to visit, and, I am going to St. Paul to help Guy finish up some things at the new Sober House for a few days. Residents are beginning to move in (sooner than planned) and we need to finish up a few improvements and furnishings. It will be great to spend a few days with Guy and see Aspire Sober Living receive it’s first resident. Life is good.
Before I go, I have a confession to make. I have not even opened up the box for the external hard drive we bought to make room on the computer for Steve’s pictures. Just have not had the motivation to tackle that project, it is not my cup of tea, so to speak!! So, in the meantime, phone pictures will have to do. I think you will notice how much better our new phone cameras are (remember the 5 hour Verizon ordeal in my last post?!) Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the pictures!
Sorry for the long post, but I had a lot of catching up to do! Thank you everyone for the comments and well wishes, we love hearing from you.
Many apologies for the long delay between posts. We are doing great, all is okay and we are loving our southwest travel. I promise a real update soon, complete with pictures. In the meantime, I thought I’d let you know we are okay! Joanie, thanks for your concern about aliens getting us at Roswell…we are going there, but haven’t been yet. So we’re still here! But what a fun adventure that would be… 🙂
I know I sound like a broken record, but our internet access has been very spotty. We’ve had to drive to towns and sit in the truck several times just to do banking, check our mail, make phone calls, etc. AND Steve’s phone up and died a few days ago. You may recall we had to get new phones last year while in Oregon. That was 10 months ago. So we drove over an hour each way to the nearest “big” city the other day and spent 5 hours (yes you read that right) at the Verizon store. NOT how you want to spend a day, trust me.
So enough for excuses. I am rounding up pictures to share with you soon. We are currently located in southwest Utah, between Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park. Beautiful spot.
Here’s a photo from a recent trip to Antelope Canyon; more to come soon!
Antelope Canyon, near Lake Powell in northern Arizona
Hi Everyone!! First, apologies for the long delay since our last post. And thanks for all the comments, we love hearing from you guys!! At the risk of sounding like I’m making excuses (which I admit I am 🙂 ), I have been struggling with – or more like fighting with – my computer and storage space. The short story is we are completely out of storage space on the computer, way too many pictures and videos. This in spite of the fact that I have 3 cloud services – Google Photos, Verizon Cloud and One Drive. But alas, all the photos from Steve’s “big” camera load to the computer storage even though I thought I was getting them to go straight to One Drive.
Technology is not my strength by a long shot, and it certainly isn’t Steve’s. I have spent hours trying to figure out a solution and have not resolved it yet. And part of the problem is I’m always trying to move pictures from the computer to the cloud when we are in areas with not great internet service which is most of the time. I think I’m going to get an external hard drive when we’re back in civilization somewhere soon. I’ve always struggled with getting our cell phone pictures and the pictures from Steve’s big camera to be in one place so I can merge them together into albums to put in this blog. And now this storage issue … ahhhggg!!
But enough about that, sorry for venting. Onto the happier topic of our travel adventures. I’ll give you a roundup of where we’ve been these last few weeks and what we’ve been up to so we’re all caught up. We left Denver after a lovely visit with Samantha and went to southwest Colorado. Near a really cute little town called Ouray, in the San Juan mountains. Loved it there, and went to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Beautiful. We also drove a long (13 mile) dirt/gravel road to the area True Grit with John Wayne was filmed (at least part of it). It was also a beautiful area and we enjoyed exploring it, very remote.
From there we went to eastern Utah. First a 3 night stay at the Dead Horse Point State Park (they filmed the end scene from Thelma and Louise there, where they drive off the cliff). Great state park and made us realize we should maybe try to stay in state parks more often. Then we moved just 30 miles to an RV park in Moab, UT. Main reason for using an RV park vs. a state park is that most state parks don’t have full hook ups. We had electric only at the state park. No water and no sewer hook up. But we have big tanks for that and planned accordingly. We could have made it several more days without hook ups we determined. But anyhow, we moved to Moab, at a decent but not great RV park with full hook ups.
I can sum up our 10 days in the Moab/Dead Horse State Park area in 1 word: HOT. It was 105 or more every day. No trees, no shade, just lots of red rocks, beautiful canyons and hot. I admit it slowed us down quite a bit. We even spent a couple of days hibernating in our air conditioning. And Gerry hates the heat we have learned. But we got out and did a lot too. We celebrated Steve’s birthday at a lovely ranch about 20 miles outside of Moab that was a beautiful drive. We got massages at the ranch spa too (hey, it was Steve’s birthday)! We went to Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park. Both are beautiful. We did several hikes and also rented a Jeep for an off road adventure. We’ve never done that before and it was fun. Plus the Jeep had air conditioning which we kept at full blast all day, while we had the top open. Gerry was not a huge fan of the Jeep and the bouncy jeep trails. But it got us off the beaten path and into some really cool places, including some very steep jeep trails with big drop offs that were a little scary.
The rental place gave us a good lesson before we left about shifting and when and how to use which gears and they also gave us maps of the “beginner” trails. The instructions even tell you exactly where on each trail to shift into lower gears and were pretty idiot proof, as evidenced by the fact we completed the trails they suggested and made it back safely!
We left Moab yesterday (Saturday) and drove about 150 miles east back to Colorado. We’re only about an hour from where we were a couple of weeks ago, on the other side of the San Juan mountains. We’re about 50 miles south of Telluride and about 70 miles north of Durango. We LOVE it here. One of the best campgrounds we’ve seen anywhere, rustic but nice. Lots of trees, and nestled into the mountains all around. Sites big enough to have a campfire at each site, and we’ve had a fire already in ours. And it was so chilly this morning we turned on our fireplace and went looking for our sweatshirts!! We’re at 8,100 feet elevation and it was only about 80 today for a high. Perfect. Went for a great 6 mile hike today into the mountains, walked right our our RV door to the trailhead.
The RV is holding up pretty well so far, but we have lost a few (3 total) pieces of wood trim inside. One is a crown molding on a kitchen cabinet, one is a piece of baseboard and one is off the closet door. Not sure why things are falling off now and not last summer on the bumpy road to Alaska. But, maybe we knocked a few things loose then and they’re falling off now. Who knows…but, all in all the RV is great and we are still loving it. And loving this lifestyle.
We plan to go to Telluride tomorrow. We hear it is a very nice, resort town that is super dog friendly. They have a Gondola that allows doggies, so we’re going to ride it to the top of the mountain. I’m sure I’ll have things to report on that later!
I’ve put together some pictures on Google Photos from our phones. As mentioned earlier, I can’t load any of Steve’s pictures from the big camera yet, so phone pictures are all we have. Hope they work!! The picture below is on Steve’s birthday, on the drive out to the ranch for dinner. The links to Google Photo albums is below it.
Howdy everyone! We have been enjoying the Denver area, visiting Samantha at her new home. We arrived to the RV park in Golden, CO on July 4th. It’s a great location, only about 5 miles from where Samantha lives and we have a view of the foothills out our windows. That’s the good news. The downside is that the RV park is super crowded, the spots are not big enough for the big rigs (ours included) even though they advertise otherwise. We’re told it’s one of the few RV parks near Denver that can accommodate big rigs (such that it is). We white knuckled it as we drove through the campground to our spot – people’s trucks and tow cars don’t fit onto the assigned spots so they hang out into the driveway which makes it really hard to drive thru with the rig. But Steve did a great job getting us into our spot and we’ve made the most of it. Did I mention we’ve had the good fortune to enjoy the almost nightly live bands directly across the road at the big biker bar? 🙁 Oh, and the loud motorcycles that come and go morning noon and night at the big biker bar??? Oh well, it’s an experience and makes us appreciate the more remote, quite places we are heading to next.
We’ve had a great visit with Samantha and her friend Ryan who moved out here with her. She graduated from OU in May (yeah!) and moved here the end of May. She will be working at a cannabis company, with 2 retail locations and grow facilities. This is her dream come true, to work in the cannabis industry, and she is excited to start her career. There’s a rather lengthy process to get credentialed to work in the industry, and she’s making her way through the process. She should be fully credentialed and able to start work by end of July. She is so happy here and we are so proud of her, she has worked hard to make this happen.
We got out for a hike the other day with Samantha. A great trail, only a few miles away. We were enjoying the hike in spite of the heat and then we met a rattlesnake right on the trail! Steve almost stepped on him since he was leading the way on the trail, but didn’t see him. Samantha saw the snake and screamed. So Steve was on one side of the snake, Samantha and I were on the other side of him and Mr. Snake was not showing any signs of moving. Steve threw a couple of rocks at him hoping to motivate him to move, but no luck. There was no way to go around him, there was a steep drop off on one side and a high rock on the other side. So, Steve took a long branch, pushed the snake out of the way while Samantha and I ran by him on the trail. His rattle was going full speed and it was scary!! Thank goodness Gerry was at doggy daycare that day! We are worried about our hiking in this region over the next few months…not sure what we are going to do yet about that. We’ve been reading about what to do in the event of a bite. I have a picture of the snake below for your viewing pleasure!
Steve looked up an old college friend, Adam, who lives in the Denver area and we were able to get together for lunch while here. They hadn’t seen each other in about 35 years!! Was so nice to visit together and hear them talk about the old days! I have a picture below of the two of them.
My last post was about New Beginnings and Beauty All Around. I think we can put this post under the same category – New Beginnings and Beauty All Around. Life is good!
Now it’s time to move on to our adventure for the summer, the Southwest. We leave here in the morning for the southwest part of Colorado. We’re going to spend the next few months exploring Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Hopefully we’ll be able to enjoy lots of hiking and seeing all the National Parks in the area without any more visits from Rattlesnakes!!!
At the OU Graduation in May. Great to have all 3 kids together!!
Samantha and Ryan at Graduation
This is when we first arrived to Colorado for the move in May
At our hike, before we knew Mr. Snake was lurking up ahead!
