Bye, Naomi - hello Grand Junction

Tuesday we went to put the Jeep in storage in Alamosa.  I had my last visit with my dear friend, Naomi, at the nursing home.  It is always a bittersweet experience for me as I am anxious to get on the road again after being stationery for five months, get I hate saying goodbye to Naomi for seven months.  I took her for a walk so she could see her beloved Mt. Blanca and feel the sun on her back…..which she really enjoys.  Then a couple of photo shots and I left….crying.  Naomi will be 96 in a few months and you never know…..

See Mt. Blanca in the background?	Artwork in neighbors yard

I wanted a photo/artwork of Mt. Blanca to take with us as it represents Alamosa to me.  Sheryl Benson, a co-worker I worked with at the library and her husband, Gary, sell wooden figurines and paintings at arts and craft fairs on the weekends in the summer.  Gary paints beautiful scenes of New Mexico and Colorado.  I asked him to paint me a scene of Mt. Blanca.  I think he did a wonderful job!  The barn wood frame just sets it off perfectly….thank you Gary Benson!

Our first day traveling took us from South Fork towards Saguache and then over to Gunnison, Montrose and finally Grand Junction.  Here is some scenery we saw on the way.

Looks like the background of our new business cards!

We ended our day at Rabbit Valley I-70 West at Exit 2 on the Colorado side.  It was just a big parking lot on BLM land, but there wasn’t any highway noise and it was very quiet.  We had happy hour, of course.   

 

 

 

 

Can’t leave out the puppies.  They wanted out to play too, but they have a tendency to go wandering.

So that was our first day on the road.  Remember, you are loved!

The luxury of full hook-ups

Oh, the luxury of living with full hook-ups (electricity, water and sewer). For the past four months we’ve been boondocking (living without hook-ups).  So when we moved over to Moon Valley RV Park here in South Fork to clean up for our trip, we were in heaven!

The first night Jim and I marveled at being able to stay up and watch TV after 10 p.m. and then the next morning we could put the TV on before 8 a.m., which were the generator hours at the campground.  We haven’t seen Jay Leno or David Letterman since  May.  We switched the water heater from propane to electricity, so we had hot water all the time…..oh, what a luxury!!! To take a shower without having to remember to turn on the water heater first…or wash dishes without giving it a second thought to whether the water was hot or not. Oh, it was heaven.

Same goes for needing water without hearing the water pump running every single time (it does get irritating at times). That’s also true to needing electricity and not having to go outside and starting the generator….what a luxury!

We can use all the electric appliances we want without blowing a breaker or causing the generator to run too hard. My favorite is having the laptop fully charged all the time. Usually Jim gets up early and he starts playing Spider Solitaire. Although he tries to leave me half the battery life, it always runs out before I’m finished surfing the net and before 8 a.m. so I couldn’t turn on the generator (remember the generator hours?).  So it is a wonderful luxury to be able to get on the internet and stay on as long as I want to.

Don’t get me wrong, we love boondocking…..I’m not complaining….it’s just nice having all the amenities once in a while.  It’s like having a nice home, but enjoy staying in a nice hotel once in a while.  It’s a treat!  That’s how I feel about having full hook-ups.  It’s a luxury…a treat to enjoy once in a while…I don’t take having full hook-ups for granted.

We’re off to drop off the Jeep at Jim’s brothers’ in Alamosa.  It will stay there for the winter and be available to us next Spring.  Then I’ll have my last visit of the year with my ~96 year old girlfriend, Naomi, in the nursing home.  That will be a hard visit…..

We had to cancel our trip to Santa Fe to see our daughters because we have a problem with our propane.  The propane detector keeps going off and we need to find the problem before we head out.  Temperatures are dipping and although we have an electric heater, we need propane to cook and later to heat us.  Jim now thinks it’s a leaking regulator, but they don’t have a new one here.  So another thing to pick up in Alamosa.

Tomorrow we leave South Fork and head for Grand Junction as our first stop on our trip to the Pacific Northwest.  Stay tuned and I’ll tell you all about it…………………….

Remember, you are loved!