Tuesday, August 17
Soaking & chatting

Laundry and chores in the a.m. and then a nice long afternoon at the springs, our final opportunity to enjoy those odiferous warm waters. While in a 104-degree pool, we got into conversation with a Columbus, Ohio, couple; all of us managed to get overhet because we were enjoying the talk so much that no one wanted to interrupt it.

He was retired from the faculty of a Methodist seminary and she continues to work as a dietician at a large teaching hospital. He reminded me a bit of Dad W. when he got teary telling touching dog stories. The man is fluent in German and Latin, at least, has visited ancestral homes in Germany, and was as interesting a conversationalist as I’ve run across in a long time.

Unfortunately, when we finally tore ourselves away before we fainted from the heat, our new friend took a nasty fall on the flagstone walk. Nothing broken, but surely sore and bruised today. The walks are not slick but somehow are relatively treacherous - Leslie take note for your visit in October. I’ve seen several people fall; in fact, I was one of them last year when I slipped going down the steps. It happens very quickly. I sported a hip-to-ankle bruise for a while afterward.

The springs sights for the day were the cleverly balanced rock cairns built in the middle of the river and the little green grass snake that got lots of notice as it was an unpaid visitor to the spa.














To polish off the day, we dined outdoors at the Dogwood Cafe, our favorite from previous trips. Their menu could be from anywhere in Louisiana with gator, okra, green beans with bacon, grits and the like - we love it!

Wednesday, August 18
Homeward bound musings

8:05 a.m.: we’re on the road after a nice farewell from Junior Nation and his wife whose name I have forgotten. They invited us to stop and see them in Lawton, Oklahoma. Junior and wife were two “doors” down from us at the RV park. Between was Junior’s sister, Trula and her husband, Chuck, from Texas. They spend their summers here. We are among the very few non-Texans in the park. Colorado is a favored summer getaway for those from the great state of.

I heard via email that our Littlefield friends left for home yesterday; they were up closer to Leadville; another of the sisters left just before that from visiting the third sibling near Denver. The Littlefield sisters are the ones who answered my newspaper query years ago and sent me my great grandmother Julia Winans Kelley’s Bible that their father had saved for 40 years waiting for a Kelley family member to show up.

We will definitely stay at the Blanco River RV Park when we return to Pagosa. It is a lovely grassy place right on the river and with minimal traffic noise. Wonderful clean facilities and the clientele are among the nicest we’ve encountered anywhere. It will require reservations as it is mostly full.

When I was researching where to go when we left our first RV site here, I saw this one and Acres Green as possibilities. I chose Blanco River because it had the better website. As it turns out, the two were formerly one. The story goes like this: it was begun as a partnership. Within two years, the relationship went sour, so they dissolved the business and split the park lengthwise, which is how it remains today, but with different owners. Absenting directional signs, a person would think it’s all one and the same. Odd but it seems to work.

Ray, the current owner, told us that when the two original partners were still there, there was considerable rancor; if one guy’s renter walked on the other guy’s road, he would come out and yell at them. Amazing how silly we can be.

Rowdy did his usual mopey cringe (or cringey mope) when we began to pack up this morning even though I told him we were going home. I think he would rather teleport than spend the day in the truck. Truthfully, it sounds pretty attractive to me, too, but I enjoy seeing the sights more than he.

We are soon on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation following U.S. Highway 64.

Okay, I’m back and it’s now noon o’clock and much has occurred in the meantime. Never been exactly sure what “meantime” means exactly but we’ll save that for later cogitation. There we were toolin’ along Highway 64 when I noted a road sign that called it Narrow Gauge Road. Hmmm . . . I had a bit earlier said something about it not seeming right, but C was sure it was only a moniker given to the highway because it was passing through the tiny town of Dulce.

Just as I wondered aloud if we were actually following a narrow gauge railroad bed, we spied ahead a defunct railroad bridge and an old water tower left from steam train days. No traffic in sight so we perform a quick middle-of-the-road stop so I can take a photograph. Proceeding, abruptly we run out of pavement and see the dirt road beginning a winding journey into the hills - this can’t be a good thing!

Fortunately, just before the serious winding gets going, we find a place to turn our rig around and get pointed back whence we came. A bicyclist engaged me in conversation, offering comfort in the observation that she sees folks miss that under-signed turn at the four-way stop numerous times.

Great -- we’re not alone. That’s the one thing I’ve come to understand in this life. It is literally impossible to be the first person to do anything, no matter how creatively doltish it may seem.

At any rate, it was interesting to drive through Dulce because it’s the site of one of many genealogical mysteries. Why, when he lived in Pagosa Springs at the time, did Lewis Beemer Rhodimer, brother of my great grandfather, Charles Bradner Rhodimer, go there to get married? A small thing but one I wish I could find an answer for. It seems even odder because of the town’s location on the reservation.

As it turns out, regaining our chosen route on 64 was not the best thing that happened today. It is a narrow winding road much in need of construction. Indeed, a lot of it is under construction, making those sharp curves infinitely more harrowing because there are no road markings and the pavement is buried under loads of loose gravel. To top it off, it traverses miles of rockfall country - those that have not already fallen onto the pavement are awaiting a prime moment to do so. Concrete barriers offer little solace; they have been breached and broken in numerous spots by boulders losing their hold on the cliffs above.

The ess-curve nature of the road requiring 35-miles-per-hour speed limits played havoc with what was alreadty anticipated to be a long travel day. It also did nothing for my nerves and I wasn’t even driving. Probably would have been better if I had been. It would have saved me a lot of yelling at Chris to slow down.

On the upside, when the cliffs do not appear to be poised to collapse onto the truck, they are very picturesque - a long rugged route down through sand-hued canyon walls.

Underground oil is plentiful in this stretch: we see a continuous string of well, pipelines and storage tanks. Too bad that this oil production requires very wide tanks to be transported on this very narrow road. I had to hold my breath each time a wide-load truck passed us going the other way. Obviously, if I had not done so, we would have not fit past them.

As we at long last left that behind, I vowed never to pull a trailer through there again. Off the Jicarilla Reservation, through the Carson National Forest that tantalizes with markers for Navajo Lake (can’t believe we didn’t do any fishing a’tall while there, will have to double-time it next trip), into New Mexico and onto the gigantic Navajo Reservation. I wonder if it’s good p.r. that Chris is wearing his White Mountain Apache t-shirt, but then Chris has no such qualms.

We stop for gas in Shiprock, fuel up, wash windows and trot inside for a pit stop and a cappuccino. Sounds much simpler than it was. One restroom and it’s occupied, so we wait, and wait, and wait. People line up behind us to wait, get tired of waiting and leave, and others line up behind us to wait. We wait so long that the clerk decides something is amiss and comes over with a key. She raps loudly and prepares to unlock the door, I guess presuming that someone has become entangled in the commode in a way that renders them unable to call for assistance. But no, a voice responds that she’s almost done. Finally, she emerges with effusive apologies but I am not sure if she’s even talking to us because she’s the same one I saw pacing outside earlier talking either to herself of to someone hooked into that apparatus attached to her face.

All the while we are experiencing our little bathroom debacle, Rowdy waits patiently in the truck. He has been more talkative than usual this morning. I think he translates our slowing and stopping so many times as nearing our destination, yet, to his consternation we keep going.

The roads this morning have all been very rough surfaced, making it difficult to type. I have learned from sad experiences that typing in my journal while being driven down the road can cause some odd paragraphs. Because I am gazing out at the landscape while I am typing, I fail to notice when a bump has caused the cursor to jump to an entirely different place. Or worse, it will sometimes highlight and delete large sections that I don’t notice until I have saved and gone on, so my masterpiece has disappeared forever.

We see that there has been recent rain through this area, and lots of it. The range and mountains are greened up to a fare-thee-well, Large stands of ponded water further attest to precipitation in the last couple of days. As we left the town of Shiprock and were passing the landmark after which it is named, Chris managed to find a bit of a place to pull to the right enough to stop so I could get a picture of that pinnacle as rain fell on it.

I always enjoy seeing the Navajos’ livestock grazing near the roadside. I see some fine horses, lots of sheep, a few beeves and some Angora goats busy producing raw material for the Indians’ incredible blankets. An unusually large garden we passed was a four-scarecrow corn field.

I noticed this morning that when Chris came home from his Wolf Creek trek and wanted me to insert in the journal a note about his three-toed woodpecker, that I placed it right in the middle of the dark-eyed junco sighting making it sound as if the woodpecker was hopping around on the ground, which it wasn’t.

Best billboard message: “November 2 - election day - time to take out the trash.”

We finished the trip with 58 birds, five of them life birds.

Sara just called to tell what she decided to fix for dinner at the Ronald McDonald House in Topeka, one of her community service ventures. She chose a new recipe from the Simple & Delicious magazine we send to her - a bacon/spaghetti/tomato dish, sounded wonderful. I’m proud of her for doing that; she heads the community service program for The Gap, her employer. Lewis does various community service projects through Walmart.

Aaah! Arizona - there’s no place like it; I’m glad to be home and will be even more happy to be at home. Wow, as we roll along with San Francisco Peaks in our sights, it’s obvious that it has been exceedingly wet here while we were away - tall grass, flowers and green everywhere. I do love our forests; they’re perhaps not as exotic with such an abundance of botanicals as Colorado’s, but they are marvelous nevertheless and besides, it’s home. Dropping over into the stunningly sunflowered meadows between Flagstaff and Williams while a light rain falls offers all a person could ask for in a homecoming.