Along the way

 

 

Back in Wyoming, there was an elk.

 

He refused to look our way and pose for us, but still, A heck of an elk.

 

 

I’ve been thinking

 

 

I’ll try my 12-second toothbrush theory out on my dentist to see what he thinks about it.  I’ve been meaning to abuse him anyway.  When we first got here to the Rio Grande Valley, I got my teeth cleaned in Mexico to see what that was like.  A lot of people get their dental work done south of the border for a fraction of the cost of doing it on this side.  I would describe the experience in Mexico as more like waterboarding than dentistry.  As part of the package deal though, $25, I also got a full checkup included, and they found five cavities.  I declined any more work and returned to my regular dentist without saying anything about that experiment.  I’m not so sure this stateside dentist is all that good though.  All these years later, he still hasn’t detected those five cavities.

 

 

Big Difference!

 

 

Crimson King.  Autumn Blaze.

 

I identified Becky’s tree as a Crimson King Maple.  It’s not.  Crimson King is purple in the summer and yellow in the fall.

 

  Becky’s tree is an Autumn Blaze Maple.  Green in the summer, red in the fall.

 

Big difference.

 

I had a question about leverage and mechanical advantage

 

 

Who do I turn to with such a question?  McKee.  He’s a design engineer so we know he’s well versed.  He’s also a sculptor, so we know whatever solution he proposes is going to be elegant.  This is the guy who has a motto emblazoned over an elaborate oak and stained-glass hobbit door on his house that reads: “Never make anything simple and efficient if a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.”

 

Our problem had to do with the couch/bed in the van.  There is a certain lack of logic to how it functions.  It’s primarily a jackknife couch, with an additional stationary piece on one end.  To convert from a couch to a bed is easy.  Lift up in the front edge of the couch seat and the parts (couch seat and couch back) separate and lay down flat for a bed.  To reconstitute the couch, however, is not quite so easy.  With the whole thing laid out flat, the leverage is gone.  There is not enough advantage to just lift the front of the couch seat and have everything pop back into place.  It takes more power than I possess.  The combined effort of Judy and me together, lifting from the front, can get it done, but that didn’t feel sustainable as a long-term solution.

 

I thought about this for weeks and came up with a couple solutions myself that should have helped, but they didn’t.  So, I turned to McKee.  “Leverage and mechanical advantage” he said.  “I can deal with that.”  We drove to his house.  I demonstrated the difficulty.  I got the couch part-way up and left it in that position so he could examine the mechanism.  He took a long look from every angle.  He muttered.  He disappeared to his garage and came back out with an improvised tool.  He directed me to the leverage point on the frame.  “Stick this in there and lift up here.”  I did.  The front of the bed lifted right up, and the rest was easy.  Exactly the power assist we needed.  And here it is, the elegant solution.

 

A four-foot long 2x4 board.  (Sanded and rounded so we won’t get splinters.)  Elegant in its simplicity.  Stows on the floor slid-in next to the bed.

 

The McKees.  Such good friends for so many years (50).

 

 

Our civic duty

 

 

We’re home and have voted, in our continuing effort to turn Texas purple.  That’s a tall order because Texas has been so red for so long.  The good news (for us) is that Texas has moved a couple points toward blue each of the last several election cycles.  The bad news for everyone is that since the races feel more contested this year, money has poured in, and political commercials have inundated our televisions.  Thankfully, we have mute buttons and fast forward to get us the rest of the way through.

 

 

Becky’s tree

 

 

That tree I’ve been sending all the pictures of over the last few months.

 

 

 

 

We’re not there in Colorado anymore, but Becky sent this photo.

 

Fall has fully arrived to this crimson king maple.

 

I’ve been thinking

 

 

We’re supposed to brush our teeth for two minutes, twice a day.  We’re also told that electric toothbrushes are maybe ten times more effective than a manual toothbrush alone.  Does that then mean that with an electric toothbrush we can brush our teeth for about twelve seconds each time and call it good?

 

 

The morning view

 

 

 

A visit from the local turkeys.

 

 

And Camping Dog!

 

 

We were exactly where we wanted to be

 

 

Shady and level sites.  Hardly anyone else there.  Walking trails.  Four bird blinds.  Good Verizon coverage.  But yesterday was the last day we could be there.  The park is closed to camping for the next week while it is open to deer hunting.  This is Texas.

 

Now we’re at Choke Canyon State Park.  Exactly the next place we want to be.

 

2024 fall trip map

 

 

Shady and level sites.  Hardly anyone else there.  Walking trails.  Good Verizon coverage.  But, alas, only one bird blind.

 

 

We’ve done it

 

 

We’re exactly where we want to be, camping out at South Llano River State Park.

 

2024 fall trip map

 

The weather is perfect.  Our site is perfect.

 

 

 

Dinner at Lum’s bbq in town.  As good as it gets!

 

 

We made it to the good weather

 

 

So did a lot of other people.  The park we want to stay at is full of weekenders.  We’re in a hotel again.

 

2024 Fall Trip

 

(Still great to have options.)

 

Back at it again tomorrow.  A reservation for tomorrow night at South Llano River State Park.

 

We headed south ahead of the weather

 

 

We didn’t head south soon enough though.  The weather caught us.

 

2024 Fall Trip Map

 

We stopped in Amarillo in a hotel tonight to take a break from the wind and the cold.  It’s good to have options.

 

We need to drop one more increment of latitude.

 

 

We’re on the move again

 

 

Heading southward.  It seems like time.

 

We didn’t spend any time in the high country during the peak of fall colors.  We’re leaving the fall colors of Becky and Brian’s neighborhood behind.

 

 

 

 

Christie submitted her colors from Leavenworth on the eastern slope of the Cascades.

 

Our spot for the night at John Martin Reservoir State Park.  Our van is that little dot in the middle by the pond.

 

We’ve cleaned up our act

 

 

 

Becky got everything trimmed and hemmed.  No more blue tape!

 

The hat

 

 

Turns out there is a photo of Dad and the hat.

 

 

Thank you, brother Tom.

 

Turns out brother Bill had the hat too (sort of).  I’d make this photo from about 1954 plus or minus.

 

 

Along the way

 

 

Lake Minatare State Recreation Area in Nebraska.  It has a lighthouse.

 

 

It doesn’t need a lighthouse. It’s not a very big lake, and it’s in Nebraska!  But during the dark days of the depression, it was constructed as a beacon of hope.  Built entirely of native stone by the Veterans Conservation Corps, it was completed in 1939 and is now known as the Plains Lighthouse.  It doesn’t really have a light at the top.  It serves as an observation tower and attraction.

 

This hat!

 

 

I just remembered; Dad had a hat like this.

 

A wide-brimmed hat.  He wore it fishing at Lake Wohlford.  I can’t find any pictures of him with it on though.

 

Something’s happening here

 

 

In September I sent out the morning view of the tree in Becky’s back yard.

 

Something was happening at the top.

 

Update.  The tree in October.

 

Yup, something’s happening here.

 

And just look what we’ve done to Kansas!

 

 

 

 

Ironically, even though we started our birding adventures in Colorado, our Colorado County Map is not completely filled in,

 

There is still that southwestern gap we haven’t gotten to.  We’ve been to all the counties in Colorado, just not to every one since we started marking them off this way by recording birds in them.

 

Nebraska

 

 

Done with Nebraska.  We made the county map go from this:

 

To this:

 

 

We didn’t exactly conquer the state, but we saw a lot of it.

 

2024 Fall Trip Map

 

Now we’re working our way across the northern edge of Kansas.  It’s fun to pick a highway and follow it as far as we can.  Most of the big cities are connected by Interstate Highways, so by staying off the Interstates, we pretty much stay out of big cities.  We’re following US Highway 36.  Route 36 starts in Ohio to the east, runs through Hannibal Mo, and ends in Estes Park in the west.  We like Highway 36.  In the Denver area it’s the Denver Boulder Turnpike.  Don’t let the name “Turnpike” fool you.  It’s not a toll road.  It was a toll road when they first built it, but they promised that when it was paid off, they would take down the toll booths.  And they did!  Right as Judy and I arrived there in 1968.

 

Following Highway 36 through Kansas is driving at exactly the speed limit, 65mph, and not having to pass or get passed for hours at a time.  Towns are small.  Some don’t even have a stoplight.  Some don’t have a grocery or gas station.  Most have grain silos.  A back road like this feels closer to what we’re passing through than an Interstate does.  There is less of a setback, less distance. 

 

Along the way.

 

 

 

 

 

The nighttime setup.

 

 

 

Before we headed out from Colorado, Becky roughed out some curtains for us.  We didn’t yet know how we were going to hang them, so she made them all over-sized to begin with.  We settled on a strip of Velcro at the top of each curtain so we can put them up and take them down as needed.  I’ve attached the Velcro to the tops of each one and have been resizing them with folding and blue tape.  One would think the curtains could be done in matching pairs, one on each side, but not so.  Each window is a different size and shape than every other window.  They’re all special.  We don’t hang every curtain up every stop; usually just the ones that face the road.  If Becky has time, next time we’re in Colorado, we can fine-tune the sizing.

 

Here we are rigged for daytime driving and hanging out.