St Vrain State Park

We relocated back to the north Saturday, on a rainy day. That made a big difference in the coach cleanup. Not a bug to wash off.

5,340 miles since Port A.

NASCAR Invocation

Matt's house

That Austin. He’s such a Couch Potato.

Tony

Not only is Taylor driving now, her brother Tony was just taller than Judy when we left Colorado last September. Now he’s about as tall as me. (I still outweigh him though). He’s just twelve, but he's growing up so fast. I took a clip of him describing a new video game.

He looks just like Brian did at the same age.

Along the way

Our granddaughter Taylor turned sixteen. Now she drives herself to school.

We’ve been watching the U.S. Open at Matt’s house on High Definition television. We like High Definition a lot.

We priced High Definition for the motorhome. The dish alone would cost $3,500. We like Regular Definition a lot too.

Ideal fall weather here. Eighty degree days. Cool nights. Took a drive into the mountains on Sunday to check out Golden Gate Canyon State Park at 9,000 feet. We were greeted by a mountain shower with thunder, lightning, and 45 degrees. We’re enjoying the approach of fall at Denver’s moderate 5,000 foot altitude.

Here is something you don’t usually see; a leaping prairie dog. Really. He got air!

Dakotas

 

We loved the Dakotas; both of them.  Open, uncrowded, and scenic.  Rolling grasslands.  Forests.  Lakes and streams.  We mean to go back and spend more time.  We were only in them for a couple days driving through, but we got several looks at what is a rare bird for us, the sharp tailed grouse.  Got lots of hawks and golden eagles.  Thought we would get a ferruginous hawk but we didn’t.  Here is the Dakotas list:

 

1.       Ring necked pheasant

2.       Sharp tailed grouse

3.       Pied billed grebe

4.       Double crested cormorant

5.       Turkey vulture

6.       Northern harrier

7.       Swainson’s hawk

8.       Golden eagle

9.       American kestrel

10.     Prairie falcon

11.      American coot

12.     Killdeer

13.     Baird’s sandpiper

14.     Eurasian collared dove

15.     Mourning dove

16.     White throated swift

17.     Belted kingfisher

18.     Eastern kingbird

19.     Horned lark

20.     Barn swallow

21.     White breasted nuthatch

22.     Mountain bluebird

23.     American robin

24.     Red winged blackbird

25.     Western meadowlark

26.     American goldfinch

27.     House sparrow

 

 

Map

We bought a map with stick-on states back in 1992 when we got our first motorhome, the 19’ El Dorado. We’ve been sticking new states on it ever since, every time we go to a new one in the motorhome. We’ve carried the map with us in the El Dorado, the Jamboree, the first Bounder (Shamu), the diesel Bounder, and now the Monterey.

We’re westerners. We took care of all the western states right away. Then we got all the southern states. We haven’t added many states lately. The last one was in 2004, when we went to Michigan to pick up the diesel Bounder. But now… we got a new state this last trip: North Dakota. Here is our updated map. I suppose it should be a digital map now, after all these years, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. So, in the meantime, here is a photographic update of the primitive map.