Thursday, September 6, 2012, South Fork, CO

One of the fishing ponds

Thursday, September 6, 2012, South Fork, CO
I worked on our travel plans through Oct. 1 for quite awhile this morning. I think I finally have it.

Fun Valley Derby

Later I walked over to the office to mail a birthday card and a credit union deposit. I stopped by Alan's coach and we visited for awhile. 
 Alan walked over to the office and then with me back to our coach and visited until it was time to go to the Big Barn for the chili cook off judging. The Wild Rose Band played during the judging. After the judging the line was opened to let spectators taste the entrants. There were twelve entrants. I tasted them all so I had a pretty good snack. I liked them all but the one that had chocolate in it. Gerri agreed that it was baaaad!

The next activity was the Fun Valley Derby. In the second race I bought a horse. Gerri sat in the owner's seat and I was the Jockey. Each race had six horses which moved across a grid according to the numbers thrown on three dice. If the horse's number comes up on one of the dice, the horse moves one space. Two spaces if the horse's number came up on two dice, etc. My horse won the second race. As owner I got $18 and the odds on my horse were 10 to 1, so I won there too.

The restaurant and creek that joins the ponds 

After returning to the coach I cleaned up the Jeep. It was pretty dusty from the dirt road I drove on while geocaching. I wiped off the coach with the duster. If I get real ambitious tomorrow I may wash it. It hasn't been washed since we went to Oceanside in July. I have the excuse that it has looked like or been raining. The white streaks are getting bigger. I may have to break down and clean the whole thing soon.
For supper we had the last of the Sole Almond plus a salad with whole grain Quinoa.
After supper Gerri watched Obama's speech to the DNC. I'll have to shovel out the inside of the motorhome before I can get to the bedroom.

 

 


 

Wednesday, September 5, 2012, South Fork, CO

Wednesday, September 5, 2012, South Fork, CO

The Wild Rose Band

This morning I made a few phone calls to take care of business regarding my mother. I also made some alternate itineraries for when we leave Fun Valley. The plans include visits with cousins in the Dallas/Fort Worth area before heading for Mississippi.

Fun Valley Derby

I started to walk down to the office to see if our new credit cards had arrived from Chase. On the way I spoke to some neighbors and ran into Alan. We visited until time for lunch. Alan went to his coach for lunch and I headed for the office to check on the UPS delivery. It hadn't come yet. I called Gerri to see if she wanted me to pickup hamburgers and fries for lunch and bring them home. She thought that was good idea. The burgers from the snack bar of Fun Valley were delicious and filling.

After lunch I went out to try to find a few caches. The first one was on the top of a hill overlooking South Fork. What a view, of course I didn't take a camera with me. The next one I found was near the gravesite and homestead of an early Colorado pioneer. The next one stumped me. I really don't like driving 10 miles of dirt roads and ending up empty handed. My next find was of a cache that I didn't find last year when we were here. The last cache I went to was very interesting. There was about 9 miles of dirt road but the cache was near a spectacular geological feature.
After the cache at the Natural Arch I headed back to Del Monte for gas and then back to Fun Valley.
While I was gone Gerri went to the 2^nd day of the annual food contests. Today's entries were pecan pies. While the judging was taking place the Wild Rose Band played and followed again with the horse races. She walked to the big barn and back and that was her exercise on her foot for the day.

Fun Valley Birds

After watching a Judge Judy show Gerri revealed her revisions of my earlier itineraries. We settled on leaving Fun Valley this Saturday and visiting relatives in Fort Worth. Then moving on to have repairs done in McKinney, and then visiting our friends from Lake Havasu in Melissa and after that on to Mississippi.

Since we had a large lunch we had cheese and crackers for supper. Ok, in addition to the cheese and crackers I ate Gerri's left over Huevos Rancheros from our at Tequila's lunch in Pagosa Springs.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012, South Fork, CO

We have attracted a few birds

Tuesday, September 4, 2012, South Fork, CO
Alan came by this morning and asked if I wanted to ride to Monte Vista to pick up his laundry. I needed to get a birthday card and some envelopes. I know I had some in the coach but couldn't find them. I did my shopping at a dollar store and after Alan picked up his laundry we headed back to Fun Valley.
On the way back we stopped in Del Norte and found a cache that I couldn't find last year.
In the afternoon we went to the Big Barn for the judging of a bean cook off. Today beans, tomorrow pecan pie and Thursday a chili cook off. We stayed for the Fun Valley Derby horse races.
We met Alan at the park's restaurant and had chicken fried steak for supper.
Shortly after we got back to the coach a rain squall came through with enough wind to bring the main awning in. It didn't last long but cooled things off quite a bit.

Nearby Big Meadows Reservoir 

BTW, when I put the new envelopes away I found the old ones.

Monday, September 3, 2012, South Fork, CO

Monday, September 3, 2012, South Fork, CO

The San Juan River

Alan came by this morning and invited us to go to lunch with him at Tequila's Mexican Restaurant in Pagosa Springs.
We left Fun Valley at about 10:30am. It's about 45 miles to Pagosa Springs and the route is back the way we came to South Fork last week, US-160 over Wolf Creek Pass. It's quite a bit faster in Alan's Jeep than in the motorhome.
We sat outside at Tequila's overlooking the San Juan River and the hot springs on the other side. The food was excellent and plenty of it. Between the people in the river and along the walk beside it we had a good time people watching.

Alan and his lunch, he only ate halg that.

On the way back to Fun Valley we stopped at one geocache just outside the Riverview RV Park.

Gerri's lunch

Back at fun Valley we parted company with Alan and I went caching. I did two a traditional at the Big Meadow Reservoir and a virtual at Treasure Falls. For the cache at Treasure Falls I drove over the hill from South Fork toward Pagosa Springs. I parked where my Jeep GPSR showed a straight line to the cache. My handheld showed .16 miles to the cache. I found a sign that said Falls Trail, but it had another sign that said trail closed. I gave up and erased the cache and drove up to the rest rooms. Of course once I got there, I saw the real Falls Trail with a map showing Misty Deck. I headed up the trail figuring I could find a sign easily enough. By the time I reached the turnoff to an overlook my knees and feet were protesting. I was ready to hire a fellow hiker to go ahead and get the required information and bring it back. But no one came along. I got to Misty Deck and the sign there had no numbers on it. I took pictures of the falls and backtracked to the last turn off. I found the sign with the answer required to claim the cache and headed back down. Straight line the distance to the cache may have been .16 miles, but as the feet meet the trail it was probably twice as far. On the way up I had to brake for a woolly worm and later a small snake crossing the path.

Treasure Falls

Since we had a big lunch we only had tuna fish sandwiches for supper.






 

Sunday, September 2, 2012, South Fork, CO

Sunday, September 2, 2012, South Fork, CO
I went to the Church of Christ in South Fork, there were 78 in the morning worship service. Gerri stayed home with her foot up.
On the way back to the park I stopped and found a cache that I didn't find yesterday. Last night I read the previous logs and one said the cache was 47' from GZ. For me it was 55' off, but I did find it.
Back at the park Gerri showed me some pictures of a couple of horses that grazed along the river bank. I walked around and talked to a few neighbors and then ran into Alan. We talked for awhile before I went back to our coach. I did meet our neighbors on the east side and we visited awhile.
For supper Gerri grilled a couple of hamburger patties on the George Grill. These were some of the patties left over from our June pool party. They were large enough that we split then in two and each had two on the sandwich thins bread instead of buns.

Not an eventful day, but a good one in the mountains.

Saturday, September 1, 2012, South Fork, CO

Saturday, September 1, 2012, Fun Valley, South Fork, CO
Alan came over this morning and we talked about replacement of the Norcold refrigerators with residential models. He is considering the replacement to gain the volume and avoid the danger of fire with Norcold units. I have also considered the replacement for those reasons plus ours has never worked that well.
Alan had some new awning straps. One was just a little shorter than my broken one. It took a few minutes to replace the strap. While replacing the strap we noticed that the bead that holds the awning material in the slot on the roller was too short. After some effort Alan was able to insert another length of bead into the material and the slot. I hope Alan doesn't think I will put him to work every time he comes over.

Our neighbor's flower garden

I loaded up the GPS with some nearby caches and went hunting. The closest cache was 1.67 miles away, but that was as the crows flies. Actual driving it was about 8 miles and a .16 mile hike. The cache was in a great spot overlooking the Million Reservoir. There we about a dozen people fishing around the reservoir. On the next cache I walked around in circles for a long time before uncovering the cleverly hidden cache. I didn't find the third one I hunted. Back at the coach I read an old log for the cache that said the given coordinates were off 47 feet, I'll go back later.
Gerri had fixed tuna salad for lunch and we had tuna wraps. And we planned to have dinner at the park restaurant, tonight was catfish. We went to the restaurant after I got back from caching and cleaned up. We went for dinner at 7, the service started at 6 and ends at 7:30. For us this is early. It was an excellent meal, catfish with fried okra, hushpuppies, black-eyed peas. There were lots of other side dishes available.
Gerri spent most of the day with her foot up as it still swells and is painful. After dinner she got her foot up with an icepack.
The internet connection through Verizon is very slow and Gerri is slowed way down on her internet activities. The park has WiFi but we must be too far away for a strong signal.
We watched TV for awhile with the windows open but a neighbor a few sites away had a huge campfire and the smoke was coming our way. We had to shut the windows. It didn't take long to get stuffy and I turned on fans.
The fire had died down by bedtime so we opened the windows again.

Friday, August 31, 2012, South Fork, CO

Friday, August 31, 2012, South Fork, CO
We woke up this morning to cloudy skies. We also woke up to the water tank overflowing again. Back to the drawing boards on this problem.
We left Monticello at 10:00 AM. We went south on US-191 a short distance to US-491 and then on to Cortez, CO. In Cortez we turned east on US-160 toward Durango. The last time we were in Durango, I participated in a bike race called the Iron Horse Classic. The ride went from Durango to Silverton. It was about 50 miles and went over two 10,000+' passes. The premise of the race was to leave Durango at the same time as the train to Silverton and beat it there. I had reservations to ride the train back to Durango from Silverton. But the train knocked me in the dirt. The ride took me 5 hours and 20 minutes and the train had gone back to Durango before I got to Silverton. Fortunately Mark Habbeshaw waited until I got to Silverton and gave me a ride back to Durango. This time I was driving a 42' motor home and wasn't headed to Silverton. Instead we continued on US-160 toward Pagosa Springs.
After Pagosa Springs the highway turned up, literally. We headed on toward Wolf Creek Pass. From 7000' to 10800 in about 10 miles. I never dropped below 25 MPH.

Our home away from home in Fun Valley

We arrived at the Fun Valley RV Park at about 3 PM. We wanted to park in Hummingbird Park but were told that was for monthly renters. Even though we had stayed there last year for a week, I didn't argue we were directed to a spot in Aspen Park with 30 amp electric. I checked it out. The site overlooked the South Fork of the Rio Grande and was only a short distance from Hummingbird Park.
After setting up, including putting out the 6'x12' patio carpet, I searched in vain for the large nails I have used to hold the carpet. I guess I took them out at home. I checked the water several times, no apparent problem.

South Fork of the Rio Grande from our site

I called our friend Alan Howeth, who has been here since May and he came over to visit. We spent a while visiting and Alan planned to attend a dance at the big barn. We hadn't had supper so we decided not to go to the dance. I took the information on our site to the office and stopped by the store, they had the tent pegs I needed for 87 cents each.
For supper Gerri fixed Sole Almandine with corn on the cob and a cabbage salad.

After supper we spent time watching TV and on the computer. The computer connection is slow. I still haven't been able to add pictures to this blog.