Archives for 2014

The cows were particularly noisy early this morning, with bulls growling like grizzlies, but they eventually quieted down and let us sleep in a bit later. Handwashed a few things before breakfast, then after finishing our morning shows, we decided to take a trip over to Mesa Verde National Park, the place where all the Pueblo cliff dwellers built their villages along the edges of the mesa and below. As it was only a 30 minute drive, we thought it would be a fairly easy day, but it turns out the only self-guided tour of the cliff-dwellings was at the far end of the park, some 20 miles in, but we had time, so we drove down to the museum, where we browsed a bit and watched the intro movie, then Hubby announced he was too hungry to go on, so we went to their Terrace cafe and split a Bison Brat and fries before heading down to the cliffs. Hubby knew he would have too hard a time climbing back up again, as his leg still hurt from wrestling with Apollo the other day, so he waited on a rock for me to make the 45 minutes hike. Afterward, we drove the two top loops, stopping to take many pix and videos along the way, admiring the gorgeous views, through some fire ravaged areas, but in particular Park Point, a short side trip that led to the highest point in the park, where the fire watchers could actually see four states fro the top. Beautiful! What a fantastic 360 degree view! Indescribeably gorgeous! Stopped in Mancos for gas and a few groceries, just enough so we wouldn't have to find a grocery store, as the next leg of our journey is going to be the longest, and the less stops we have to make, the better! Finally got back to camp after 7:00, got the horses fed, happy to see Apollo didn't seem to be dragging his foot at all anymore! The rest is obviously doing us all good! We finally settled in for the nice, with another dose of Icy Hot on our various bruises and strains, and off to bed!

Neither Hubby nor I had a great night sleep, which is always the way when we are waiting for an extra early alarm to go off. Why is that? When you need the most sleep in the shortest hours, it seems you always wake up throughout the night, not getting the rest you really need. Anyway, we were up as soon as the alarm went off, and it didn't take long to finish putting everything away. Just after 7:00 we were ready to pull out when Hubby noticed one of the tires on the horse trailer was flat. So we put in a Fix-a-flat can and got out the compressor and generator and blew it up, and it seemed to be doing just fine. Said our final good-byes and slid out of camp around 7:40, just a little behind schedule, with a particularly long drive today. We decided to take US 84, which was slightly longer time-wise, but short mileage-wise, though it meant going through Santa Fe and hitting all the lights (which we did, naturally). Once we got out of there, it was pretty straight forward. Just before getting to Pagosa Springs, Hubby called me on the walkie talkie to tell me the tire had blown. Unfortunately there was no shoulder, so I pulled into a barn yard through a pretty narrow gate, but just enough room so I could turn around. Unfortunately when I did, I scraped my wheel well a bit on a big tree, not enough to crack the body, thank goodness, and I think I'll probably be able to compound out the scratches, but I suddenly hear a hissing sound, and found a hole in one of MY tires! The property owner showed up, a nice gentleman who was very helpful and let us use his yard. As Hubby started to work on getting the trailer tire off, I got out our plug kit and started in my tire, and with the owner's help, managed to get that fixed in no time. Then I helped Hubby get out the spare and got him up and running. All told, we lost just over an hour, back on the road just after 1:00, just about 14 miles from Pagosa Springs. When we got there, we stopped for fuel (Hubby was on fumes, thank goodness it was all downhill!), and grabbed a sandwich at Subway to sustain us for the rest of the drive. Headed west on 160 into Durango, we decided that since we had to come into town for a new tire this week anyway, and we were running so late, that we would forgo all the shopping we were going to do except fuel for the vehicles and head straight for Transfer Camp north of Mancos. Fortunately, that was only about 45 minutes more, and we rolled into the main campground around 4:00. Contrary to what I thought I heard about the place, there weren't spigots on every campsite, and in fact, the only spigot was one of those ridiculous ones with a spring handle (which was bad enough) and the kind of outlet you can't put a hose on, which made it much worse! Without some pressure, our long collapsible hose doesn't work at all, and even with a regular hose, we need some pressure to open the automatic valves inside the tank, so we were very frustrated. Fortunately, the camp host, a nice, simple man from California, allowed us to fill up from his faucet, which had a regular spigot on it, thank goodness. It was a slow pump, though, and it took quite a while to get filled up, until finally, we had a full tank. We headed around the corner to the horse camp, and found a nice little spot right next to one of the four very large corrals, with some small aspen trees, which I didn't expect. From the Google Earth shot it looked little more than a parking lot, but on the ground it was actually rather nice. Five rather small campsites, but with fire rings and picnic tables. We soon settled in, and even managed to get the satellite up, though we missed recording one of our shows, but believe it will be broadcast again next week. Hubby was a bit tired and testy by now, but some food and a brandy with his coffee made him an (almost) new man. This place is much quieter than the last, for which we are grateful, but it has a couple of other challenges. There is only one large water trough in the middle of the 4 corrals, with no faucet or spigot or water of any kind. Evidently there is a dude ranch that occasionally brings in a bunch of horses for weekend rides, and they bring a tank of water with them and pump it into the trough, but otherwise, there is no water available. Fortunately, we had enough in the tank in the horse trailer for the evening, but we'll definitely need to get more tomorrow. By the time we finished setting up, however, we noticed that there were cattle free-ranging the area, and we were wondering how they were going to affect our stay. Didn't know if this was typical, or if they broke out someplace and would be retrieved later. Anyway, we were too tired to worry about it, and went to bed early.