September 20th - 23rd, Colorado and New Mexico

Friday Sept 20 Travel day to Ft. Collins Colorado

Well, mission accomplished!  All 49 states covered that we can drive to and camp.  We figure we drove over 500 miles this week in and around the Black Hills and all of the scenic routes.  Of course about 70 miles was the trip to the dealer in Rapid City.  Today's drive was one of those where you shake your head in wonder and find it hard to believe that there are still areas so vast, open and unpopulated in the United States. 

Heading west out of Hill City South Dakota, south through Custer we paralleled the Mickelson Trail, (named one of the top 10 most beautiful trails in the world), for a long way.  It is a 114-mile trail that follows the old Burlington Northern rail line. There must have been some event going on this weekend as there were hundreds of riders on the wide, hard packed gravel trails.  Supposedly the trail is a max 4% grade throughout with a few long uphill climbs two of which are going North and South out of Hill City.   During our time here in SD, I have noticed that the trail-heads for the Mickelson and the Centennial Trail are clearly identified as you are driving down the main highways.  The Mickelson trail alone has 14 trail-heads and the Centennial Trail (over 100 miles also) goes all the way to Bear Butte State Park up by Sturgis, has signs for all the trail-heads also.  Kudos to South Dakota.  More cities should do this because that is my one pet peeve about some of the rails to trails routes.  Unless you are a local biker it is often hard to find the trail-heads even if you Google it.  Some apps work in certain cities but what if you have no phone service, then what?  You cannot research every little thing you may want to do before you leave home.

Yes, in this great country of ours, where we often feel so inundated by

technology, there are still miles and miles and more miles, where phone and internet service is non existent.  You might get a little blip through one horse towns like on US 85 south on the eastern edge of Wyoming but long stretches of open prairie and grass lands force quiet introspection.  Few farms, little to no livestock, just you and the open road, or in many places mountains that block the signals.  We saw these interesting statues in the middle of no where, and stretches of tall fence sitting at an angle quite a bit back from the road.  Too tall for livestock, not long enough to property boundaries.  The lady at the Wyoming visitor center said they are wind/snow breaks.  Instead of planting lines of trees, these fences are erected at intervals and in areas where the dry blowing snows could cause highway closures during the winter.   They are quite effective she noted.  Found an interesting section on my atlas today.  Each state lists its rank by area and by population.  Wyoming is 9th largest by area and 50th by population, less than half a million people in the state.  Even though my atlas is 10 years old I find it hard to believe it has changed that much.  And NO I could not look it up while we were en-route today!! Funny to see when we were coming down I-25 into Ft Collins, Colorado, at a farmstead with pretty run down buildings, was of all things, a Geek Squad Truck!  Yep, we once again had phone service!

Construction Novelty- hit a 30-minute delay where they were resurfacing a road in Wyoming.  The traffic pattern was one lane, one way following a pilot car.  Somebody screwed up and let the northbound traffic start coming before the entire southbound traffic line (us) was cleared.  And the northbound kept coming and coming, semis passing us within inches as they were on the shoulder while we sat still on the newly resurfaced black top.  Finally the construction crew realized and got it together.  Very FRUSTRATING!  By the way, for states that get a lot of snow and harsh winter we have been impressed that the majority of the roads in Minnesota, ND, SD and Wyoming have been pretty decent and we have not really run into a lot of construction this summer. 

The KOA here on the Northern Edge of Fort Collins is quite nice.  We have a very long pull through site that is flat and pretty level.  They have an on site pizza shop and their gift shop is huge.  They even have a large selection of greeting cards. And it is crowded!!  Compared to the last two campgrounds in the Badlands and Hill City South Dakota, which were 90% empty.  Tony thought about switching to 30 amp site to save a few bucks since we won't need to run both air conditioners while we are here but there was no availability.  Looks like they have several Colorado RV groups enjoying the last nice days of summer.  This is the last place we have reservations for.  Called a couple of places in Flagstaff and Colorado Springs.  They are also booked for the next week.  Hmm... and people wonder why we make all of our summer reservations around January and February for the summer peak camping season.  I am sure we will find places we may just have to go a little farther off of the beaten path. 

Saturday Sept 21 -  Kind of a catch all day.  I went to the Larimer County Farmers market by myself and had quite a bit of fun.  There was a fitness event going on in the same vicinity so parking was at a premium.  Luckily a very large church, St. Joseph built in 1926, was only a block or so from where I parked so I just needed to look for the steeple to find my way back to the truck.  I did peek in the church for a few photos as I passed by.  It was very beautiful. 

The farmers market was quite large and probably the best one I have visited this summer.  The produce was beautiful and the homemade baked goods very enticing.  There were people selling micro greens and organic produce, grain fed beef and bison products, locally raised lamb and goat meat and organic dog food.  There was a healthy supply of peppers of all varieties and I even got to watch one of those big roasters.  They made short order of roasting the peppers and another guy bagged them up.  I bought a bag of Big Daddy, medium hot peppers and I will cut them up later this week 

and freeze them.  There were Sweet Italian, Anaheim, Poblanos and a few others.  The Poblanos and Big Daddys seemed to be the biggest sellers.  I made a couple of loops around to scope out the various products and prices.  In the end I came away with a loaf of marble rye, a huge head of leaf lettuce, some mixed variety micro-greens, corn on the cob, a couple of new potatoes and a photo of a great Israeli salad recipe, in addition to the bag of roasted peppers.  One lady running the CSA had bought some of the organic produce and had several salad recipes made up for tasting.   There was so much more I was drooling over but with lack of fridge space and the fact that we will be home in a week, I had to show some restraint.  

I had to rush back to camp because we were meeting a good friend from Arizona, Sharon for lunch in Loveland, CO.  It was about a 20-minute drive for each of us, she lives in Longmont Co.  We spent a leisurely few hours over lunch at a Mexican place, catching up on our summers before we parted ways without a picture.  Dang It... Again we forgot!  She has been following our blog this summer and was glad we called her for an impromptu visit.  There was a grocery store in the strip mall so we stocked up on a few items for the last week of our journey and then headed to Saturday evening mass.

We had two choices for 4pm mass.  Holy Family and 

St. Joseph.  Holy Family was just a bit closer so we headed there.  It was an older church, one stained glass window I saw was dated 1938, in a working class neighborhood.  The Hispanic priest was a little difficult to understand but not bad.  The music was quite painful.  One elderly lady did her best at leading the songs but without any musical accompaniment the tempo and pitch were an issue. With minimal support from the older congregation, oh my, it was hard to listen to.  But they were there for the mass, which is the

most important part.  The stained glass windows were plain but framed detailed central artwork.  This kind of drew you in to the center and made you concentrate on the scene that was depicted.  The Stations of the Cross were unlike any I have seen either.  They were all white with the exception of the cross.  It was brown and stood out against the rest of the imagery.  It really made you focus on the cross in each scene.   Praying for everyone, helping the needy and being active in your own salvation were today's themes. 

We walked the half-mile trail around the little pond here at the camp before dinner.  There was some great artwork painted on the tree stumps by a previous worker at the KOA.  She was pretty talented as you can see from the photos.  Left over pizza with salad capped off the day and we spent time reviewing our large assortment of pictures from the last couple of weeks.   The wind has been blowing fiercely this evening and the  grey clouds hanging low in the sky, but no rain so far. When rain is predicted we try to close up camp including two of the three slides on the RV.  So much easier than trying to pack up when things are wet.  

Sunday-Sept 22

Yesterday when I posted a note on Facebook about our location in Fort Collins at the Lakeside KOA, I was hoping to get a response from another couple from our Alaska trip last summer.  We only had the e-mail address of David and Myong but I thought I remembered they lived in the Denver Colorado Area.  David was able to meet up with us south of Colorado Springs near the town of Littleton as we headed south to New Mexico down I 25 for breakfast at an Einstein Bagel place near his home.  Myong was busy but we had a great time catching up with David and hearing about their summer, their trip to Hawaii and their grandkids and his son's Coda Coffee business, which is growing and 

branching out to franchises.  He also told us about his ventures to Rocky Point Mexico in their RV.  Including the best place cross the border off US-85, getting insurance through Baha Insurance, and which RV park to stay at.  Tony and I are still a little leery of taking our RV to Mexico and would love to go with someone who has experience in this adventure.  Hopefully we will see them the next time they are in Arizona.  Saw some tidbits about bagel history on the bathroom wall while there.  I took a picture in the ladies room but Tony didn't think of pictures.  He said, the men's wall told about cream cheese being invented 100 years before bagels so that was a long time with "Nothing to put your Shmear on!"

Note to self:  Good idea to travel through big cities on the weekends.  I-25 was still very busy for a late Sunday Morning.  The construction and gawking at a six car pile up on the northbound side made travel a little dicey.  Coming into Denver looking at the skyscrapers, the multiple lane freeways, the Mile High Stadium (Empower Field - Denver Broncos) plus the traffic we realized that we have not missed the big cities and have enjoyed our slower paced, less crowded summer travels across the Upper Peninsula of 

Michigan, Northern Wisconsin, Northern Minnesota and the Badlands of North Dakota and South Dakota and the Black Hills of South Dakota.  Another thing we ran into this summer.  Beautiful Rest Areas with bathrooms that had no running water.  There were Enviro toilets and hand sanitizer.   Pit toilets that are air composted.  What a "cool" idea, literally as the breeze can be felt aerating your privates as well as the biological matter below.  I will say that there was no odor to speak of, so something must be working right.  The little KOA we stayed at in Raton, NM just across the border from CO was small, and older but the bathrooms were clean.  Great for a one night stay, and there was a hardware store across the street going out of business with 20% off all items.  The only thing we bought was some caulk to redo the sinks in the RV.  Later that night I though of two more items we could have used but it was too late!

Monday September 23

Heading South and West on I25 our goal tonight is Gallup NM - almost to the Arizona border.  This stretch of highway is also labeled as part of the Santa Fe Trail where settlers heading west to Santa Fe instead of driving cattle up to Santa Fe for shipping eastward.  For the first 100 or so miles between Raton and Las Vegas NM there were pronghorn antelope everywhere.  We probably saw 100-150 of them in groups of 6-10 though there was a couple of loners and a couple of larger groups.  We were amazed.  In Custer State Park we were craning our necks to see the half dozen or so on our drives and here they were in the open grasslands wild and free.  Bedded down, grazing, and running
along.  Truly it was the epitome of the words from the song Home on the Range - "Where the deer and the antelope play".  No deer but plenty of antelope.  The scenery later changed from grasslands to more mountainous and high desert clumps of evergreens that dot the scrub grass and hillsides like haphazard polka dot patterns.   At one stop there was a historical marker dedicated to Fort Union that was the largest fort in the area set up to protect travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, and as a supply post for other smaller forts. 

Traveling back through Santa Fe today.  To stretch our legs and get a rest room break we knew there was a Wal-Mart not far off the highway having been through Santa Fe earlier this summer.  Of course I had an ulterior motive.  The Creamland Brand green chili dip that I bought was VERY tasty when we finally sampled it during the July 4th Holiday week with our kids and their friends.  I picked up a couple more containers so we can share with friends at a game night when we get back home.  Attempted to get fuel but the divided highways in the area make it tricky and after one U turn with the fifth wheel and a couple of "sorry's" to drivers who could not hear us as we changed lanes quickly, we got back on the highway and decided we would stop somewhere after Albuquerque. 

The rolling hills and the black ribbons of highway looked cool as they stretched before us leading us towards home.   Later in the afternoon, we passed wreckers as they were trying to upright two semi trailers that were blackened by fire makes.  This makes the third rolled semi trailer this summer and has us counting our blessings, considering the miles we travel during the summers.  I always grab the handle on the door as we round curves and the GPS announces "Roll over Warning".   Ironically any time we have seen a roll over it is on a straightaway.  Someone probably fell asleep at the wheel.  That is why we generally stick to 5-6 hour days traveling only in the daylight. 

Carvings at USA RV Park

As we rolled into Gallup NM the rain slowed to a slight
drizzle making it a little nicer for setting up.  Gallup is billed as "the most patriotic city in the country" and USA RV Park is one of the ones we stayed at with our RV moving to Arizona five years ago when Noel and Karen accompanied us driving our car.  Long sites, wide gravel roads, paved pads and clean restrooms - a great spot for a one-night stop.  I learned they have no grass because it is not allowed in the city of Gallup.  You get fined if you have grass in your landscape because of the water it requires.  Water bills here are more expensive than electricity according to park employee.  I have often wondered why we have so much greenery and water thirsty landscape in our AZ development and in the city of Gilbert when we too live in a desert environment.  Go Figure.