Nine Nights of Pull-Throughs

The weather forecast is for a deep freeze to settle over the nation.  We are ready to go, so ready to get on the road and head for Arizona!  Do we wait for the freeze to pass and take the chance on more snow and ice after the freeze?  No, of course not!  We hit the road, hoping for the best. The weather is fine that Saturday, the day before New Years Eve and we make it from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Meridian, Mississippi.
By bedtime the internet is full of cautions for tomorrow morning…icy streets, hazardous driving conditions.  I am thinking we will not be going anywhere!
But we do.  It is almost 11AM before the road seems safe and we get another 200 miles to Fontainebleau State Park in Louisiana.
It’s New Years’ Eve.  The wind is howling. The forecast is 24 degrees! We pay 2 bucks extra for a pull through and do not exit the trailer till morning.
Our destination for January 1 is Beaumont, Texas, Gulf Coast RV Park, another Passport America campground that has a great free breakfast!  It being a holiday, the office is closed but there are instructions guiding us to a vacant site.  It’s a repeat.  Another 24 degree night where we hole up to keep warm. We cover the Fantastic Fan’s screen with aluminum foil and stuff plastic grocery sacks in the weatherstripping around the door.

Sylvester staying warm.
Forgot to mention that the trailer is winterized. We are making do with a few gallons of fresh water in jugs and keeping antifreeze in the drains.

At Gulf Coast RV
We hit Houston just before 10:30 am and it is less of a problem than usual. We are shooting for Boerne, Texas where we usually boondock at a visitor’s center….but not tonight!
Top of the Hill, another PA park, is 10 miles past Boerne. For $22.50 we are escorted up the hill and have the run of a nice clubhouse with a large screen TV. I consider showering and decide it is too cold!  It will be 20 degrees in town tonight and colder at this elevation. The wind is brutal! We are not having fun!  But we are eating good due to the mini Instant Pot.  Our freezer is full of meatloaf, mexican casserole, ham and chicken.

The next day in a small western town we encounter Jerry and Wanda of Egg Rollings at a gas station.  They are heading for the same RV park in Fort Stockton.  It is great to see them!  That night we enjoy a great dinner together at the Roadrunner Cafe. 

Another pull through at Fort Stockton RV.
We are members of the Escapees RV club and so are Jerry and Wanda, so it was only natural that we were again going to the same campground, DreamCatchers RV Park in Deming, New Mexico.
From Deming we always go straight into Arizona…normally as fast as possible.  This year we decide to take a look around the area and go south down to Pancho Villa State Park.
There’s a museum at the park that explains the history of Columbus, NM being invaded by Mexico in 1916.  Enjoyed our time there but we were ready to leave the next day, skipping the almost mandatory trip to the Pink Store across the border in Mexico.

Pancho Villa SP, $14 a night with electric and water.

As we drive the last stretch into Arizona, it is finally warm, in the 70’s!
We stop for lunch at a I-10 rest area in western New Mexico and pull in behind another Escape….which looks real familiar.  I go up to check it out and, yes, it’s our old friends, Duke and Beverlee from Texas!  We exchange hugs and promises to visit in a few weeks at Quartzsite.
Saturday night, day 8 on the road, we stay at the SKP park in Benson, AZ.  Great place!  We stayed here for 7 nights January 2017.
This time we boondock….$5.58 for members!We are planning to spend another night when I manage to reserve three nights McDowell Mountain Regional Park, close to Fountain Hills, AZ.  We hear that it is really nice…..I’m excited!
We leave Benson with a plan to stay at the Escapees park in Casa Grande but for some reason it just does not feel right. We pull off a side road and call Usery Regional Park where we land on night 9.  Another pull-through and after 2100 miles we still have not unhitched the trailer.
But that status changed two nights ago when we set up camp at McDowell. 
For two and half days we rest. I ride the bike, read, walk and write.  And sit gazing at the mountains….my favorite thing.
Will close with photos from Usery and McDowell.

Usery


McDowell

Life Happens, Mountain Vistas

For weeks, all attempts to write the blog have failed.  Maybe today will be the day?

This photo of our rig makes me smile.  This is taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway while on our way to Balsam Mountain campground in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Three days ago we are packing to go to a local state park when we discover a nasty dent and broken fog light in the front bumper of our big blue beautiful truck.  The guilty party is paying…not going to identify him…but our camping plans for the Land Between the Lakes Rally are on hold until the bodywork can be completed.

(FYI:  My watermark is dated 2016 as I am still using Picasa which is no longer being supported.  Stuck in 2016!)

We really enjoy our three weeks in the western NC, eastern Tennessee mountains! It’s not the same as Colorado but the fun factor is very high!

The eclipse crowd paranoia (mentioned in the last post) is all for nothing!  We walk across the street to the Mt Pisgah Inn and join a small crowd of eclipse seekers.

The clouds obscure some of it but we see enough to make us happy!

The day after the eclipse an outfitter puts us on the French Broad River right above the Biltmore Estate in Asheville.  There’s only a few photos as we were often going through mild whitewater…our first time in years to navigate between rocks! We paddle/float a fast six miles downstream.

A few days later the Secretary of the Interior plans to visit the Mt Pisgah area and we decide to move on.  There’s another high elevation campground down the Parkway…one we have never seen. ….Balsam Mountain, elevation 5,310 feet, in the GSMNP.

Only photo from Balsam Mtn campground. (No hookups, price $8.00 with senior pass)

The campground is small and the sites are close.  It is wonderfully cool!  We don our jeans, long sleeves and vests to sit around a fire.

The next morning David says calmly “I see a bear cub.” Sure enough. I look through the trailer window in time to see a very small black bear run across the road.  Later we hear there’s a momma with three little cubs in the campground.

After one night at Balsam we decide to relocate to Smokemont campground just north of Cherokee, NC.  It is another Smoky Mountain Park camp, more developed and closer to civilization.  The price is $10 a night with senior pass. No hookups but there is a dump.

Creek running through Smokemont campground.

Elk grazing on the side of the road…just below Smokemont.

Escape trailer friends are camping in the Cosby campground on the northern side of the Smoky Mountains.  We drive over to the Gatlinburg side of the park, happy to see very little scars from the intense fires of last year!

We enjoy two days of catching up, going out to eat and cooking.  We visit a farmer’s market and find beautiful fresh green beans.  Our friends have a generator and offer to run it while we cook beans in our mini instant pot.  Fresh corn on the cob and green beans are the perfect evening meal after a caloric lunch.  (And I had a great time teaching them how to “string” beans!)

This is our first time to cook with a generator as we do not have one.

Our 80 watt solar suitcase normally meets all our electric needs.  This trip is different, though, as we are in heavy shade for four days and the battery begins to to slowly drop.

The weather forecast is not good!  The hurricane from Houston is heading toward the mountains bringing lots of rain.  We have been out three weeks and decide to go home.

Some thoughts on our life and life in general…..

As I write this morning we are preparing to join David’s high school class for their 80th birthday celebration….they celebrate their milestone birthdays together.

This coming weekend we will attend my 50 year class reunion…which is one of the reasons we chose to be home in September.

Aging continues to factor in on what we do.  We continue to be so very grateful for the ability to travel.

Note to you youngsters……don’t delay your life!  Get out there and do your dreams NOW!

Back In The Saddle

So here is the dilemma… do I start back in March and update the blog with a month by month of everything we have done or just pick up with our current life?

The muse says to go with the immediate.  There is no excuse for not writing for months.  In the past I have felt ashamed, now I just feel relief the words are coming again!

We have been home in our mountain duplex since the middle of May after attending the Eggs on the Hiawassee rally in Hiawassee, Georgia.  Lovely rally!  One that we will do again!

David on the Hiawassee River

Our time at home is a mixture of doctor appointments, errands, reconnecting with family and upgrading our space.

David is having issues with his left hip which is worn out.  It is just a matter of time before another hip replacement. (He had his right hip done in 2011.) Meanwhile he is feeling better after a cortisone injection this week.

When we downsized two years ago and moved into a space that had been rental property for 47 years, we remodeled everything but the bathroom. The bath is overdue for improvement.  Most of the fixtures are the original. 

Tile samples, 1968 bathroom

The work is to start next week and we will be relocating to the Escape 19 until the facilities are functioning.  The plan is to camp at a nearby county park….(no room to park at our home). 

It’s been part fun and part work to pick out tile, vanity, shower doors and lights. Hope it goes smoothly!!

We can’t leave the area until it is complete.  Still have our fingers crossed that nothing else will get in the way of another Colorado mountain trip in July.

When we are not at the doctors, or Walmart or napping, I am cooking with my magic pot, my Instant Pot!

Those of you who are fiberglass trailer enthusiast….do you recall the excitement, the obsession, the craziness when you first got introduced to the little egg trailers?

Take that obsession and transfer it to a cooking utensil!!

On Amazon Prime day, one year ago, Chris of Technomadia posted that the Instant Pot was on sale.  I had never heard of an Instant Pot and really never thought of myself as a cook, but I was curious???? And before midnight I ordered the on sale electric pressure cooker.

The Facebook Instant Pot group with its half a million members is constantly feeding the frenzy. I get lost in reading the posts which are so much more fun than the politicalized FB feed.

As a result of the FB group, I am now making my own hummus, my own yogurt and using my IP two, sometimes four, times a day.  Cheesecake will be my next challenge!

About now, several of you are wondering why you are reading about cooking on a camping/traveling blog?

I call it “life”!  We can move from one interest/obsession to another!  I am usually good for about 8 years and we got our first Casita in 2008.

(But we are not leaving our trailer friends!)

Tortilla Soup

First whole chicken before

After cooking….falling apart!

First yogurt

meatloaf before cooking

Meat loaf after cooking

Summing it up……we are having fun with me cooking and David eating!

Going back to camping, we have been to three rallies this spring, the Green Eggs and Ham in March, the Eggscursion in the Great Smoky Mountains in April and the Hiawassee in May.

It was bitter cold for the first of the GE&H but nice the last few days.  We stayed 8 nights at Gunter Hill COE moving three times. (Failed to make timely reservations). Can’t find the photos from the cold!

The Townsend rally….our 8th year to attend…was fun.  We experienced a jolt one night.  I turned over and went back to sleep hoping there were no leaks.

The limb bounced off the trailer onto the table and Clam….thankful there was no damage to either one.

The April rally site is at a KOA, much more crowded than the Corp of Engineer parks.

We have been staying pretty close to home for the past month.  Most of our exercise is walking up and down the road where we live. We did explore a new trail a couple of weeks ago.  It goes along a creek in an old coal mining area.  Super nice day!

Hope to try out the swimming hole soon!

As you can see, the two men in my life are just hanging out….waiting for the time to get back on the road!

Living the Dream?

Vallecito Lake

Some of our family and friends have commented that we are “living the dream” and, for the most part, I agree.  But it is being dishonest to not mention some of the un dreamlike parts of the “dream”….like the past three days of rain and cold.  At the moment the sun is shining but the wind is howling and it’s barely 60 degrees.  I am warm, writing while sitting in the truck.  The husband is napping in the Escape…a little distance helps me concentrate.  But rain, cold and overcast skies are not fun.  Ready for some warmth!

Speaking of the husband…a fact I rarely mention is his aging.  I know, we are all aging, but, at almost 79, some days are more challenging than others.  Like two nights ago when he took the trash to the dumpster and became disorientated as to the correct direction back to the trailer.  Luckily he had his phone on and there was coverage.  It was dark and very scary for me when I realized that he was lost.  I see a pair of walky talkies in the future for us.

David’s blood thinner also causes issues when he bumps or scrapes up against objects.  I was not a happy camper earlier in the trip when the sheets were needing daily washing and I was constantly changing bandages.

Hope no one thinks I am complaining.  Gratitude for what we have is practiced every day.  Love that I have a mate who shares my love of the outdoors.  But some days just go smoother than others.

So, backing up a week……

The Chimney Rock ruins is just down the road from our camp.

There’s a $12 fee for the tour and we opted to just take one of the two tours.

The view from the monument is magnificent!

 

Not sure if this was a kiva….but the tour had many structures like this one.

The next day we head east back to the Durango area.  We plan to ride the train and then, just decided not to do it. The less expensive travel option started sounding uncomfortable.

Instead we pick up meds called into the local Wal Mart.  Durango is a metropolis compared with Pagosa Springs…..what a traffic mess!

We choose to stay at Vallecito, a forest service campground with some electric sites.  It is $14.50 a night with electric and the Senior Pass.

The Vallecito Creek runs through the campground.  The electric sites are off from the water but we can hear the creek sing.

 

The creek runs into Vallecito Lake…the largest lake in Colorado at 8,000 feet or higher.

 

 

Vallecito means little valley in Spanish.  Our campground is at the very end of the valley….and under a thunderstorm.

We stay 5 nights.  Love the river, the hiking trail, the canyon walls and the blue spruces!  It feels like we are camping in a Christmas tree stand.

And the campground is almost deserted after the weekenders leave.

 

This catches the blog up to yesterday where we stay at West Fork campground after deciding against crossing Wolf Creek Pass in a thunderstorm.

Today the pass was no big deal with the Tundra pulling the Escape with empty tanks.  Not sure why I was so nervous about it.  It was just 10,000 feet! 

We arrive safely at Big Meadow campground.  Lots of photos but they are all still on the phone.

Hope to get them published before we arrive at the Kansas rally next week.