Snowbirds...sort of .... for a little while

Our trip on Thanksgiving was pretty much uneventful. Traveling through Texas seems to bring up the question “are we there yet? It takes forever. The one break in the scenery was our drive west of San Antonio driving through the hill country. The colors of the trees were beautiful and we went through a little town called Bandera. If we ever go through there again I'm going to stop and explore the shops!

We stopped in Ft Stockton at a Walmart to spend the night as RV parks were far and few between. It was a great idea but we forgot that Walmart’s Black Friday begins on Thursday night! The parking lot was a zoo… areas roped off and people directing traffic and nowhere big enough for us to park. After circling the parking lot twice we saw a nice big roomy area in the gas station. Didn’t sleep very good that night as there was a lot of coming and going, not to mention the boombox stereos that shook the coach as they drove by!

Friday we finally got out of Texas. Driving west we were able to miss all the freezing rain. The only really good scenery on the rest of the drive was Texas Canyon in eastern Arizona. We  drove on into Benson and stayed with our friends and dive buddies Sara and Diann. They have a beautiful property up in the hills north of Benson. The had plenty of room for us and leftovers from Thanksgiving so we got to have turkey after all. Thank you ladies. Road trip pictures.  

Saturday we toured Kartchner Cavern which is located outside of Benson, AZ. It is a state park and a “living” cave. The story about its discovery and how it was opened to the public is fascinating. It was discovered in 1974 and kept secret until it was made into a state park in 1988. It was opened to the public in 1999.  (link to the whole story). I found this presentation on the web - it’s really good  A presentation on the cave

It is a living cave - one of the few existing - in that water is still dripping into the cave and extensive protocols are in place to make sure the cave environment is not impacted by touring the cave. (link to the science of the cave)The lighting is amazing! In fact, one of the lighting electricians that worked on the original installation was in our tour group. It was the 1st time he’d been back. There is every kind of formation found in caves, even some beautiful “draperies”, soda straws and cave bacon. Kartchner Caverns is home to:

One of the world's longest soda straw stalactites: 21 feet 3 inches (Throne Room)

The tallest and most massive column in Arizona, Kubla Khan: 58 feet tall (Throne Room)

The world's most extensive formation of brushite moonmilk (Big Room)

The first reported occurrence of “turnip” shields (Big Room)

The first cave occurrence of “birdsnest” needle quartz formations

Many other unusual formations such as shields, totems, helictites, and rimstone dams.

Here are 2 amazing videos

Kartchner Cavern video tour.

About the cave

We weren’t allowed to take any pictures so I scanned in some postcards. Here is a link to them (Cave pictures) and the photo gallery from the website (Photo gallery)

We had thought about going to Carlsbad Caverns on the way west but all the elevators are out of order. So you have to hike down 1 ½ miles before you even get to the cave …...and then you have to hike out again after hiking all around the cave. Not bad going down but back up….no thanks.

On Sunday we went to Tucson and stayed with more friends (dive buddies, too) Steve and Lynn. They live in this great old house up in the hills above the Rio Rialto. You can see all the lights of the city at night. It’s gorgeous, especially will all their trees and cactus. They even have a second driveway for us to park in….very accommodating.

Lynn is a gourd artist and creates very beautiful and unusual pieces. She also runs an artists co-op gallery where about 10 different artists have their creations on display and for sale. It’s in a group of shops around a courtyard with a fountain….really charming. Here is their website Many Hands Artist Coop. Their work is amazing……..

We had a lot of fun with them taking long walks with the dogs, cooking great food and drinking Steve’s amazing Margaritas. We also sipped some really great scotch, Del Bac, made right in Tucson at. Hamilton Distillery They make 3 kinds, including a mesquite smoked. Quite different from peaty scotch. Wonderful! Link to Tucson pictures

Phoenix has been a trip. We’ve seen so many friends and family….it’s been a whirlwind! I baked lots and lots of Christmas cookies with our grandsons Jack (5) and Harvey (2). Harvey wasn’t interested in rolling out the dough …. he pounded it with his fists!  

We spent a whole day at a huge RV show. It was fun walking through all these RVs we’ve been looking at online…. and I still can’t say which one is “the one” One of our favorites is the new “retro” design by Winnebago. They have brought back the original Brave design from the 70’s (?) The outside profile of this class A is the old school square looking Winnebago. The inside is amazing … completely redesigned and kinda diner styling . Lots of room and well designed. Very fun!

In between all of that Jim has worked really hard, trimming trees and bushes on his old  friends David’s property, where we stay. It’s beautiful here, north side of Phoenix in Cave Creek, up against the mountains.

We see a lot of Christmas decorations and lights in all our driving around town and we saw some unique ways to decorate for Christmas, ie Santa hats on cactus and beautiful lights on cactus….I wouldn’t want to be the one that has to string those lights!

We finished it all up with Tuesday Tacos and Grandpa wrestlemania with his grandson’s at daughter Melanie’s last night and hit the road today. Link to Phoenix pictures

Driving north before we got to the freeway we passed the road to Shangi La, Phoenix’s own nudist resort and spa. On I-17 heading toward Flagstaff, we passed by a pine tree in the median that is decorated anonymously every year. The drive north was dominated by snow-capped views of the San Francisco peaks, (they got a ton of snow on Monday) really beautiful!

East to Albuquerque there isn’t much to see except for the Joseph City power plant. You can see the steam for miles.  And some beautiful red rock bluffs just before we got to New Mexico. We’ll spend the night in Albuquerque and then home to Golden just in time for Christmas festivities…….Fa La La La…..La La .Road Trip Pictures

Addendum: I have to add this bit about Albuquerque. Jim normally drives until he can’t see straight but the trip across Texas kicked our butts, so we decided not to do that again. To break up our trip to Golden, CO from Phoenix, AZ,  we decided to spend the night in Albuquerque. We stopped at the KOA on the north side of town on I-25. Very nice RV park. But the best part is that it is right next door to the Kaktus Brewery . You go through a gate at the end of the RV park  labeled “BEER” and follow the signs all the way around to the brewery. I swear it’s like walking into someone’s back yard. Small and funky, one of the best joints we’ve been to in a LONG time. It should be called the Hideaway, it’s that unique. We had “Dunkle”  pints (a German dark beer) and a meat platter. This is links of wild boar, elk, duck and beef sausage with curry ketchup and mustard dipping sauce…….are you getting the idea? The menu for the pizzas was intriguing, lots of the above meats and unique combinations on their veggie pizzas. You have GOT to stop here if you are going through Albuquerque on I-25. It’s even worth the side trip if you are on I-40  Pictures of Albuquerque and the Brewery

Winter Texans

Wendye and Shelley discovered Retama Village (Information about Retama ) down here in Mission, TX. while they were looking for a place to spend the winter. They wanted to go somewhere warm (first priority)  that offered a spot to park their RV and had an extra living area (casita) for Shelley’s mom, Millie.  They found it here and rented it for the season. It is a RV resort and each lot is part of a neighborhood that has a paved driveways, full hookups, a small coach house and a yard. There is a gorgeous clubhouse, workout room, pool, hot tub and lots and lots of activities. There’s also an outdoor shooting range, woodworking shop, kayaks and bikes. They invited us to go down here and check it out and play for a while. We only intended to stay for a couple of weeks and then go on down to San Carlos in Mexico. Once we got here though we decided to stay longer and forego Mexico this year.

The resort is about 50/50 big Class A motorcoaches and big 5th wheels. . It must be a Texas thing because I’ve never seen so many rigs pulled by semi tractors. There’s probably about 10 of them. We felt kinda small in there. There is also the award winning Retama RV park right next door.

It’s a very interesting blending of cultures down here…..almost more Mexico than Texas. We’re only a short distance from the border so there is a heavy Border Patrol presence. People switch from speaking English to Spanish and back. The newscasters speak perfect English and then switch to a Mexican accent for names and places… a little disconcerting.  The grocery stores carry a lot of Mexican products and meats. Lots of neighborhood drive thrus….. a big garage door on both sides of a garage or house and you drive thru to buy beer and snacks, Mexican meat markets in convenience stores where the butchers speak no English at all.

Then there is the Mission to Pharr corridor along the freeway, with every store and restaurant imaginable, including a Luby’s cafeteria. I did not even know they were still in business! And a Blockbuster Video! It must be one of the last ones in America.The freeways in this part of Texas are unique in that access to the businesses along them is via 2-3 lane frontage roads that border both sides. You have to know which exit you want so you don’t go past where you want to get off or you have to all the way down to the next exit, turn around and come back!  

About 45 mins from Mission is Nuevo Progresso in Mexico. This is the dental mecca for all Winter Texans. Friends that we met at Retama offered to take us down there for dental work. This is a true border town. You park on the Texas side for $2 for the day, walk across the bridge over the Rio Grande and you’re there. Instant Mexico! There is at least 50 dentists in the first 2 blocks over the border. And sidewalk vendors and hawkers everywhere. The hawkers only know enough English to say: root canal, fillings, crowns, clean your teeth, pedicure, botox, face lift, breast implant……. you name it! Sing song mantra……

I’m so glad they took us. They knew all the best restaurants and margarita bars. And they’ve been going to Dr. Mustre for at least 8 years. Everyone speaks English, cleanings are $25 (the best I’ve ever had) full mouth digital x rays for $50, and crowns for $200 (I needed 4 -- I have a lot of 45 year old fillings that are cracking) They did all 4 at once and 2 weeks later I went back for the permanent ones -- perfect fit.

When we got here it was still hot and humid so we played in the pool a lot. (Aerobics and swimming laps). The mosquitoes were really bad as it had been raining so much. They don’t spray because of all the butterflies and birds. (Birding is a BIG deal here) So we’ve gone through 3 cans of Off  and as we didn’t feel like using the mosquitoes for target practice we went to the indoor shooting range a lot. I learned to shoot a pistol for the 1st time and I’m pretty good (see the pictures of target practice) I rented several different guns and have decided to stay with the 9 mm S&W semi-auto Jim bought this fall.

Both our faucets in the coach started leaking over the last month before we got here so we took the opportunity to change out the faucets and we got new sinks, too. The bathroom sink went in super easy with no problems so I knew the kitchen sink would not co-operate as well. Sure enough we had to cut the old sink out with the grinder blade because all the brackets were installed before the cabinet bases. And the plumbing drains didn’t line up underneath so Jim had to re-engineer all the pipes along with much cussing and trips to Home Depot.

They grow sugar cane all around us. It needs a lot of water so there are lots of irrigation canals. In one of the canals there are about 8 baby alligators. They are not indigenous to the area (someone probably turned their pets loose) and there is a Mom and Dad but they stay in hiding. The babies are about 18 months old and are over a foot long. Rumor has it that some of the Border Patrol agents feed them tortillas while on break.! Hmmm, do you suppose this is a new form of deterrent to keep illegals from swimming the Rio Grande?  Another issue with illegals is when they harvest the cane. It has to be burned first so they have a lot of loudspeaker announcements  in English and Spanish prior to harvest to make sure no one gets caught in the fields who might be hiding out.

We’ve had a lot of fun exploring the area, checking out different restaurants, taco stands, flea markets and unique markets. Ruben’s grocery is a fascinating place with food from all around the world. The flea market is pretty big with lots of collectibles, etc but the best was the swimsuits booth --- new swimsuits for $5, $8 or $10 and lots and lots of cover ups. I got a great $5 suit before Jim’s patience ran out! All my girlfriends ---- I know you can relate .

Pictures illustrating all of the above

Best of all though was the National Butterfly Center. (http://nationalbutterflycenter.org/)

We have a few butterflies on the flowers in the village but nothing like there. The other day I saw my first monarch Pictures and video of the Monarch

It was amazing to walk around and see all the different varieties. The next best thing about the butterfly center is that it is almost within walking distance of the RV park.. Serious butterfly enthusiasts have floppy hats, binoculars, checklists, life lists and can tell the difference between males and females. After walking around I know why binoculars help --- some of the butterflies are really small and details are hard to see. I definitely need a faster shutter speed on my camera and a better zoom to capture them digitally but I got some pictures and cool videos. Pictures of butterflies  Here is a link to their photo gallery, these pictures are TRULY amazing (Butterfly Center photo gallery)

I’m writing this on Thanksgiving as we travel to Arizona to spend a couple of weeks with family and friends ……..

Happy Holidays everyone. Eat healthy…..stay lean cause Christmas is right around the corner with all the cookies and other treats.

Retirement (again) part 2

We started the next stage of our vacation; final destination Mission, TX. On October 12th, the first leg of our trip us south to Red River, NM to visit Jim’s sister Judy and her husband Gil. It was his birthday took and she cooked an amazing dinner and had several friends over. For those of you who have followed our blogs in the past, you know they remodeled an old building into an incredible house and they’ve added some beautiful finishing touches. We met some new friends and were able to get in another season of aspen colors.

This had been the year of driving roads we haven’t traveled before. This time we drove west from Red River to Eagle’s Nest and then through Cimarron  Canyon where we joined I-25 south of Raton and then took Hwy 56 out of Springer to Clayton NM and across northwest Texas into Amarillo. (Red River pictures)

Many of you have probably driven through Amarillo or you’ve seen the billboards for miles around about the Big Texan restaurant. We’ve never eaten there until this time. We stayed in an RV Park right down the road ( Overnight RV Park --$30, really nice; 806-373-1431) and they sent a limo to pick us up. Not just any limo but one with a huge set of longhorns mounted on front!

The Big Texan is the home of the 72 oz steak. If you eat the whole thing in an hour it’s free. But if you don’t its $72! AND you have to eat the baked potato, salad, roll and 3 butterfly fried shrimp. They’ve been doing this since 1960. Amazingly, a competitive  eater (Molly Schuyler, 120 pounds) ate 3 of them in 20 minutes and set a new record, earning $5000. (Big Texan website)

We didn’t try it but our steaks were awesome. Almost everything they serve is homemade and comes with a fresh jalapeno pepper.  We had fried mushrooms and Rocky Mountain Oysters for appetisers and they were the best. They have a whole menu of handcrafted beers also and serve them in all sizes including a 101 oz tower of beer, $20. It has a spigot on the bottom for easy serving. The restaurant are on I-40 east which is part of the original Route 66 so the gift shop has lots of memorabilia, Texas bling and snakes ( yes that’s a really big, live rattlesnake ) (Big Texan  pictures)

The next day we headed east to Childress and then south through the Hill Country into Anson. It is just north of Abilene out in cotton country. Very flat and a taste of the scenery to come. We stayed with friends we met working at Amazon, Randy and Evelyn.

The last leg of our trip, on Oct 16th,  took us around San Antonio and south into the Rio Grande Valley to Mission, TX, just a few miles from the Rio Grande river. Wendye and Shelley leased a lot in an RV resort here for the season, so we came down to check it out and enjoy some R&R.

Retirement time (again) Part 1

The  first 6 weeks of our “time off” from River Spruce were very busy! At least for me ….. After we got all the new towing stuff installed on the new Jeep, Jim headed south to Cotopaxi and went fishing. I went to South Dakota to visit Jeremy and Brandy and Sydney (they moved there in June) over Labor Day. It was a beautiful drive to a place I’ve never been to.  They live in Whitewood. It's a small town right in the middle between Deadwood, Spearfish and Sturgis.  

We had a fun time in Deadwood on Saturday. They had a parade of horse drawn wagons and a re-enactment of  snake oil sales complete with costumes and old fashioned speech. We went in this great store called “Beer and Bling”. Buy a beer and browse all the bling ….. Then we had lunch at Kevin Costner’s restaurant and casino, Diamond Lil’s. The entire place is decorated with memorabilia from all of his movies. I discovered I had seen them all. Deadwood website

Monday we went to Sturgis to have lunch at the Loud American Roadhouse. Very fun place, famous for their Steak Tips. These are bite sized steak pieces that are chicken fried. They are so tender and SO GOOD. Not much was happening in town since the rally was over Photos and info on the Sturgis Rally so we went to Spearfish to the park and the historic DC Booth fish hatchery. It was created in 1896 to propagate and stock trout in the Black Hills. It is a living museum and still provides trout for stocking. DC Booth website,

Then we found a park with horseshoe pits set up for competitions. Except that the ground around the stakes was so hard the shoes bounced everywhere!

It was a great visit and they really like living there. Pictures of my trip to South Dakota

Two days after I got back to Cotopaxi, Co. I left again, this time to go to a wedding. You know how your own kids keep growing and soon you have grandkids, etc but you just don’t embrace the reality of other people in your life life growing up and changing? You always remember them the way they were? We lived in Montrose, CO. for almost 18 years and my kids grew up there. I ran a home daycare for 16 years. Now I’m going to one of those kids’ wedding! Her mom is a dear friend so I’ve seen Brittany many times over the years and she has 2 little ones of her own. But there is something about a wedding that just hammers reality home.

It was a beautiful wedding in the mountains east of Montrose near Lake City, Co. We stayed in rustic cabins next to the river and transformed everything into a wonderful blend of outdoor woods and wedding bling  Pictures of Brittany's wedding

The next weekend we drove the motorhome down to our friends west of Gallup, NM. Jim and Bren have a beautiful acreage up against the cliffs in the desert. They  work on the Navajo reservation in Window Rock, Az. and are building this house. It’s called “The Camp” and we came for the Roasty. A roasty is when you get together with friends, old and new, drink beer, cook amazing food and roast chilies. They took orders (mild to extra hot), drove to Albuquerque and got many, many 40# bags of Lemitar chilis. So we cooked and imbibed and roasted and ate and watched some amazing sunsets and cooked and roasted and ate and imbibed. It was wonderful! We had a great time and a beautiful trip down there and back. Pictures of our Roasty trip

We drove down to Gallup via Highway 285 through Alamosa and Antonito in Colorado, through Tres Piedras in New Mexico, west to Chama, (where we spent the night) then on to Farmington and Shiprock and south to Gallup. Coming back we went to Albuquerque. I needed to get chilies (because I did not order any and wanted mild) and we were able to meet up with dear friends for lunch.  We went to Taco Cabana website for lunch. They have incredible food. I highly recommend searching for one near you if you are in the southwest. Taco Cabana locate by zip code. Then we drove north through Taos and Tres Piedras and back to Antonito and Alamosa. You might know Chama and Antonito as that is where the Cumbres and Toltec narrow gauge railroad runs between. Cumbres and Toltec railroad website If you are into historic train rides, this is one to put on your bucket list! You also are very close to the oldest church in Colorado (website) Great Sand Dunes National Park (website), Colorado's only alligator attraction (Colorado Gators website) and another wonderful scenic train ride is the Rio Grande La Veta Pass route that travels between Alamosa and La Veta. (Train video ) They even have outdoor concerts at the top.

Well, that was 3 trips by the 22nd of September…...Wow!

We spent the next 3 weeks or so hanging around the KOA in Cotopaxi. The Aspen colors were beautiful. It’s been several years since I’ve been in the high country to see them and we really enjoyed the drives we took to see them.  Golden Aspen pictures

I also had fun working with my friend Amy in the Art Shed at the campground. This year we made Sugar Skulls and helped the kids decorate them. One of our campers brought her white Cockatoo along for the weekend and he was quite the showoff with everyone. Check out this video….it's amazing. Cotopaxi pictures and video And here is a fantastic video taken by one of our campers via a drone…….who’d have thunk it! Drone video of Cotopaxi.

Even though we weren’t at River Spruce, Wendye and Shelley shared some videos and pictures.

Elk fight at River Spruce

The flower garden at River Spruce

And a friend sent me this link of a traffic jam, Estes Park style

Traffic Jam

The fishing was great and Jim could have stayed to fish for another month at least but I was ready for a road trip so we headed south ………...

Summer at River Spruce

(Some have said they can't see the pictures..... to follow a link, click on the underlined text then go below it and click on the link)

We jumped into our time managing River Spruce for the summer with both feet. Our 1st big project was to plant a butterfly and hummingbird garden. (We can’t have hummingbird feeders because of the bears, so we decided to plant flowers instead)  It is going to be a memorial garden also. We had a lot of fun doing it and it turned out beautiful. It took most of the month of June what with all the rain we got. We were beginning to feel like we were living in the Pacific northwest. But the rain was great for all the plants we put in all over the property, not just in the garden. It’s great having flower gardens again. That is one thing we miss living in the RV.

This is a link to pictures taken over the summer at the cottages. Lots of wildlife, the new garden  and flowers. Also pictures and a short video of a bear that came visiting and the paw prints he left one night opening a car door. Yes, they can open doors! Pictures of River Spruce

Jim’s big project for the summer was painting all the picnic tables and wooden Adirondack chairs at each cabin. We also got a beautiful cedar swing so everyone could sit by the river.  It kept him busy but we were able to take time to go up into the park . Here are pictures of our 1st drive up Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. (RMNP webpage) Trail Ridge is the highest continuous highway in the US and is only open during the summer. Check out the snow along the road in June and you can see why. Pictures of Trail Ridge Road

All the rain and the record snowmelt did cause some concerns about flooding, so we reinforced our river banks with sandbags. The Big Thompson was really raging until the middle of July but it never went out of its banks, thank goodness!

Once the mountain streams calmed down Jim had lots of opportunities to hike and fish up in the Park. He took many guests up to introduce them to fly fishing and we also had lots of friends and family that came to visit. Our granddaughter Allie came the end of June and our grandson Holden came the end of July. Holden lives in central California so the mountains, rivers, trees and flowers were an eye opening experience for him. He’s coming back for the summer next year! We played tourist with kids, mini-golfing, riding the tram ( Built in 1955 here is some Tram history and webcam images) and riding in go-karts and bumper boats. Pictures of our summer visitors

Holden got to hike a lot with his Grandpa and learned to fly fish. They went to the Alpine Center at the top of Trail Ridge Road. It is the highest visitor center in the Park system at almost 12,000 feet and the drive up there is a white knuckler if you don’t enjoy heights. We went several times our other visitors over the summer. (Info on the Alpine Visitor Center and webcam link)) Pictures of the Alpine Center

Here are links to places we went over the summer:

Pictures of Bear Lake

Pictures of hikes in the Park

Pictures of hikes to the Wild Basin area of the Park

It was a very busy summer but lots of fun. The hardest thing was getting used to all the traffic and the crowds. Downtown every third store is either a taffy, ice cream or T-shirt shop but every Thursday there was a great farmer’s market in the park. So Becky braved the traffic and the ever elusive hunt for a parking place to go  to her favorite stand. It was a local farmer where you could fill up a big bag with anything at his stand for $10! It was awesome having all those fresh veggies.

We finished up the 1st of September. Wendy and Shelley took this video of the property after we left River Spruce video. And of course we saw a few elk this summer, mostly up high but in September and October they come right down into town. We missed seeing these but thought you would enjoy it.

Elk fight

Traffic jam

Bugling in the park

Going to go fishing ……….

May in Cotopaxi

I looked back on the last blog posting and I am really, really, really far behind!  It’s amazing how fast the time has been passing. But I have to explain that it’s not really my fault.

I know I had a blog almost done about our time in Cotopaxi (end of April through Memorial Day) On MD weekend we had an intense rain and hail storm and you won’t believe what happened! I came back to the motorhome and my computer had water all over the keyboard :( I couldn’t figure out how that 1 spot on the desk got wet and nothing else was. Well it turned out water came in through some cracks in the seal around our TV antenna (which was down) and that was directly over my laptop. Unbelievable. So as soon as we got back to Denver (on the way to Estes Park) I had to get a new computer. Thank goodness my hard drive was OK. So I spent the entire next day transferring all my data over to a new laptop which starting glitching and crashing within a few hours. So we took it back to Bestbuy and upgraded. And I spent the entire next day repeating the whole process all over again!

So enter in Estes Park and River Spruce. We hit the ground running and have been busy ever since. Many of you know I’m a list person and every new list has “finish the blog” at the top of the list….meaning the Cotopaxi blog so I can start on the River Spruce blog! So, FINALLY, today I sit down at the computer and I can’t find it. I have every document ever written except that one! I’m sure it’s here somewhere but with all the file restoring it got put somewhere weird. So I’m just starting over again………except I just remembered I wrote it with Libreoffice, so I reinstalled that and here it is:

May:

Well here we are all snuggled up in bed in our motor home, listening to the rain on the roof. We're parked alongside the mighty Arkansas River in Cotopaxi, Co. for the month of May. I'm helping my friend Amy who owns the KOA here get the office organized and ready for the summer season. We first came here two years ago to work and fell in love with the place. So now we come back every spring and help with getting everything organized for the summer. Jim goes fishing and I work which he feels makes for a great relationship.....LOL.

We've been here about 10 days and it’s been fun so far. No snow just lot's of rain which is typical spring time weather in the mountains. Last year we had 6” of snow on Mother’s Day so we've got our fingers and toes crossed hoping for sunny days ahead. Jim's enjoying some great fly fishing, including a 24” rainbow trout he caught out of Deweese Reservoir which is a short drive to the south. Picture a small mountain lake surrounded by forest and flanked by the 14,000 foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range and that's Deweese. He also caught some small mouth bass which make great fish tacos. Clean and fry pieces of the bass up in an iron skillet until golden brown and crispy, wrap in a warm tortilla with some chopped onion, cilantro, tomatoes, and fresh salsa with a roasted chile on the side..... easy, quick, and lip “smakin” good!!! That's English for muy bueno.

The Arkansas River was recently designated by the Colorado Wildlife Commission as Gold Medal fishing water meaning waters capable of producing 60 pounds of trout per acre, and at least twelve 14” trout or larger per acre. Only 322 miles of Colorado's 9000 miles of trout streams carry the Gold Medal designation. Needless to say Jim's in 7th heaven and spends many hours fishing the river and hiking the its banks with Lucy. This is one of those places where it's as much about the surroundings, solitude, the scenery, and the wildlife as it is about catching fish. Lucy loves it because she gets to run and play to her hearts content with no leash....just being a dog.

After we got back from California we headed back to Estes Park to help Shelley and Wendye install a new hardwood floor in Tom Tom cabin. Tom Tom is one of the older cabins at River Spruce and very popular with guests. We knew it had snowed in Estes because the same big storm that chased us back from California had passed thru but I could not believe how much snow was still there! They really did have 3 feet of snow and it all happened over 1 night. They shoveled and plowed for over 5 hours on Friday and barely made a dent in it. Heavy, wet, springtime snow....almost like shoveling cement. As soon as Jim saw all of it, he started shoveling. Shelley, Wendye and I tackled removing the old carpet and linoleum from Tom Tom. I think it was a draw as to who had the harder job..... Jim or us! There were 2 layers of hard, brittle linoleum and 2 layers of carpet....yuck! But we got it all out and installed a beautiful new wood floor in just a little over a day. It's amazing what 3 gals and a guy can do! (PIX)

Tuesday morning we looked up from the breakfast table and there was a herd of about 15 deer walking across the river and stopping for a drink. It was beautiful scene set against the backdrop of snow covered spruce trees and the river

Thursday we left Estes for Cotopaxi. We don't have a tow bar installed yet on the new Jeep so I got to drive the Jeep.... by myself.... all the way to Cotopaxi while Jim drove the coach! Needless to say, I haven't gotten to drive it much and what fun. Toolin along all by myself, listening to bluegrass music on Sirius XM, singing out loud, pretty cool!!!!

One of the most amazing thing about the springtime here is that we already have hummingbirds and they are hungry. Today we had hail and lots of rain but they were still out there....fighting over the feeder. We've had as many as 8 to 10 there at one time!

As it’s been raining a lot and Jim is reluctant to stand in water with a 9 foot lightning rod in his hand we’ve been able to take some trips and do some touristy exploring. Jim’s sister Judy and her husband Gill were at their amazing house in Red River while we were in Cotopaxi so we drove down there for a short visit. We went into Taos and explored a small artist community called Arroyo Seco. Very cool place….lots of pottery studios and funky shops and great ice cream. (Pictures of Taos and Red River)

Then we spent another fun afternoon in Canon City touring the Prison Museum. (Canon City prison Museum) There are 7 state prisons in Canon City plus all the federal pens in Florence just 10 miles away! For a change of pace and beauty we visited the Abbey Winery (Abbey and the Winery).

And we went to the new Royal Gorge Park. It burnt down almost completely in the fire 2 summers ago. They were able to save the suspension bridge which until recently was the highest in the world. The incline railroad and the tram were lost and they have rebuilt the tram, but of course it is not the same. They were also able to save all of the animals including the albino buffalo but they aren’t bringing them back. They’ve added a zip line across the canyon and one of those giant slingshot rides where you put on a harness and they launch you out over the edge while you scream and throw up…….no thanks! (Royal Gorge pictures)

That brings us full circle to Memorial Day at Cotopaxi and a wonderful visit with Alisha and Billy and Allie and Kalyn. It was Billy’s first time fishing the Arkansas River and Deweese Reservoir. They caught a mess of fish and had a blast!

We are finishing up our 3 months in Estes Park and I promise I’ll be much more prompt in getting a narrative of our adventures and pictures out to all of you. We have a lot of little projects to finish up here before Wendye and Shelley return from Wisconsin. So as soon as we are on the road again I’ll get the pictures edited (there are a lot of them!) and the story written………...