Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Silverton

Monday.

Both furnaces are working fine. Up to a point. That point is seventy
degrees. The front heater will do whatever you ask of it. The back heater
stops at about seventy. If you're chilled and want to take a shower in a
warm room and turn the heater up higher, it might go higher. It might not.
It depends. I don't know what it depends on. It just depends.

Judy was bad, but now I forget why now. I'm bad because I'm not taking good
care of the propane. I figure you can turn the furnace off at night and
open the window if you want, or you can turn the furnace on, and leave the
window closed. No sense trying to heat all of the high country with a
limited amount of propane. It still gets down to freezing every night, so
it's too cold to sleep comfortably without the furnace, so I set it at sixty
degrees when we go to bed. Here's the bad part. I open a window over my
head to get some of that nice cool night air before we fall asleep. Then we
fall asleep. We fall asleep before I reach up to close the window, and we
sleep until dawn before I wake up and close it. Not very good propane
management. Great sleeping though.

Work went well. Had the exit conference at 4:30. Finished by five. Thank
you Stuart.

Silverton. The Durango Silverton railroad. It stops in Silverton just
before noon. Judy went out at lunch, stood by a locomotive, and got
blasted.

Left Silverton. Negotiated Molas and Coal Bank Passes back to Durango to
spend the night. I can't just keep going on about the scenery can I? Okay.
Just let me say, we've been hanging out on a road called the "Million Dollar
Highway", and in what's know as the Colorado Alps. The Switzerland of the
Rockies.

Had some serious barbeque for dinner. Boy, am I thirsty!

I have now walked around the rear of the motorhome at least thirty or forty
times in a row, without walking into the rear slide. I wasn't so good at
the start of the trip. You might think it would be hard not to notice that
rear slide sticking out, but not so. It doesn't extend down low. It sticks
out about shoulder high, depending on the surrounding terrain. Walking
around the rear of the motorhome in Leadville, in a snowstorm, looking at
the ground, trying to see, I walked right into the slide and tried to knock
myself out. That left a mark. I'm more careful now. And my head feels
better too.

Tomorrow. Back to finish the Durango job.