Colorado Rocky Mountain summer weather; eighties during the day, forties at
night.
Discovered an interesting fact. The bathroom sink in the hallway has the
usual overflow port at the top front, so if you fill up the sink for the cat
to drink from, because he likes to drink from his mountain lake, and forget
to turn the water off, it just runs out the overflow until you remember.
If you fill the sink up in the bathroom, you'd better keep an eye on it,
because it does not have an overflow.
On the way north, we stopped at a campground in Big Spring. At this
campground, they have an affinity for the classics.
With only one game remaining in the preseason, the Broncos are undefeated.
I think they're going all the way.
Racquetball in Grand Junction. Racquetball in Cortez. Racquetball in Las
Vegas. I don't ever have a match, so I just go hit the ball in an empty
court and lurk. I watch for someone else that might want to play.
On the way into the courts in Las Vegas, I saw a guy hitting in another
court. He was kind of old, didn't look to be in very good shape, and his
shots were weak. There wasn't anything there for me, so I went on to my
court and started warming up my shots. Shortly, here he came, the guy with
nothing, to introduce himself and invite me to play a game. Oh well.
He was properly hospitable and gave me the serve to start. I was careful
with him and didn't serve it too hard. He returned it well. After ten
minutes, I was well beyond being careful with him. All we had done is trade
serves, with only the occasional point scored. I was down four to one. His
stroke mechanics are horrible. He has no power. What he has is a game that
puts the other guy in a position to hit a weak shot, then he steps up and
capitalizes on it. He has a game!
I like to outhit the other guy if I can. All I have to do is hit the
perfect backhand power shot from the deepest corner of the back court. An
offensive shot from the back court that is perfectly executed is a beautiful
thing. However, an offensive shot that is almost right is much worse than a
mediocre defensive shot that is designed to move the other person around in
the court and get them out of position. An offensive shot that just misses
comes back out to the center of the court for the other guy to put away. I
played the game I wanted to play. I hit it hard. I broke away in the
middle part and got a comfortable lead, but somehow that evaporated and he
was ahead again by the end of the game. I was down twelve to fourteen when
I got the serve back, got lucky, and served out the game. Thirty minutes to
play one game! I won it........ by one point!
I've been working on maintaining my shots. Guess I need to work on my
scouting skills too.
The Beaver has landed. After all our buzzing back and forth between
Washington and Texas, we've settled in Colorado for three weeks of jobs in
the Roaring Fork Valley. Three weeks at one place! Can you imagine that?
We're at an RV Park in Basalt. The jobs are in Glenwood, Carbondale, and
Glenwood.
It was cool in Raton this morning, forty-six degrees. Drove two hundred
miles. Had lunch with Matt, Kari, Alex, and Steven. Drove another two
hundred miles, and here we are. Seventy-five degree day. We ran the air
conditioners nonstop in all that hot weather. Now we'll get to run the
heaters some.
Looking forward to a new client tomorrow. Hope it's an easy one. Well, it
doesn't really have to be easy, I just want it to be one where all the
pieces come together by the end of the week.
Like I said, it was cooler and dryer outside last night. We slept at the
same temperature as always inside, we set the air conditioning on 60
degrees. When we got up in the morning, the outside of the motorhome didn't
look like a giant glass of iced tea, covered in condensation, on a hot
summer day down south. And the first time we opened the door to go
outside... all the glass and mirrors inside did not immediately fog up. It
was cooler and dryer.
White winged doves, yellow rumped warblers, curve bill thrashers, and cactus
wrens.
Have you ever driven from Big Spring Texas to Lubbock or Amarillo? It is
sooooo flat. There are towns named after how flat it is. La Mesa,
Plainview, Levelland. We have been to Plainview and it is aptly named. You
can certainly see plains in all directions. We have been tempted to divert
to Levelland but haven't yet. We are certainly curious to see what
distinguishes Levelland from the surrounding countryside.
A perfect place for cotton. Cotton, cotton, cotton for all those miles.
Two hundred miles of cotton.... And oilwells. The ground is perfect for
growing cotton and oilwells.... and that funny little plant that looks like
tiny corn but with a big puffy thing in the center. It appears that they
harvest the big puffy thing in the center and leave the little corn plant
kind of thing in the ground. We haven't figured out what that is yet. We
haven't stopped to look. We haven't stopped to ask.
Big Spring to Lubbock to Amarillo to Raton New Mexico. We did it. We did
all the leaving it took to actually leave Texas. And in a few more days
I'll probably get that song refrain about "Happiness is Lubbock Texas in my
rearview mirror." out of my head as well. Becky, have I thanked you enough
for bringing that up?
Tomorrow, Colorado.
We need somebody to invent something. Know those two pins that connect the
tow gear to the front of the tow car? You have to have two of them or the
whole thing doesn't work.... those two pins. Know how when you pull the
pins to disconnect the car, you have the disconnected tow bar in one hand
and the second pin in the other. You have to set the pin down, fold up the
tow gear, then remember to turn back and put the put the pin back in the
bracket on the tow car so it will be there the next time you hook up. That
pin.
Someone should invent a pin that stays attached to the tow car at all times
so people that might forget to turn back and put the pin back in the front
of the tow car before they drive it away won't be disappointed the next
morning. I mean just in case that ever does happen to anyone.
Got an early start this morning, made a quick stop in San Antonio to run an
errand to an RV supply store, and headed northwest. Through Boerne,
Kerrville, and Junction. Turned right at Sonora, north to San Angelo.
Stopped for the night at Big Spring, migration home for thousands of
sandhill cranes, none of whom are here right now because it's not time to
migrate. Got barbecue at Brenda's.
It's still hot, high nineties today, but we're farther north and the
humidity is lower. It promises to cool down below eighty tonight. Saw
robins, lesser goldfinches, curve-billed thrashers, and some little brown
birds. Still trying to figure out the flycatchers with yellow bellies we
saw at Paradise Pond. Maybe juvenile eastern phoebes.
Left in the afternoon. Got off the island and through Corpus Christi.
Stopped for the night at Choke Canyon State Park. We didn't see the
javelina, the raccoons, or the vermilion flycatcher. We did see the deer,
black-necked stilts, white-faced ibis, grebes, cormorants, caracara,
sissor-tail flycatcher, roadrunner, wild turkey, barn swallow, cliff
swallow, cave swallow, and chimney swifts.
We have a job in Glenwood Springs on Monday.
The lower patio. Some accent lights. They're solar powered and just glow
at night for a little background light. Some buchgrass over by the cranes.
When they get all the landscaping done, they'll clean up the pond and raise
the level a few feet.
It's hot here, in the nineties during the day, but it cools down at
night.... to eighty. The humidity makes it feel hotter than the temperature
would indicate; add fifteen degrees. It felt oppressive the first day, but
now it just feels hot.
Pelicans crash headlong into the surf a few feet from us as we walk on the
beach. All the gulls here in August are laughing gulls, except for those
two ring billed gulls we saw. Ring billed are not a big gull, but they
looked so big compared to the laughing gulls. Terns in August are a
different story. The beach is a ternfest. There are eight different terns
here.
Back at the RV Park, eight black-bellied whistling ducks did a noisy
flyover.
We stayed in our motorhome at the rv park on the beach.
Others arrived by different means.
A few hours to get through social security. It didn't take nearly as long
as it looked like it was going to take. The driver's license bureau line
wasn't as long as the social security line. Friendly helpful people all
around; even fun people to talk to in line. The guard at the door for
social security was downright charming.
Funny thing. We couldn't get driver's licenses without showing Colorado
licenses, passports, social security cards, insurance cards, and vehicle
registrations. The social security cards were the key, so we did that
first. Know what it took to get the social security cards? Colorado
driver's licenses. That's it. The key to getting our Texas driver's
licenses, social security cards, we got with our Colorado driver's licenses.
I know the government is trying hard to implement systems to keep us secure.
It would be hard to coordinate all the parts and keep them from going in
circles sometimes.
We turn ourselves over to the local bureaucracy. Today vehicle inspections
for the motorhome and jeep in Rockport. Vehicle registrations for both in
Port Aransas. Missions accomplished.
Tomorrow, Texas driver's licenses. How hard could that be? Judy called
ahead to see. All the forms of identification in our possession, including
passports and our Colorado driver's licenses, are inadequate. We must
present social security cards. I haven't had a social security card since I
was eighteen and memorized it. So, tomorrow, the social security
administration, then the department of motor vehicles for drivers licenses.
Six hundred miles. String enough five hundred mile days together, and you
end up somewhere completely different. We just went from the top left
corner to the bottom middle, from the cool misty pacific northwest beach, to
the warm gulf coast with fireflies and palm trees.
Port to Port. Port Townsend to Port Aransas.
Another five hundred. Van Horn Texas. Central time zone. Six hundred more
and we'll be at Port Aransas.
Yellow warbler. Eastern kingbird. Swallows. Grebes.
Gone at dawn. We drove the rest of Idaho, all of Utah, bounced off a corner
of Colorado and stopped in Gallup New Mexico. We just kept driving and
driving till dark. Six hundred fifty miles. An easy day.
Six states in three days. Now all we have to do is cross Texas. We're two
thirds of the way to our destination.
Central Washington, Toppenish. Ninety five degrees. Killdeer, magpies,
white pelicans, barn swallows, cormorants, nighthawks. Out of Washington
into Oregon. Out of Oregon into Idaho. Five hundred miles. Back to
mountain time.
Snake River sunset.
We said goodbye to the Bounder in Bend Oregon. It served us well, it was
great for extended trips, but for full-time living, there were a couple
shortcomings. We traded it in on a Beaver Coach and got an improved galley
with more kitchen counter space for Judy, and better heating and insulation
for the living space. We're better prepared for the next Colorado winter.
It's a nice house.
It's about the same size.
Still in Bend. Not very birdy here, mostly house sparrows and house
finches. We see robins on the grass and mourning doves in the trees. We've
been hearing a mountain chickadee but still haven't seen it. Western wood
pewee in the distance. California quail, and a great horned owl at night.
We hear more birds than we see. Even at that, still not very birdy.
