Off for Family Reunion

Tomorrow we are driving to Denver to spend the night and then Sunday we fly out to North Carolina for a family reunion.  My sister, Evi, is flying in from Costa Rica where she lives.  We will arrive in Atlanta first then pick up our rental car and then meet my sister’s plane…she is a nervous flier.  Then we will drive to my brother, Mike’s house in North Carolina….it’s about a two hour drive.  We won’t arrive till after 9 p.m.  That makes for a long drive so we decided to go to Denver the day before so it won’t make for too long a day on Sunday.  Denver is a four hour drive north from Alamosa….that’s enough driving for one day for us.

Yesterday Jim drove down to Tres Piedras and met Teddy Abeyta and handed over Poncho for them to keep for us while we are away.  Roberta called this evening and said Poncho went along with Teddy to herd cattle today and did a fine job.  Roberta said Poncho could check off “cattle wrangler”  off his Bucket List….we laughed!!!

If you are not on Facebook than you haven’t heard yet….our refrigerator died …. we need a new cooling unit.  Happily our local wonderful RV Tech, Matt Harris, just arrived at South Fork Campground where is headquartered for the summers, so we are in good hands.  Matt came over yesterday afternoon and after calling Rich Deacon to drive down here from Monte Vista to help the three guys were able to move the fridge out of the RV and on to Matt’s tailgate to take back to South Fork.

The cooling unit has been ordered and will be delivered to the South Fork Campground while we are gone.  Matt will install it and run the fridge for a couple of days to make sure it is working well.  When we return to Colorado we’ll move up to South Fork Campground for a couple of days and Matt will reinstall the fridge into our RV.  

Thanks to Rich for coming down to help move the fridge…thanks to Heinz for letting us put our frozen foods in his and Angela’s freezer at 11 o’clock at night…thanks to Salai for taking my fresh veggies since I didn’t have anywhere to keep them….thanks to The Abeytas for kenneling Poncho till we get back.  It Takes A Village to take care of us!!!  We are blessed to have such wonderful friends to help out in a time of need.

I probably will not blog while we are away as I’m not taking our computer….so hang tight till I get back end of next week.

Remember, you are loved.

Back to Alamosa

We had a wonderful weekend at Park Creek Campground in South Fork, Colorado.  It was restful but we also had our entertainment with Tim, Paulo, Clay and Chris that made it so enjoyable!!!  Jim went fishing three times and caught eight fish.  Nothing like eating a trout two or three hours after it was caught.

Jim and I both felt “funny” being back to Park Creek again.  The place had a different vibe….and not in a good sense.  Maybe it’s just us, but we’re now rethinking our plan to stay up in South Fork all summer. 

We’ve got reservations for Big Meadows for the fourth of July week and then Jim has the Chapman Annual 4-Wheel Ride to Ouray by going over the river and through the wood.  So maybe we’ll go up into northern Colorado between those times and into August.  We’ll see…..

So we are back to Chappy Campground, set back up and enjoying TV again….haven’t seen the news in five days!!!  We’ll stay here for the week, do laundry, one more day of volunteering at the library, take Poncho down to Espanola to stay with the Abeytas and then take off for North Carolina next weekend for a mini family at my younger brother, Mike, and my sister, Evi, who is coming from Costa Rica.  It’s been more than 25 years since we’ve all been together so this will be a real treat for all of us.

Remember, you are loved.

Part 2-Memorial Day Weekend

Friday The Boys, Tim and Paulo, along with their pet, Chaps, drove up from Santa Fe for the weekend and parked with us in Park Creek.

Tim is Teddy and Roberta Abeyta’s son and we always have fun with him and Paulo during visits. Paulo brought us some coffee from Brazil that I will ration out.

 

Tim invited a couple of his friends, Chris and Clay, from Denver to come down for the weekend, so we had a nice dinner together, with Jim grilled burgers and brats.  Later we built a campfire and all enjoyed the serenity.

Saturday we went to Creede for their first festival of the season, Taste of Creede.  All the shops had street side samples of food.  There was a 2 p.m. Silver Chef competition with the restaurant chefs but we didn’t stay for that.  Most of the retailers were having 50% off sales and a lot of people were shopping hard.  There were many artists set up on the closed off street painting the beautiful Creede buildings, along with other artisans.

Photos of old Creede for sale	The building in Creede are so attractively painted.
Here’s a woman spinning	This lady was throwing a vase

 

I always have to take a photo of the Creede Hotel as one of Jim’s ancestors use to run it.

 

 

Then there is always the outdoor Doghouse that has an outdoor grill and makes wonderful tasting hot dogs and burgers.

      

We tasted some balsamic vinegars and a few of the olive oils at Creede Olive Oil Company and bought a couple of dip mixes and then went back to Park Creek Campground.

Later on The Boys made dinner and we contributed four more trout Jim caught Friday morning, and some grilled chicken thighs.  Tim and Paulo set up a very nice campsite with their “hotel” sized tent, canopy over the picnic table, and a separate “cook shack”….just like Teddy and Roberta always do.  He had three tables, a grill, a cook stove stand and a disc where he cooked cicharones….called cracklings in Louisiana.

      

Look at that plate of mine with fish, chicken, Paulo’s black beans and Tim’s calivasitas (sp?) Mexican squash with onions, corn and cheese…wonderful!

   

We enjoyed the dinner and the company even more.  The Boys were interested in our stay in Louisiana and then we all started talking of everyone’s different travels. It was a wonderful day.  Soon it got very cold and I went home, but not before Tim had to wrap up Chaps in a towel to keep warm.

That’s most of our Memorial Day Weekend tale.  What did ya’ll do for the holiday?

Remember, you are loved.

Memorial Day Weekend-South Fork, CO

The national forest campgrounds opened yesterday so we drove back up to South Fork, Colorado and were able to get into site #11 at Park Creek Campground.  This is one of the campgrounds we camphosted in for six years….it was odd to be just a camper when we arrive and not “in charge”. 

It is very pretty amongst the trees and is one of only two we fit in with our 36 foot rig.

Here’s the view from inside the rig.

We referred to this site as “the beach front property” because the creek laps up to the edge of the site where it slopes down to the creek edge like an ocean to a shore.

We’d stopped in town to be gas for the generator and I bought a Blimpie’s Best sandwich for us to share, so we weren’t too hungry for dinner.  But along about eight we decided to cook hot dogs over the campfire. 

The Two Lindas had told me about the Applegate hot dogs being so good, organic, all beef so I bought some to try. Oh, were they wonderful.  Highly recommend them. If I’m  going to eat meat sometimes, this is the kind I’ll do…organic, natural, no hormones.

    

We haven’t used a generator since summer of 2012.  But I am enjoying not having the TV on.  I plug the Sirius satellite radio into a 750 watts inverter, dial in Serious Sinatra, get out my Kindle and I’m happy.

Tomorrow there is a Taste of Creede going on with most of the businesses up there offering a selection of food to munch on as you walk the street of this old mining town.  We’ve never been able to go before, so we will take in that activity and go up to where Jim’s mom and dad’s ashes are scattered and pay our respects.

What are you doing during this holiday?

Remember, you are loved.
Read the story behind this saying HERE

Working on Historical Documents

I’ve been going through four-drawer filing cabinets in the Local History section of our local Alamosa Public Library to help sorting through the files.  Remember I use to work here my last five years before retirement.  We called those “vertical files” and the genealogical clerk kept newspaper articles in folder in there as well as other historical papers. 

I’ve been volunteering and going through the files doing a preliminary sorting of what to keep and digitize, what to give other entities and what to throw… the librarian will do the final sorting.

It has been so interesting seeing some of the old documentations.  Part of the documentation I found was an old cemetery book with entries in beautiful penmanship.  Some entries are straight forward with name, birth and death dates and maybe the reason for the death. 

Other entries go into great details and actually tell the story of the person and death.

Of course these cemetery records will be saved and maybe even digitized. 

There was a form called a State Land Inventory where parcels of land was identified and attached were family stories of the property.  Reading those stories were so interesting.  Some talked about how they came about purchasing the property and some talked about going to school or how they washed clothes or taking a trip to town that took all day.

I have another day or two to get through all 12 drawers and will get that done before we move up to South Fork for the summer….sometime in early June.

Remember, you are loved.

Photos–South Fork Campground

When I downloaded photos from my camera, I realized I had some pretty nice ones from our weekend stay at South Fork Campground.  So I wanted to share them with you.  If you are in the South Fork, Colorado, area we highly recommend this water-front RV park.

As you drive down the hill into the park, this is your view.

The RV park has a number of water-front sites along the Rio Grande River

This is the view from a water-front site

As you come up the other side of the park this is your view

As you exit the park you look up the hill to see the office

The RV park also has full hook-ups, a meeting hall with kitchen, shower house, large barbecue grill and is the perfect place for a rally. 

Remember, you are loved.

Back to Alamosa

We sure did enjoy our weekend at South Fork Campground and visiting with friends.  We left yesterday about 9 a.m. and drove directly to Broadway Services on east of Alamosa and had two tires put on the RV.  They had Gladiator brand G-series tires for half the price of a similar Goodyear.  Jim is happy to have that done as he has been sweating having a blow-out since Louisiana.  We need to have our RV alignment done but can’t find any where around that does RVs.

The rest of the day was spent setting up, vacuuming, dusting, and all the rest of that type of stuff.  Jim hooked the satellite TV again and we got caught up on the news, while I continued to knit on my lacey cowl.  Pretty soon it was too late to fix the steak and salmon I had taken out for dinner, so we had breakfast for dinner and were pretty satisfied with that.

Today I hope to finish up the cowl and Jim will start working on cleaning the outside of the RV.  You know that stuff you have to do once or twice a year waxing, caulking, etc. 

We plan on going back up to South Fork for the Memorial Day weekend and hopefully get into Park Creek Campground where we use to camphost. 

Remember, you are loved.

Beaver Creek Reservoir and Pizza

We decided to stay another night at South Fork Campground and after a lunch of the leftover ribs and bidding Heinz and Angela goodbye, we took Rich and Terri up to see Beaver Creek Reservoir.

I know many of my blog readers have camped with us in South Fork through the years, so am familiar with Beaver Creek Reservoir.  As you know they found a leak in the earthen dam up there a few years ago and this year they started the repairs….looks like they are going to create a whole new dam behind this one and take the current one down.  There is only a trickle amount of water left in the bottom of the reservoir except at the base of the dam where it is pooled up.  The reservoir sure is a lot deeper than any of us realized.  Click on any photo to enlarge the view.

That black area to the right looks like the back of the new dam up against the mountain side	A closer look
	All the heavy equipment looks real small in this photo.
These are all looking south
See the boat	Somehow this boat sank years ago with the motor intact
	This is looking back towards the North.You can see the boat ramp in the middle right side of the photo

Later on we all drove to Del Norte and enjoyed dining on pizza at Three Barrel Brewery. 

 

Rich and Terri did a sampling of the beers they offer and we enjoyed almost all of them.

 

 

 

The place is very small, only holding 22 people but we were lucky to find a table right in front of the glassed in brew room.

      

The pizza and calzones were very good and inexpensive.  Love pizza cooked in a wood burning oven.

We’re looking forward to the opening of their new location on the main drag sometime this summer….and their offering of the summer beers.

     

Remember, you are loved.