Today we got a sort of late start; Connie had a bad night sleeping and has been having some on and off (mostly on) tummy issues. We’re pretty sure it’s just due to the altitude; she hasn’t got full blown altitude sickness but is having some of the symptoms which start with headaches and on and off nausea. We’re continuing to do what we want to do; but between that and the thin air it’s just slower than usual.

We did get stuck by the bank robbery on the base as we left this morning. Just as we got to the gate they closed them and weren’t letting anybody out. Talked to the guard and apparently an alarm had gone off at the bank on base so they were restricting leaving until they found out what kind of car the robbers were driving. We had a good laugh with the car next to us since we were clearly too old to be robbers and they had 4 kids in the car…besides, everybody knows that robbers have masks and guns…the gate guards didn’t find this amusing at all. After about 15 minutes they opened the gates and let us go…we never did find out what happened but there was nothing on the news and no additional armed security when we got back 3 hours later…so we decided it must have been just a false alarm. Darn, we always wanted to be in the middle of a bank robbery, guess we can’t check that one off the bucket list.

By about 1100 or so she was feeling better so we headed off to our scheduled thing for the day which was a visit to the Wild, WIld, Wild West Festival in Pueblo, Colorado about 45 miles form here. Pueblo is about 2000 feet lower in elevation so we pretty quickly could tell the difference in breathing as we headed south. By the time we got there it was noonish and getting up into the 70s so we wandered around the festival awhile. It turned out to be very little in the Wild, WIld, Wild West mode and mostly just another street festival. Connie was all up for quarter horse demonstrations and cowboys and shootouts and the like and what you got was funnel cake, turkey legs, snow cones, and lots of cheap but overpriced trinkets. Bummer.

We parked in a 2 hour free parking space a couple blocks from the festival, wandered around for an hour or so, had lunch and decided that we had enough street festival. It was getting pretty warm by that time (1300 or so) and Connie was running out of gas so we left, hopped in the car and came home.

We were really tired (not much sleep last night for Connie and Neil was worn out from just living today…so we had a nice siesta in the afternoon. After that we got up, had a wine cooler, and made a nice dish out of left over rotisserie chicken from the Commissary, some leftover sauce made from Mushroom and Roasted Garlic Campbells soup and a little wine, and some noodles. Added some cheesy garlic bread using the last of some rolls we got the other day (as you can tell, it was pretty much a leftover kind of dinner) and it tasted pretty good. We’re having bread pudding with strawberries on top for dessert a little later.

Sorry no pictures today; there wasn’t anything worth it. We did see some nice young ladies dressed up in old west saloon girl costumes (saloon girl was a nicer term for available woman back in the day) wandering around trying to drum up business for the photo studio…but then they opened their mouths and all had down home Virginia accents with a real Southern Bell attitude…which sort of clashed with the saloon girl outfits. We were too hot by that time to bother with pictures though.

Cyas.

Thursday we headed off for our first fun day; we had two stops scheduled for our visiting pleasure. First up was the Garden of the Gods State Park here in Colorado Springs. Our plan was to drive through the parts of the park we were not going to hike through and then take a 3.5 mile hike around the central and most scenic parts of the park.

Our first stop was Balanced Rock. This 700 ton boulder is about 20 feet tall and 30 wide and is balanced on a little segment about 6 or 8 feet around. It’s right next to the one way road through the park so it was a pretty easy visit.  

After that we made our way around to the south parking area and set off on the Chambers/Ute/Bretag/Palmer trail which is  a nice loop that covers most of the best areas in the park. Right at the north end of the parking lot we spotted Cathedral Rock. Our original impression of this rock was that it was just a pinnacle as you can see from this first photo which was taken from the south side.

Little did we know that in actuality it’s a long skinny dorsal fin shaped rock about 500 or so feet high. As we got further around the east and then north east sides of it Neil took the following two pictures…it’s nice how almost every direction gives you a different viewpoint.

Shortly after that we happened across a Black Billed Magpie. This is really a beautiful bird with the black and white accents…Neil was able to get 2 good pictures from slightly different viewpoints.The wings are black and white and flash in flight along with the greenish iridescent tail.

Shortly after this we crossed the main entrance road into the park and took this shot of the classic and famous view of South Gateway Rock on the left, Signature Rock in the middle, and North Gateway Rock on the right. This view is looking to the west and that’s Pikes Peak about 15 miles away between the two gateways.

We turned to the west around North Gateway Rock  and passed White Rock; this is the north side of North Gateway Rock shortly after we turned again to the south to continue our hike.

After going up and down a couple of canyons we exited the trail and entered the Central Gardens area of the park from the west side where we went past Cathedral Spires.

Doesn’t look much like spires from this angle but from the side you can see the separated towers that give it it’s name.

Doesn’t look like the same rock formation, does it. It’s about 200 feet or so high and the profile in the second picture was taken from immediately to the left of the rock in the first picture. Here is another neat formation we saw in the Central Gardens although hit doesn’t appear to have a name of it’s own.

While in the center area we spotted this Western Scrub Jay.

With that our hike was about done so we exited the east side of the Central Gardens area, rejoined the Chambers/Ute section of our original trail and made our way back to the parking lot.

Our next stop was the Manitou Cliff Dwellings which were inhabited by the Ute Indians for about 1000 years…they lived in the caves in the cliff and farmed on the top of the mesa above. Due to a drought about 1300 or so they abandoned the area and moved further south between Pueblo and the Four Corners area. Here are a couple of shots of the dwellings.

Connie noticed that we had forgotten to take a picture of the Kissing Camels at Garden of the Gods earlier so we stopped by there on the way back to the Fam Camp. We really needed to wait until later so that the Camels (which actually are on top of South Gateway Rock) would be backlit and hence easier to see.

You can see the hump and head of the left hand camel and pretty much just the head of the right hand one; the large bump to the right of the second head sort of forms his hump but it’s harder to see than the left one.

With that we headed home as we were pretty tired. We stopped by the Trinity Brewing Company and had a couple of beers and then pretty much just snacked for dinner.

Friday we got up early as we had another pretty long day. 

Our first stop was Helen Hunt Falls. There are two falls at this location; the first (and what turned out to be the better of the two) is right at the trailhead parking area.

This falls is about 40 or so feet high; the picture above is an HDR compilation Neil took from down in the stream bed. After that we headed up about a 1/3 mile hike which would normally be pretty easy even with the 200 foot vertical rise over the distance. However, since the hikestarted at 7600 feet…it was pretty tough going until we got to the top. Neil grabbed this shot of the valley part way up

and then we got up to the upper falls which pretty much turned out to be a bust. This is the best picture Neil got; the falls here are only 4 or 5 feet high. Still worth the hike though.

On the way down he grabbed a couple more shots of the stream; this first one was just below the upper falls after the water ran down a 45 degree rock slope and then hit a rock that was poking out of the slope. Neil really thought this was a really neat shot.

and finally this is the stream just above the lower falls.

With that we were off to our second destination of the day…Pikes Peak. There is a 19 mile long road that goes all the way up to the summit at 14,110 feet. Costs 12 bucks a person toll to go up but the views were definitely worth it. Following the recommendation of the toll road folks we drove all the way up and stopped for photos on the way down as that’s a lot easier on the car than stopping and then having to start again going uphill. The first 9 miles or so were pretty easy climbing through Pikes Forest…the next 4 were getting steeper, less shoulders, almost no guard rails except at the switchback turns and climbing through the tree line and the last 6 were essentially through arctic tundra. Again, not much space on the side of the road if one lost control and it was a long way down. Finally arriving at the summit; the first thing we did was put on some warm clothes as it was 29 degrees up there instead of the 80 it was down in Colorado Springs. Here are some shots from the top.

as well as a 180 degree panorama view looking to the east/northeast.

Here’s the obligatory We Made It!! photo of us at the top.

The wind was blowing about 20 knots so the wind chill temp was around 19 or 20…needless to say we didn’t hang out too long outside. We did head into the gift shop and Connie got a T-Shirt that says “Pike’s Peak, 14,110 Feet. Got Oxygen?”

We thought the air was thin down in Colorado Springs but it was really, really tough to breathe up on the summit. We walked maybe 300 or 400 yards tidal around the top taking photos and buying stuff and pretty much stopped and gasped every 50 feet or so. Right before we left, Neil grabbed this shot of the Pikes Peak Reservoir; this is the main water supply for Colorado Springs. The reservoir is over a mile below the summit in height and about 7 or 8 miles away horizontally.

With that; we got back in the car and headed down…slowly and in low gear so as not to overheat the brakes and recreate the old Harry Chapin song “Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas” which is about a truck headed into Scranton PA that has a brake failure and the resultant trials and tribulations of the driver (true story by the way behind the song). The purpose of this picture will become clear in a bit.

Here is a shot of some of the switchbacks up in the above the timber line tundra area.

These are actually not some of the steeper ones; Neil was afraid to stop and get a picture of them since there were no pullouts. The grade ranges from 4% up to about 15 or 18% for several short ramps. I can’t believe that they actually run a marathon foot race up this mountain with the finish at the top. The race starts down in Manitou and climbs over 7000 feet during the course of the race. Nuts I say.

On the way down; we stopped at the visitor center on the shore of the reservoir from a couple photos back; at the top of the reservoir you can see the white line that is the dam holding the reservoir back; the visitor center is just on the left side of the dam. Here is a shot from the visitor center lot looking back up towards Pike Peak.

This shot is looking almost due west. The dam is immediately out of the frame to the left and the road is behind where Neil took the photo from. The highway to the summit turns and parallels this reservoir for a bit then winds around the back side of the rightmost snow capped peak you can see here then onto Pikes Peak itself which is the left hand snow capped peak. The road comes up from the back right side of Pikes Peak and the summit house is just to the right of the highest point you can see.

We headed home then went out to Ted’s Montana Grill for dinner…then it was back home and since there is nothing worth watching on TV tonight we’ll go to bed early. I think we’re getting acclimated to the thin air. Tomorrow we’re heading south about 50 miles to Pueblo, Colorado for the Western Cowboy Festival. I can’t remember what we’re doing Sunday, Monday and Tuesday but we have more fun stuff scheduled for all 3 days. Wednesday is get ready to travel day and we head out for Great Falls, MT on Thursday.

Cyas.

Neil took the Mazda over and got the oil changed and a minor repair on the front bumper…it got sideswiped in a parking lot somewhere and one of the clips holding the bumper on was broken so it needed a little hillbilly engineering to help hold it in place. It wasn’t in any danger of falling off but was loose and rattled in the wind at highway speeds.

After he got back from the Mazda place Connie was feeling a little better so he cut up an avocado for lunch for her and got some lunchmeat and cheese for himself. After that he went on a quick run…and thinks he’s starting to acclimate to the altitude a little since it didn’t hurt quite so much today…then had a shower and listened to the Security Now podcast from twit.tv. Following that they ran out to the commissary to pick up a few groceries we needed and mail a package for Connie’s work to Chicago.

Getting back home we watched a little news and are going to have some rotisserie chicken with cheese tortellini for dinner and then settle in for some of Connie’s favorite shows on TV. We also picked up a couple of packages (new power supplies for Neil’s Macbook Pro and Connie’s work laptop) that we ordered on Monday.

Tomorrow we’re off to see the Garden of the Gods state park and the Manitou Indian Cliff Dwellings and then have a date at the Trinity Brewing Company for dinner. Friday we’re going to on a hike to see Helen Hunt Falls and then take a drive up to the top of Pikes Peak and back. I’m sure we’ll have some great photos from those adventures…and then we have additional adventures scheduled for Sat through Tuesday. Wednesday we will get ready to travel and Connie has to go and get her new crown installed. Tuesday is Neil’s birthday and we’re planning on going to Tomo Sushi for dinner…it was recommended by Dr. Koo the dentist we saw here as having the best sushi in town.

While it rained most of the day it was pretty nice early this morning…here are a couple of photos of the 14,114 tall Pikes Peak. It’s the snow capped peak in the center background of these pictures; Colorado Springs is located in the valley to the immediate east of the Front Range which is the part of the Rocky Mountains that passes west of Colorado Springs and Denver. Both photos were taken from the side of the road through the Air Force Academy to our campground but he zoomed in a little bit for the second. They were taken with his iPhone…hopefully we’ll get some more detailed ones later in the week as we have our fun.

Pretty impressive, huh? These shots are looking southwest from the road toward the peak. The road to the peak that we’ll be taking Friday leaves the freeway a little north of Colorado Springs then goes west and basically comes up the back right side of the peak as you see it from this viewpoint. I’m sure glad we aren’t doing any serious hiking at that altitude…we are having a hard time catching our breath here in town at a mere 6,100 feet and the summit is 8,000 feet higher than we sit here. Nonetheless; we’re looking forward to it.

Cyas.

The first thing I can report is that there isn’t’ any oxygen in the air in Colorado Springs. I knew we were getting pretty high in elevation but thought we were somewhere in the 4000+ foot range still lower in elevation than Denver. In actuality, Colorado Springs is at 6035 feet and the air here is really, really thin…especially when you’re not acclimatized yet. Yesterday Neil went on a bike ride…11 miles or so but discovered that a 300 yard long climb that went up 30 or 40 feet total was really steep in the thin air and caused much heavy breathing on the way up. Today running…he was even worse…by the time he got to the front of the campground he thought he had run 10 miles. Nonetheless…he continued and did about 3 miles but boy did it hurt.

After our early bedtime Sunday night; we got up yesterday and Connie worked in the morning while Neil caught up on some bills, paperwork and other administrivia. After that we did a serious cleaning on the house; Neil vacuumed the floor and carpets while Connie cleaned and then she Swiffered the floors. We had a steak and some fried ‘taters for dinner, a beer with it, and a coconut chocolate ice cream bar for dessert and went to bed.

Today we woke up and were starting to feel refreshed a little bit; although the thin air does make things take longer to do…hopefully that will pass in a couple of days.

Monday Connie went for her dental cleaning and discovered she needed a new crown…she has a cavity under one of her existing crowns…so she went back today and got the prep done while Neil had his dental cleaning. We also got her recliner repaired (the Lazyboy dealer in Sarasota forwarded the parts here), ran a couple of errands (including buying a couple of 5 gallon containers for spare diesel fuel in the back of BAT)

Tonight’s dinner was sautéed chicken with a sauce made from fresh mushrooms, onions, a can of Roasted Garlic Cream of Mushroom soup from Campbells and a little wine…the sauce was really good but unfortunately not as good as the one Neil made a week ago out of fresh roasted garlic. Now it’s a little TV for the evening…we got our DirectTV access shifted over to the West Coast channels for network broadcasts…and we’ll have some fresh baked cookies for dessert and then off to bed.

Tomorrow is going to be a rainy day…so Neil is going to go get the oil changed in the Mazda while Connie does a bit of work and then after that we’re looking forward to some fun stuff…Connie’s working out the schedule this evening.

Pikes Peak is really pretty cool looking…Neil will try to grab a picture tomorrow when he heads out to get the oil changed in the Mazda so you’ll have a little taste of the good views to come during our visit out west.

Cyas.

Neil talked to our friend Linda Payne…she and Howard are in Colorado Springs already and confirmed the location for our rig weighing tomorrow. We’ve got another 180 odd miles to go and can’t get into the campground until 1730 tomorrow afternoon since Prince Harry is at the Air Force Academy in the afternoon. We’ll plan on getting rolling about 1000 or so which with a nice stop for lunch will put us at the weighing location about 1400. Figure an hour for the weighing and we’ll find a Walmart or Camping World to park in for a couple hours and go find a beer or something while we wait.

Sunday turned out to be (a) a lot more exciting than we thought and (b) quite a tiring day even though it was only a 180 mile travel day. Since we only had 180 miles to go and couldn’t get into the Air Force Academy to park until 1730…we ate breakfast, Neil went on a run and we headed out at 1000. After a quick stop for lunch we continued on to Limon, CO about 60 miles from our destination and left I-70…which is when the fun started. As we exited Limon and turned onto US-24 for the final 60 miles of our day we passed a sign that said No Services next 56 miles…so we sort of knew the road would be relatively deserted. We quickly conferred via our walkie talkies and decided that since BAT’s trip computer said we still had 100 miles of fuel remaining not to turn around and go on a diesel hunt in Limon (we had not seen any stations on the way through town and while there were surely some there we would have had to look…which given our 45 mile cushion seemed like plenty). We continued down US-24 and the miles were counting down to the next turn…when at about 40 miles to go we passed what turned out to be US-24 on the right turning off but it was unmarked and looked more like the dozen or so side roads into ranches we had already passed. Right after that the GPS with no “Turn right now” message went into the dreaded “Recalculating” mode. It didn’t tell us to make a U turn but calculated a new route to Colorado Springs that was now 93 miles left instead of 46 miles…and BAT’s trip counter was down to about 70 miles of fuel remaining. We pulled over at the first place we could find a space about 9 miles down the road (the road had no shoulders and ditches on both sides) and essentially blocked a side road while we again conferred. We decided that the road we passed shortly before Recalculating was actually US-24 so we made a U turn and headed back. Nine miles back up the road we turned onto the unmarked road and the GPS immediately went back into 40 miles remaining to our destination…so we had found the correct road. The bad news was that now the difference between fuel remaining and destination only gave us a cushion of 13 miles since we had wasted 20 or so miles of fuel with our unscheduled sightseeing trip into the unpopulated sections of Colorado. By this time the road also started getting hilly since we had one section of low mountains to get over before descending into the valley where Colorado Springs is located…which means that BAT’s mileage decreased a bit which meant that our 13 mile cushion started decreasing. We started looking for fuel in all of the towns we were passing but most of them were towns in name only. After passing through 3 or 4 of these and with our cushion down to 9 miles we entered Calhan CO about 20 miles short of Colorado Springs which luckily had a truck stop so we were able to fuel up. Took 33 gallons so Neil remarked that we had a whole 4 gallons left and would have made it to Colorado Springs with almost 2 gallons or 19 miles to spare. It was a lot closer than we wanted to cut it so we immediately decided to always fill up at 100 miles remaining for the duration of our time out here in the west and also to stop at Home Depot today and grab a couple of 5 gallon cans we can fill with diesel and stow in the bed…that will give us an extra 95 miles of emergency fuel; we’ll just have to remember to put diesel stabilizer in them and use the fuel in the cans every couple months and refill them since diesel can grow mold if left sitting for long periods.

With that crisis averted we continued on into Colorado Springs to Pikes Peak Travel Land where our friends Howard and Linda of RV-Dreams are parked for the weekend. Linda came out and unlocked the gate for us and we got the rig weighed. As expected; all of our weights except the rear axle of BAT were fine and as we feared the rear axle is overloaded by about 700 pounds. We’ll have to do some shifting of some of our heavy stuff within the coach to correct the overload condition but it won’t be too hard. We can move our 120 pound safe from the front closet to sit next to the couch at the rear of the coach…this alone will correct over 240 pounds of the overload. We’ll move our 100 or so pounds of toolboxes from the basement to sit in the front passenger side of BAT on the floor since the front axle is way under the limit…between the two of those we’ll correct most of the overload. The remainder isn’t something we can fix so we’ll just live with it.

Howard and Linda also recommended lowering our trailer tire pressure from 125 to 100-110; we’ll still be well within the weight limits of the tires at the lower pressure, they’ll last longer, and the ride will improve since they will be less like balloons bouncing the trailer up and down. They recommended we increase the rear tire pressure on BAT from the factory recommended 60 to 70-75; this will make the rear tires the same pressure as the front tires are at factory recommendation so is well within the capacity of the tires. Doing this will make sure that the tire loads on BAT’s rear axle are well within specs so the only overload will be on the rear axle itself by a couple hundred pounds and we’ll just have to live with this or else buy a bigger t ruck and we’re not ready to do that at this point…although the possibility is still under review since we haven’t been in the mountains yet. We did hit a couple of 7 or 8 percent grades for a mile or so yesterday and had no issues with braking and controlling speed but will continue to evaluate this the rest of the travel season.

After our weighing was complete we headed out…it was only about 1530 by that time so we stopped at Walmart to kill time. Connie got her nails done while we waited…when that was finished we got back on the road and headed up Academy Boulevard the last 5 miles to the campsite. The road had been reopened by that time so we got to the Fam Camp and quickly checked into site 84. This wasn’t our original site but when we told the young lady at the counter we had a 39 foot rig she said that a 40 foot site would be a bit cramped so she changed us to the pull through site 84. Plenty of space, pull through instead of back in, and has a nice hole in exactly the right location through the trees so we can get satellite visibility for the TV. Here’s a picture of our site once we got setup (although Neil took this the next morning).

We quickly decided to just do the minimum setup and leave the house cleaning and outside setup until tomorrow since we were tired. So it was utilities only then we went in, baked a pizza for dinner, and watched a little TV. We did catch a really neat show on National Geographic Wild channel on Canyonlands National Park…which is one of the places we will be visiting later in the summer after we leave WA/OR/CA and start heading east through UT and CO…so we got a lot of good tips on things to see while we are there.

Today Neil is going off to get his recliner fixed and run a couple more errands while Connie gets some work done. She has a dental cleaning at 1330 and then we’re spending the rest of today and probably tomorrow cleaning, putting things back after our work last week, and rest up as we have been going pretty hard for the past two weeks or so and need to rest up a little before we start doing fun stuff.

Cyas.

We got all our work done (except for a minor hole in our inside ceiling but Neil’s gonna head over in the morning and grab Chris to get it fixed before we pull out.

• Leaky window fixed
• Gray tank indicator replaced
• Pendant lights over island replaced and a brace for travel built
• Cell phone booster antenna relocated
• Multiplex light switches upgraded to the model you can actually read
• Thermostat replaced
• Air springs installed on BAT. This was actually accomplished by a truck place named Film at Eleven over in Manhattan about 20 miles or so away
• Fixed a couple of minor valence and trim mounting issues
• MorRYDE axles greased and brake pads inspected

Quite a lot of work but it seemed like we had a lot of time standing around waiting. That’s the way it is I guess.

Anyway; with all our work done and Connie finished working for the week we headed out about 1200 or so after lunch to visit the Nature Conservancy preserve named Konza Prairie; this is about 10 miles away towards Manhattan. We had a nice 3.6 mile hike around the prairie and woods and actually saw a fairly decent amount of wildlife…the hike was a lot better than we thought it would be.

First up was a rickety bridge over this creek

and right after we got over that we spotted an Eastern Phoebe, some wildflowers, and a Summer Tanager (originally identified as a Cardinal but sharp eyed reader Jim Mullins correctly called the actual species and a quick check with Peterson verified the corrected ID…thanks Jim.)

along with some nice views of the prairie after climbing up a couple hundred feet onto a ridge.

After coming down from the ridge we wandered through an old homestead from back in the day; here are shots of the remnants of the barn and the plow they planted their crops with.

Heading back towards the car we spotted a beautiful Red Headed Woodpecker; brilliant white underbelly, black back and bright red head. Gorgeous. Neil took 2 shots so you can see both the front and back.

We heard but did not see a turkey several times…we peered carefully down into the bottoms by the pond where the call was coming from but just could not find it. We also know there are deer (probably Mule Deer) in the area since we spotted their hoof prints

as well as at least a couple of bobcats as we spotted at least 3 separate sets of their tracks. Based on the info we found on the web; this is most likely a hind footprint of a female since the larger heel pad is smaller than it would be on a male. The heel pad is the one in the 2 o’clock position. We had no idea what this was until we got boom and googled it.

After that we headed home via Walmart where we picked up a couple of things we needed; some new camp chairs and a pizza for tomorrow night’s dinner after our travel day. We are planning on getting out of here by about 0800 or so (or as soon as Chris finishes the ceiling repair, I think he’s just going to install an additional smoke detector over it since that won’t look out of place and anything else would. We’ve got about 280 miles to go tomorrow but all but about a mile of it is on I-70. We’ve already fueled up and don’t have much camp breakdown; unhook power and water, hitch up BAT, drive around behind the building to dump tanks and hit the road. It should be a pretty easy transit…the speed limit is 75 out here in the west but we usually stick to about 58 or 59 to improve BAT’s fuel mileage and put less strain on everything up and down the hills. We changed our travel order and Neil goes in front on freeways to prevent cars from running up onto her bumper. We’ve had many cars in previous travels (with Neil/BAT in the rear) that blew by BAT and pulled back into the right lane not realizing that Connie was a hundred yards or so ahead also going slow…with the result that they car runs up on Connie’s bumper before realizing she’s slower and slamming on the brakes. We found out that with her in the back on freeways it causes her much less stress since they see her going slower and then just pass both of us. The only drawback is that Neil has a harder time seeing her to keep track of her but we’re going to get us some CB radios once we get into Colorado Springs…that will give us a much longer talking range than the walkie talkies do. We have a pair picked out on Amazon and will order them as soon as we arrive on Sunday. We’re also meeting our friends Howard and LInda Payne when we get there to get the house weighed and make sure we are within our limits.

Cyas.

We dropped the front jacks, hooked up water and electric, and didn’t bother unhitching since we’re just staying overnight. We headed out to the Brew House for dinner and found out they were closed on Mondays so ended up at the Catfish Corner restaurant. Both of us had fried fish…man was it good. Coated with cornmeal and deep fried…it was quite yummy. The decor in the restaurant was quite eclectic; here are a couple of shots of the interior. 

We got up early Tuesday morning, broke camp and hit the road. First stop was McDonalds about 4 miles up the road for breakfast and coffee (we didn’t even make any). After that it was 80 miles or so up the road where we bought fuel for BAT right outside of Norman, OK. We then continued up I-35 until time to stop for lunch. Neil spotted a Travel Stop that had a Dairy Queen so we had a chili cheese dog and a caramel milkshake (well, actually we had one each of each of those for a total of 2 of each of them total) and right over the border into Kansas got off the freeway to avoid the toll roads in Kansas. We headed east about 15 miles, avoided the bridge with a clearance of 12 feet six inches (we are 13 feet 6 inches tall so we definitely couldn’t make it under that overpass) and then proceeded on several 2 and 4 lane roads (pretty decent actually except for not being limited access freeways) all the way to Junction City, KS. The only bad part is that we only go 58 or so miles an hour so you end up with traffic piling up behind you with a speed limit of 70 or 75 and then they come flying past you…curves or double yellow lines or no passing zones mean nothing to the other idiots on the road.

We arrived here at Camp Horizons (otherwise known as the New Horizons factory, dumped our holding tanks which were 25% or so full from our two days of travel with no hookups since we plan on being parked here until Saturday morning and there are no sewer hookups; then got parked in our assigned spot in front of the service building. Here’s a photo of our house (with the tarp up over the window since it’s supposed to rain tonight, hopefully they’ll get that fixed in the next couple of days).

Neil went on a bike ride and had a shower then we headed out to the local Elks Lodge for beer and dinner…which consisted of some Fried Mushrooms and Jalapeño Poppers since we were pretty full from lunch.

Then it was home and early to bed since we have to be up early tomorrow…we have to have finished coffee, breakfast, and be ready for worker bees at 0700 so that means the alarm will go off at 0530. I thought we were done with that craziness since we are retired now…but it seems like we are at least as busy now as we were when we were still working. I don’t know how we got everything done back in those days.

Anyway; there will be no fun this week…after talking to the repair folks in the morning we’re headed over to Film at Eleven (strange name for a truck modification shop, isn’t it?) to drop BAT off for installation of air springs on the rear suspension. Then we’ll do laundry or Connie will work or we’ll hang out in the lobby of New Horizons depending on the work schedule for the rig.

Wednesday morning we met with Ken about 0730 who said they would get right on our work. After that we drove over to Manhattan to drop off BAT at Film at Eleven for the air spring install; getting back to Camp Horizons about 1045 and the house was still sitting where we left it…so much for getting right to it. We’ll hang out in the lounge, go eat some lunch, and probably run back over to pick up BAT later on today; they said it was a 3 hour job and would easily be done today.

Cyas.

Our friends made us feel very welcome from the beginning…Marny was over to welcome us almost as soon as we arrived and Tim and Carolyn the rally masters shortly thereafter. Social hours were held daily both before and after dinners.

There were workshops during the day; 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon with a nice lunch break in the middle. Neil gave a couple of them on technology for the RV lifestyle and we attended other workshops from backing up tips to gadgets to maintenance checklists.

We had a catered dinners Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was a free day for doing other stuff and then more workshops and a closing pot luck on Friday. Neil made roasted garlic (7 heads worth) and a couple of loaves of French Bread as our contribution…it must have been a hit because it all disappeared pretty quickly.

Pro tip: The next time we do this Neil will drag the Breville oven out on the picnic table instead of baking the garlic inside the rig…we baked it Thursday evening after we went out to dinner with Lyn and Ed ad it took us 2 full days to get the garlic smell to dissipate.

Each evening after dinner (except Friday) we had a Great Places Show and Tell where couples brought pictures from their travels and talked about the Great Places they had been. Friday evening we had a White Elephant Gift Exchange with humorous gifts. When your number came up you could pick an wrapped present from the table or steal anything that had already been unwrapped…although each gift could only be stolen twice as the second thief got to keep it. Needless to say the wine and outdoor solar light decorations were quickly stolen twice (too bad, we wanted both of them) so we ended up with a chicken shaped egg poacher and a do rag kerchief to put over your head. Neil did his best to get somebody to steal it but alas, it came home with us.

We volunteered to be on the Rally Committee for the next rally which will be in September of 2014 at a location we an’t reveal yet…but suffice it to say that it fits into our winter 13-14 and spring/summer 14 plans perfectly location wise. It will only be a few hundred miles transit from where we will be spending our summer and will fit perfectly to make our transit either back to Fort Myers or to southern California if we change our mind and go there instead.

Neil finally got around to editing the last couple pictures we wanted to post from our visit to San Antonio the other day…they are both pictures of the memorial to the rising spirits of the Alamo Heros. First is the side view of the monument…you can’t get to the front to take a picture because of the trees; and second is the inscription on the rear of the base. Quite a cool statue although Neil did have to some judicious editing to remove the power line that was across the photo as well as the antenna on the building in the back that appeared to be growing out of it’s head. The front of the memorial is the rising spirit (it’s an old Indian/Texas tradition thing I guess) of the slain Patriots (that’s what they call them down here) during the Texas Revolutionary War (when they broke away from Mexico). The area was named Tejas back in those days which is the Mexican way to spell Texas.

Anywho; that’s about it for now. Today is tank dumping, camp breaking, Connie working, Neil doing computer stuff and all that typical jazz. We head out early tomorrow morning 400 miles to our overnight stop in Ardmore, OK and then another 380 miles on Tuesday to Junction City to Camp New Horizons for our warranty and upgrade work.

We really hope the internet is better there…Neil has some system updates and stuff he needs to do and service (although free) has been pretty lousy here in Buckhorn Lake RV Resort. Too many people using too little bandwidth is the issue.

Not real great photos I know…but sometimes you just an’t really get one any better. To orient you a bit; the Alamo itself is immediately behind where Neil was standing for the first photo about 30 yards or so…he was almost up against the wall of the Long Barracks which was the location of the last stand I talked about in the post the other day. The corner of the fortified area where we took the pictures the other day is off to the left and across the street behind the first photo and to the right towards the building you can see in the second photo.

Cyas.

We got there in the late morning and our first stop was the Alamo…this was one of the three great battles of the Texas Revolutionary War when they broke away from Mexico. The Alamo was originally a mission but it was fortified in the late 1700′s and used first by the Mexican army and then later by the Texan Army. On March 6, 1836 Mexican forces of about 5000 over ran and massacred the 189 defenders in the Alamo including Davy Crocket and Colonel Travis. Only one man survived (a slave) as well as the women and children inside the fort.

This picture is taken from the southeast corner of what was the fortified portion of the mission looking to the northwest. The church is on the right side and housed the wounded and women and children during the final battle. The low building on the left was the barracks and was (along with the church) the fall back point after the Mexican forces breached the wall and gained entry to the mission both where this picture was taken from and on the far side of the barracks building about where the building with the red roof is located.

This is the original mission bell; it was remounted in the museum that was constructed for the 100th anniversary of the battle.

We wandered around the mission for an hour or so; quite a moving story and well documented with how and why the war was fought and the particulars about the battle.

Next we wandered around the corner and visited St. Josephs church; this was built by the German settlers in San Antonio in 1868 and is the oldest church in the city. We really liked the inside of the sanctuary with it’s stained glass and gold around the altar.

After that we headed around the Riverwalk which is an isolated portion of the San Antonio River. It was isolated for flood control purposes and has a controlled water level with a lot of really nice hotels, shops, pubs, and other tourist stuff on the shores.

We stopped for lunch at Durdy Nellie’s Irish Pub and had sandwiches and Guinness then continued around to the San Antonio Cathedral where Davy Crocket’s bones are interred. The cathedral was built in 1938 or so and while bigger than St Joseph’s isn’t as nice inside.

After that we headed again down the Riverwalk and lo and behold saw a site I would never have believed we would see. Right on the bank of the Riverwalk we spotted a male Mallard Duck (quite common) and a Yellow Crowned Night Heron. If you had told me this morning we would see this normally very skittish bird in the middle of downtown San Antonio and he would let you walk up to within 10 feet of him I would not have believed you.

That first picture was taken from across the river which is 30 feet or so wide. Neil walked around closer to him and got this second shot from about 10 feet away.

By this time we were getting tired and were back to the car anyway so we came home. Our friends Lyn and Ed from New Jersey came over and we went to Grape Juice here in Kerrville for dinner. I would not have figured a town this size had a wine bar but they do and the wine was pretty good…although Neil had some Toasted Coconut Porter which was mighty tasty instead of wine. Following that; we came home, had the evening rally get together/social hour, then headed home. Neil’s roasting garlic for tomorrow’s pot luck…garlic roasted in olive oil and french bread makes a mighty fine contribution.

Tomorrow we have a few more rally educational sessions to attend and the final pot luck and closing get together then rally participants start pulling out Saturday AM although we aren’t leaving until Monday. Connie has some work stuff to do on Saturday and Sunday at this point we haven’t gotten the jello out of the package yet so I can’t stir it to see what we might do.

Cyas.

Saturday afternoon we packed up for our transit down to Kerville, TX; then we had the Saint Saëns Organ Symphony concert in Plano in the evening. For a small civic orchestra; the Plano Symphony was actually pretty good. The performance was in St Andrews United Methodist Church which had a huge organ with the pipes behind the sacristy area. We were sitting on the aisle about 10 or 15 rows back. Here’s a picture of the organ taken from our seat in the pew. Before the concert we had dinner at Roy’s nearby. Connie had Macadamia Encrusted Mahi Mahi and Neil had Poached Scallops with Corn Risotto. Both were quite yummy followed by a hot chocolate mousse cake thing for dessert…then it was off to the concert. The concert was great; the organ fit the acoustics of the hall extremely well and was well balanced with the orchestra. One of the better performances we have heard overall…much better than we expected.

Sunday morning we hitched up and headed off…306 miles later we pulled into Buckhorn Lake RV Resort, checked in, and got settled into site 6059. Here’s a picture of us; we’re parked next to another Majestic that has the same color scheme as we do. Funny though…on walking around there are probably a half dozen or more that look just like us. Most of them don’t have a matching pickup through; white seems to be pretty popular; although there is one a bit up with a heavy duty truck painted to match the dark color on the rig. It’s got a SmartCar storage place on the back of the truck as well so they just drive it up when they’re ready to roll. I’ll grab some pictures of the various rigs and trucks during the walk around tomorrow.

Before we even got unhitched (much less setup) we had 3 or 4 other New Horizons owners stop over to chat/welcome/kibitz…I realize that people are trying to be friendly and really do like talking to other RVers but it’s always struck us as funny that the folks already in the campground haven’t figured out that you have stuff to do right after arrival. I mean really, don’t they have to set things up on arrival just like we do. Maybe we’re just not smart enough yet. I dunno.

Anyway; we got setup, Neil got in a quick ride down Goat Creek Road past the ranches and 77 acre ‘estates’ in the area then it was pizza for dinner, TV, and bed. A bunch of rally folks were heading out for Chinese…but given our travel day Connie was pretty tired so we passed on it and ate our pepperoni pizza from Walmart.

Monday morning was Connie doing some work, Neil running, Neil kibitzing with other rally folks (no, not the ones trying to setup), and getting checked into the rally HQ. By that time it was happy hour so we had a brew then headed off to the BBQ (burgers and hotdogs) provided by the rally and the evening get together/welcome/introduction stuff. We also visited a bit with our friends Lyn and Ed from New Jersey who are here still checking out rigs for their purchase a year or so from now; and visited with Lee and Ken Marks. Lee and Ken have the rig that came off the production line right in front of ours and we’ve been chatting via email with them for months on various topics. It’s nice to finally put a face to the name.

Tuesday we start the rally sessions themselves; there are 2 morning and 2 afternoon sessions of about an hour and fifteen minutes each. Topics range from RVing in Alaska to Computers for RV Lifestyle (Neil’s giving that one) to How to Back and Park Your Rig. Essentially each presenter has some expertise in whatever area he’s talking about and most of the sessions are on topics that rally attendees asked to have. Sessions continue Wednesday then Thursday is a free day…but most of the rally attendees are going on a car/truck caravan to wineries. Road Trip!!

Sessions continue Friday with a final potluck dinner and wrap up Friday evening. We’re staying through the weekend; with a trip over to San Antonio for some fun stuff on Saturday; then Monday we’re off to Junction City for warranty work and some upgrades. I’ll make sure Neil takes some pictures of all that to put in the blog

Cyas.