Colorado

We're parked right on the Eagle River. In the Eagle Valley. Right
downstream from the town of Eagle. And guess what we saw flying up and down
the valley today? That's right! Magpies!

Magpies! And a few eagles too.

McKee gave us an eagle story as well. A bald eagle comes to roost in the
same tree every night in Louisville just a couple blocks from her house.
That's unusual.

Oh! And our victory. On the way out of Texas, we faced the San Antonio
Challenge and emerged victorious. Right in the middle of the day on our
drive home, we made the connection from northbound Interstate 37 to
westbound Interstate 10. That's it. You would think it would be simple.
One road goes north. The other road goes west. How hard could it be?

The process involves turns. You would think one turn would do it. A left
turn. But no. I don't recall how many turns there are, but there are a
lot. They are all freeway intersections. It's not like you have to get off
the freeway and drive through traffic lights. And there are signs. This
way to Interstate 10. This way to El Paso. Signs like that. You'd think
it would be easy. And it is easy. For a while. But then the turn and lane
changes get closer and closer together. You make the first exit, follow it
for a few miles then make the next turn, then the next, then the next. They
are not all right lane exits. They are not all single lane exits. After
the first five or six changes, they get so close together, you have to be
set up in the correct lane for the next exit while you're still in the one
before it, or you've already lost.

Fifteen years now, we've been driving back and forth to the Texas coast, and
most of those trips we drive through San Antonio. Never once, in all those
years, have we made the connection between these two interstates without
making at least one wrong turn and having to explore other parts of San
Antonio in our motorhome.

Of course, we didn't accomplish this victory without help. We had the GPS
navigator. But know what? The navigator didn't help at all. It missed the
first turn and was going to direct us another way. So without the help of
the GPS navigator, how did we find our way......?

Luck.

Could we do it again.....?

Not likely.

Colorado

The river view.

Colorado

Along the way, in Colorado, we saw somebody had an ice monster in their yard
so we swung back around and took a picture of it.

Colorado

The view from the cliffs of the Monument looking out over Grand Junction.

Colorado

Our house in the mountains for the next week.

Colorado

Sunday.

Enough lurking. Now it's time to get there and start the job tomorrow.
Drove through Grand Junction, Debeque Canyon, Parachute, Rulison, and Rifle.
Nice lunch stop in Rifle at that rest stop that has the little lake. A run
around the lake. A nice day for a run. Cold enough for mittens.
Forty-five degrees. Mittens and shorts. It's not a very big lake, but
that's okay. I don't need a very long run. Fifteen minutes or twenty.
Canada Geese on the pond. As I'm running the back side, a flock glides in
for a splashdown. Snow on the mountains all around.

Silt, Newcastle, Glenwood Springs, Glenwood Canyon particularly beautiful
today. Surprised by how many fly fishermen we saw on the river. It's
January! Sunny, forty-five degrees, and January. There were even two drift
boats. Stopped right on the other side of Glenwood Canyon at the Riverdance
RV Park. It's a high country park, but open year round. I'll commute the
twenty miles to Edwards for the job.

A year ago, I threw out a question that nobody answered. Sometimes the wind
comes up when we're driving and I can feel its influence. Sometimes,
though, I think I feel rough air even when the wind is not blowing. So,
Skip. You're an aeronaut. You know something about air don't you? Is it
possible to drive through rough air even when it's not windy? Ground level
clear air turbulence?

Texas

Thursday. Driving day. Back to Colorado. Rained all the way. We didn't
actually stay in Nevada last night. We got off at the Mesquite exit, but
the RV Park was just over the state line, in that corner of Arizona you have
to drive through on Interstate 15. So, this morning, we drove from Arizona,
back to Nevada, back to Arizona, through Utah, and into Colorado. A five
state day!

WiFi RV park outside Grand Junction. Across the street from the Colorado
River State Park in Fruita. Outside the entrance to Colorado National
Monument. We can lurk here for a couple days. We're within 150 miles of
the client so it will be an easy drive on Sunday. We have an internet
connection so I can work. We stayed at the commercial park across the
street so we could get the WiFi signal. It is a really strong signal, so
while we were here, we experimented with the pirate approach again. We put
the computer in the car and drove across the street into the state park.
The signal is a little weaker in the state park, but we can get it in all
most all of the camping area. Next time we can stay in the state park if we
want. It's not completely like pirating. We still have to log on and pay
the provider.

We got the flyers mailed out to New Mexico. They went out last Monday. No
more confusion between Arkansas and New Mexico. I think that's under
control. Some good activity on the website. Can't tell whether any of it
is from New Mexico or not, but a hundred ten visitors in the last month. On
average, each person looked at six pages. Those are probably the people who
discovered the pictures of Annie and Rags the cat. 73 new visitors, and 37
returning visitors. Some of the people who looked couldn't believe it and
had to look again.

No cat drugs. Rags the cat has been clean since November 1st.

We didn't stop to look at any birds, but it was a six bald eagle day anyway.
Saw them all from the highway.

As we were driving away from Parker, working our way up through Lake Havasu
City, we saw a burned out palm tree. The house next to it was fine. There
was no underbrush on the ground around it. There was nothing to support a
fire in the palm tree, but there it was, a burned out hulk. Judy and I
tried to imagine an exotic explanation for how a lone mature palm tree could
burn, while nothing around it did, then realized that what we were looking
at was probably not that unusual after all. We were just witnessing the
tragic aftermath of another case of spontaneous palm tree combustion.

Texas

Wednesday.
Rain. We moved on. North along the river. Through Lake Havasu City.
Extended the route a little and went through Kingman, across Hoover Dam,
through Las Vegas, and to Mesquite Nevada for the night. It rained all day.
I wonder. How fast would we have to go to hydroplane 25,000 pounds? I'll
just slow down a little and not find out.

Work is picking up back at the office. Busy Season Begins. Last week we
had one job. This week we have three jobs. Next week it starts for me on
the road too, and we'll have four jobs. It is always such a long time from
one busy season to the next. It's nice when the work lets up at the end of
June and we can get all caught up, but then it is a long time until the next
one. I am so glad when busy season arrives and we can be really productive
again. I like to be busy.

Know how, when you're hooked up at an RV park, and the dump hose is lying on
the ground, and when it's time to leave, and there is still gray water lying
in the dump hose because the outlet end is a little higher than the part in
the middle? You have to get the extra wastewater out of the hose before you
put it away, so you pick it up at the motorhome end and walk it down toward
the other end to empty it. Have you ever noticed that sometimes this works
really well, and sometimes it hardly seems to work at all? Sometimes the
water just hangs in the hose and doesn't want to go away.

Well I have. I've noticed this. And I've figured out why it is. When it
doesn't work right, it's because it can't breathe. Logically, you close the
valve first, so no more water can get in the hose, then you try to clear the
hose. But when you do that, it's like trying to pour water out of a bottle
when no air can get in to take the place of the water you want to get out.
All you get are a few glugs, and you have to do it over and over to get the
hose clear. What you need to do for this to work right is clear the hose
with the dump valve still open. That way all the water pours easily out one
end while air comes in the other end of the hose to replace the water that
just poured out. Then, you have to remember to go back and close the valve
and not just put away the empty dump hose and close the cabinet. How would
I know this last part you ask?........

Texas

We got the white crowned sparrow at Falcon State Park too.

Texas

And Alex too. Matt and Alex.

Texas

check

Got a Conner picture to pass along.

He has even mastered crawling forward now.

Texas

check

And a spoonbill and an ibis.

Texas

Judy got some good spoonbill pictures up by Goose Island.

Texas

And the white winged dove looking a little rumpled.

Texas

A mourning dove in the morning.

Texas

Coots. I never though of them like quail before, but watching them today, I
realize they are a lot like quail. They are both rather round birds that
mutter about, clucking and nurdling. Quail would rather run than fly, and
so would coots. Coots are generally on the water, so their running is more
spectacular, flapping just enough to get up on the surface, they will run a
hundred yards across the water, splashing like crazy, before settling back
down. Water Quail.

Texas

Did we show you the green jay? Here's a tropical looking bird.

Texas

Cardinals are a big deal for us. We never get to see them in Colorado.

Texas

The black phoebe.

Texas

Australian Open tennis on the television. We've made it to the
quarterfinals. Number eight seed Andre Agassi plays number one seed Roger
Federer. They broadcast the match live from Melbourne, which made it 1:30am
our time. We taped it. This morning, I watch Agassi play while I work. I
tend to root for the old guy to beat the young guy. I'm rooting for Agassi.
Two sets down, it's not going well for him. I paused the tape and went out
and ran three miles to see if that would help. I ran up a mountain. I got
the machine pumping. I ran back. It didn't help. An old guy running
didn't seem to inspire him at all. Agassi is great, but Federer is just too
good. Straight sets. Federer played up to his ranking. I went back to
music. Taj Mahal, Blind Boy Rag was waiting for me.

We got to be pirates. There is no reception at this campground. Buckskin
Mountain State Park in Arizona. No WiFi. Not even cellphone. We were
talking to our neighbors and they said they found an open WiFi signal in
town. The next time we drove to Parker, we went to the parking lot of the
seventh day Adventist church across from the library. We opened up the
laptop and tried the signal. It was there! No fee. Just a very fast
connection. Our neighbors say that often do that. They turn the computer
on and drive around until they find a signal. Sometimes the signals are
there, but you can't get on without knowing a password. Sometimes the
signals are just open. Like this one. Of course we don't want to do
anything illegal, or that harms someone else, but it doesn't seem like this
infringes on someone else's system at all, unless maybe we slowed their
internet connection down by a nanosecond while we were on it. It was fun to
do. We don't have a directional antenna, so we never did figure out exactly
where the signal was coming from, but it's easy to drive around in
concentric circles to locate a strong signal. We'll probably look to do it
again some time. In fact we left the computer on when we were through to
see if we ran across another signal, and we did, about two blocks from
Susie's house. Another open signal.

Texas

Buckskin State Park. We love this place.

Texas

Here at the campground, the river is low and quiet in the morning. We
paddle upstream then drift down past the campground and around the bend.
The campground is desert, but lush desert. It's like Organ Pipe Cactus
National Monument, but with a river.

Texas

Moved on. A couple days in Parker. We're getting closer to Colorado.
Judy's sister Sue lives here on the river.

Sitting on Sue and John's deck watching the river go by. Coots, a black
phoebe flycatching insects from the dock, bufflehead, goldeneye. Color in
the west. Flocks of egrets flying home to roost. Full moon rising.

Texas

Had a close encounter with a red tail hawk.

Texas

Found a marbled godwit along the beach.

Texas

We got this cactus wren from a bird blind in Falcon State Park.

Texas

Here is a rare bird in the United States. Chachalakas. They're about the
size of chickens and are at least as noisy. They're in the brush country of
the Rio Grande Valley.

Texas

And when bashing through the brush, we don't want to irritate these guys.

Texas

When stomping about in the swamps of South Texas looking for birds, it's
important to keep an eye out for these guys.

Texas

Inca doves pretending they are gravel.