Busy, but not a lot of fun

When I said we had a project here in Pagosa Springs to do, I wasn't kidding.  As I mentioned we have three tile inserts in our shower, and a few of the tiles on one of them were popping out as if water was getting behind them.  We tracked down the mastic and matching grout running all around Albuquerque while we there.  But we needed several days of sitting still to tackle this project.  We popped out the three most offending tiles first, a simple job of slipping a putty knife under and pop, off they came.  It was very apparent water had gotten through the grout and caused the problem.

After making sure I had a picture showing how the tiles were arranged, I worked on getting the rest of the tiles out.  It went pretty well.  I was very careful not to break any, as we weren't sure if we could get replacements.  5 tiles were a challenge, as you can see in the next picture.  The white you see is the old mastic, and it is as hard as concrete!  The 1/2" Corian that makes up the walls of the shower has been rabbeted out by a 1/4" to make the insert for the tile, which means as we are struggling to get the hard dried mastic off, it is sitting on Corian, only 1/4" thick!  We headed over to the Lumber Yard/Hardware store to see if we could figure out the best tools for the job.  We bought a small metal scraper, but we thought we'd maybe have to get a grinder of some sort to grind off the mastic if we couldn't get it off with elbow grease and a scraper. 

Ah yes, the beauty of a small town.  We asked the gentleman who was checking us out if they rented tools?  He said no, but there were several rental places in town.  He then asked what we needed and what were we doing?  I explained the project and said how we probably were going to need a small grinder.  He then says, come back tomorrow morning at 8am when I come into work and I"LL LEND YOU MINE FOR HOWEVER LONG YOU NEED IT!  How bout that?  We thanked him profusely and headed back to the motorhome to tackle the mastic.  We found if you were careful and very forceful at the same time you could chip the mastic off, so I would work for awhile until my hands hurt and then Jan would work for awhile until her hands hurt and so on.

Progress

This picture represents about 3 hours work!  I ran back to the lumber yard, thanked Mark for his generous offer, but said we wouldn't need his grinder after all.  Bought two more scrapers, as we had worn the edges off the first one, then came back and we worked some more last night, then more this morning.  I fought getting the last tiles off, but we were successful, and now have the tough part done!

Success!

Next all we have to do is clean up the tile, reattach the tile with mastic, and then grout!

Pizza night

We started the day with a project we hadn't planned on.  Jan opened the clothes hamper and it kind of fell out.  Turned out a screw had popped out for whatever reason, so got that all fixed, pop it back in and yuck, it didn't work.  Bound all up, so I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out what I could have possibly done by putting in a screw to cause a drawer slide not to work.  Now it's fixed, but I have no idea what I did or didn't do to make it work.
It was pizza night so we went down and had a real enjoyable evening.  We had a big welcome and a nice catchup with Buzz and Gay, Fred and Bobbi, Dick and Eddie, Al and Marge, Jerry and Gen, Harvey and Jean, Ron and Jo, and of course, Jan.  Chit chatted with Bob and Georgia, Don and Ruby, and Barbara and Jack earlier.  Great to see everybody, but missing some of the group.  Jo said to me at one point, she had come to the realization that you get to a point when you know you aren't going to see good, old friends again.  Pretty poignant, but true.

Over to Pagosa Springs

Slow day yesterday, just some grocery shopping in the big city of Durango before we headed over to Pagosa Springs.  We did take a 5 mile bike ride in the morning that was very enjoyable.  What an active town, we got on the bikes about 6:45am and we passed tons of folks, walking, running, and biking.
We have now arrived at Cool Pines in Pagosa Springs, home of our western family, although the numbers are dwindling.  Our wonderful friends, Dick and Ann decided not to come out here this year.  Instead they are sweltering and underwater in Florida.  Just kidding with you.  We miss you.  Also several other couples are not here this year due to serious health issues, and the way it's looking may not ever come back.  Quite sobering.  But we were welcomed by Harvey and Jan who got us situated in our site, and Al and Ron stopped to say hello.  We'll get to see everybody soon I'm sure.  We are going to be here a little over two weeks.  Lots of visiting and camaraderie, but we also have some issues to take care of, the biggest being repairing the tile wall in the shower.

A VERY interesting day!

We left in the morning with Silverton as our goal, but wanted to do a hike on the way.  Jan had read about it in the same hiking book.  Sounded good, about 1 1/4 mile one way, climbing about 450 feet, starting at 9400' going to Potato Lake, or Spud Lake as it is referred to here.  It was about 3.5 miles down a dirt road, a little rocky, but nice.  The beginning of the hike was near a beautiful lily pond way up in the mountains north of Durango.

It was a fantastic hike, nice trail, easy steady climb, excellent views, gorgeous aspen groves passing by a series of beaver ponds.

Trail

Aspen groves

Not bad views

Beaver ponds

Until we popped out at Spud Lake.  Beautiful lake!  Peaceful, pristine clear water surrounded by towering mountains.  It was worth it.  On the way we were talking about another hike we had taken a couple years ago to Opal Lake.  It was touted as a nice easy hike to an absolutely picturesque lake.  When we got there expecting this gorgeous lake, it was overgrown, covered with nasty looking algae, unapproachable because of all the vegetation around as if you'd want to approach it.  We were worried that when we arrived at "Spud" lake we'd have a repeat.  Not so, take a look!

Beautiful, huh?  We putzed around the lake a bit, then headed back to the Jeep.  The map showed our road continued around, got a little narrower and rougher, and met back up with Rte 550, the road to Silverton.  We figured why not?
Well, we found out why not in several bumpy, rocky miles.  Our hiking book mentioned the road went down fairly steeply to the creek, but we didn't think much about it.  But as we climbed and climbed I started to get this little niggly feeling in the back of my head.  I told myself I was worrying about nothing.  To back up just a bit, as most of you know, I'm afraid of heights!  I'm getting better with it, but hanging on a cliff edge with nothing next to you scares me to death!  Keep that in mind.  We start to descend a bit, but we are surrounded by aspens, and then come around a bend and we see what looks like stone guard rails with NOTHING out past them.  The road is as wide as we are at this point.  I almost turn around just looking at this road disappearing around the corner, but figure how bad could it be?

Well, I'll tell you how it bad it can be.  It turned out to be the scariest road we have ever been on.  And Jan agrees.  She is not afraid of heights so she wasn't as terrified as I was, but she agreed it was dicey, a shelf road as wide as we were.  I didn't want to think what we would do if we met a vehicle, so I tried to put that out of my mind.  It wasn't that hard to do, as all I could hear was my heart beating at about 500 beats per minute, a roaring in my ears over the vibration of my hands and arms shaking like leaves.  The real problem was, TURNING AROUND WAS NOT AN OPTION. No room!  Oh every once in awhile there was some miniscule widening of the path, I mean road, but there was NO way I was going any closer to the cliff edge.

Nothing on the right

A rock to add challenge

Thankful for these guard rails in the awful places

We continue, my breathing is okay, only about 100 breaths a second, until we see a truck "parked" in the road ahead. OMG!  We ease up to it.  It appears to be hanging over the edge on the right leaving just enough room of the left side, thank God, for us to squeeze through.  3 young men are there with an ATV pulled in front of the truck somehow.  They are real nice, polite kids that I can almost see through the red haze in my vision.  They real quietly say, "Sir, up ahead is a boulder that has fallen into the road, but you should be able to get around it"!  SAY WHAT!  "Do I have to go right towards the cliff edge to get around it?", I ask.  "Yes sir, you do, but you should be able to make it."
Now I really start breathing fast, blood pressure a million over a million.  "But Sir, there is no way you'd be able to turn around anyway", they say to comfort me.
On we go about a quarter of a mile and guess what we see?  A rock in the middle of the road as promised, and even though in this next picture it looks like a piece of cake, there is nothing on the right side behind the rock you see on the right.  It is a little blurry cause Jan took the picture through the windshield and I was probably shaking the Jeep.

Panic

I am sitting there trying my best to figure out what to do, because actually, it doesn't even look like the Jeep will fit between the rocks.  Jan got out and directed me through. As long as I kept my eyes on her I was merely terrified rather than incapacitated.  She told me later there was only about 2-3 inches of road to the right of the tires then nothing.  I'm glad she waited to tell me.  Obviously we survived, the road kept coming down and got a little less scary as we proceeded, and thankfully we never met a car!  I really don't know what you would do.

Pretty view though

We finally got out to 550 and decided it was too late to go to Silverton, so instead we stopped for a bit at Molas Pass, 10,900'.  It was cool and crisp, and beautiful.

Then we went out to Little Molas Lake to walk around a bit, so I could work the seat cover out of my butt.

Little Molas Lake

We decided to call it a day and headed back down towards Durango.  Smoke still around, but not as bad as it had been.  The fire we mentioned to the west of us that was causing all the smoke is 15% contained, but has grown to over 8300 acres now.
We mentioned Haviland Lake as being a favorite of Brett and Sandra's in a previous post and realized we never gave it justice with a picture.  Here you go guys!  It is a gorgeous place.

Haviland Lake

WIsh Vern could see this.

It was a big day yesterday in our clan.  Another motorhome was added to the mix.  Karen, Jan's next older sister closed on a nice used coach.  Nancy, Jan's oldest sister and her husband, CT already have one.
Vern, their father, and their mother, Viv had been in RVing forever.  They had motorhomes, travel trailers, and more motorhomes.  They always talked of their exciting travels around the country, and of course we would laugh at their travails that always seemed to follow Vern.  Jan and I had a sailboat for about 10 years and all of our vacations back then were sailing vacations, mostly in the Caribbean.  As the kids got older and more and more involved in activities, it became harder and harder for us to justify our sailboat.  It was moored a 2 1/2 hr drive away from us, and it required a lot of upkeep for a very short sailing season on the coast of Maine.
Some background is required for this little tale so bear with me.  I was a brother-in-law, but very close to Vern for many, many years.  My love of flying got us together long before I married into the family.  He was my surrogate father and mentor, as I had lost mine along the way.
Anyway, one day in 1994, Jan and I were visiting with Vern and Viv, as we both lived in the same town in NH, and we were lamenting that we had a vacation coming up and just didn't know what to do.  Well, Vern stunned us when he offered the keys to their motorhome and the keys to their toad and said, go have fun!  Jan and I were deeply touched and a bit nervous as we accepted their offer.  We took off with our kids for a 2 week jaunt and fell in love with RVing.  The rest is history.  We bought our first motorhome shortly after and that started a long, long history of traveling together with Vern and Viv, and we even got our close friends' Ray and April into a motorhome, and the 3 of us traveled together for years all over the country.  Karen and Tom, and Nancy joined us several times in a rental motorhome and knew they liked it as well.
While all of us were visiting with Vern and Viv in Kentucky at Karen's place in 2005, CT announced he and Nancy were getting a motorhome!  We all were amazed he was getting a 40 footer as his first motorhome. We got to travel for several months together with Nancy and CT after I retired the first time, and have traveled with them several times since for shorter periods.  Karen even borrowed their motorhome to accompany Jan and I last summer for a couple weeks.
Well, Vern had to get out of motorhoming eventually as it was just too much for his age, and the driving of a large vehicle was just too demanding.  We helped him sell it and it was a sad, sad day when his motorhome drove out the driveway.  He and Viv would reminisce with us when we visited and we'd tell tales of our adventures and mishaps along the way.  He desperately missed RVing, and always talked of getting a small class C, but we all knew it was just talk.
Vern passed away a little over a year ago, and we miss him dearly, and especially miss all the excellent times we all had together out on the open road.  It's too bad he never got to see the full circle of all his daughters stepping into his footsteps into this RV life.  We have many adventures ahead of us, and it looks like we will keep the tradition of traveling together alive as we play with the idea of all of us heading to Alaska together in a couple summers from now.

Fires!

We planned to leave early yesterday morning to "look" at a hike Jan found in a hiking book.  It is 17.5 miles up a forest road, deep in the wilderness, but the 1420' elevation gain made me pause.  The weather was great, but we noticed looking out it was very smoky even in the campground, and when we went out to the Jeep it was covered in ash!  The only fire we were aware of in the area is the fire that is to the northwest of Pagosa Springs and that is about 50 miles away and to our east.  We were puzzled but headed down into town to find our road to the hike.  As the road climbed up and up we saw off to our west an enormous plume of smoke!

Fire

Durango's elevation is about 6500' and the beginning of the hike was supposed to be at over 10,000 so we had a ways to go.  The road got interesting in places, but the views, ignoring the smoke were great.

About 7.5 miles from town there is a fantastic overlook at 8700'.  The views down into the Animas Valley were superb!  There is a 2/3 mile path around the viewpoint offering panoramas in several directions.  It was a quiet pine forest, very peaceful, and there was only one other car there!

Pines

As we were walking along we heard an aircraft engine that seemed pretty close.  There is a very active glider port just south of our campground, so we expected to see the towplane.  And we were rewarded by an incredible sight, sometimes below us as they climbed and sometimes above us.  Very cool!

Glider and towplane below us

Gaining altitude

Framed beautifully

Release!

Circling around free as a bird

NICE!

As we were walking along we noticed a guy sitting on a picnic table just enjoying the view.  We asked him whether he knew anything about the fire to the west of us.  He said the fire had started the evening before at about 4:30pm beside a road and during the night had grown to over 600 acres and was causing evacuations!  (This morning the fire has grown to over 6000 acres!)  He was a very pleasant guy who has lived here in Durango for 16 years and just loves it.  He was originally from Michigan.  We discussed fires out west and how they are to the Westerners as hurricanes and tornadoes are to the Easterners, and Midwesterners.  He said he had been evacuated 10 years ago when there was a fire very close to Durango on Missionary Ridge, which burned over 72,000 acres and destroyed 46 homes.  He said smelling or seeing smoke really gets their heart rates up!  It is terribly dry this year and there are many fires around, it is like a tinderbox!

We continued up the road and as the smoke got thicker we knew there would be no hike, but we felt compelled to get to the end of the road, which we did.  And encountered a spot of wildflowers covered in butterflies.

We turned around after looking at the site of the hike.  Looked like going straight up the side of a cliff starting over 10,000' and going up well over 11,000'!  For me, thank goodness it was too smoky!

We turned around and decided to have lunch at the overlook.

Lunch overlooking the Animas Valley

We got a couple good looks at the town of Durango coming back down, still smoky, but not quite as bad as when we left.

We then took a ride up to Haviland Lake a favorite spot of Brett and Sandra's.  It was beautiful, took a 1 1/2 mile hike and called it a day!

Nice ride

Animas River

Jan and I took off our CRS badges after we each checked twice to be sure the bike air pump was in the Jeep and off we went to ride.  I haven't been on a bike in at least 5 years, so I was really wondering how I would do, especially at 7000' and on a somewhat hilly trail.  We drove to the southern terminus of the Animas River Trail and ended up riding the whole 7 miles to the north end and back.  It was fantastic!  The town of Durango has done an exceptional job with this trail.  You never have to cross through traffic, there are ample places to pull off, many parks along the way, informational signs about Durango and the area, and it is paved or concreted the whole way.

Rapids right downtown

The Animas is a big rafting river.  You see tons of people in group rafts, small two man rafts, inflatable kayaks, and even inner tubes.  The river is mostly quiet and docile now as the water level is down somewhat.

Rafts going by

View from a bridge

Beautiful, huh?

Colorado has an active population, even on a weekday, in the morning we passed many walkers, joggers, mom's out running with their high tech strollers, and lots of bikers.  They even have some whimsical art work along the way, like this flower and bee!

These pictures we took with our phones so not as good as usual, but it is amazing, at least to me, that they do as well as they do.
After our ride, we went north to check out another campground we had heard about, Durango Riverside.  We met some folks, Ron and Nancy, in Santa Fe, and they were staying there.  We were not impressed with the campground, quite dusty, pretty tight, and very pricey.  We did have a nice visit though.  Then off to buy some honey at Honeyville.  We drove past this place many, many times over the years, and never stopped until last year.  They have all sorts of honey, honey products, even honey wine, and interestingly, a clear active bee hive right in the middle of the store.  You can sample all sorts of things, and last year we got some cinnamon flavored whipped honey.  Well, I tell you what, it is delicious!  We went through our small jar we bought last year, even ordered some to be sent to us while we were in Atlanta, so we wanted to be sure to pick up several big jars while we here!

CRS badge

Jan and I earned our CRS badge yesterday.  I wish I could say this is the only time we've earned it, but that would be pushing things:)  We decided to take a leisurely bike ride on the Animas River Trail, a picturesque paved path along the Animas River beginning south of Durango that runs 7 miles to the north of the town.  I wanted to start all the way at the southern terminus of it to be able to ride the whole length uphill first and finish downhill.  It's about 15 miles from the campground.  At about 12.122 miles from the campground it dawns on us that the air pump is in the motorhome!  Is there any chance there would be enough air in the tires for a ride?  Hell, no!  All was not lost as we walked a couple miles along the path instead, gonna try again this morning and yes, the pump is in the Jeep!  We'll be wearing our badges!

Durango!

We had a wonderful drive up to Durango.  An absolutely beautiful day.  As we were getting ready to leave Santa Fe, we had a nice conversation with our neighbors that moved off a boat they had lived on for 5 years and are now full-timing in a motorhome.  We exchanged websites and campground suggestions and hopefully we'll meet up again in October when we all return to the Albuquerque area, us to visit family and Howard and Diana to attend the balloon festival.
Jan remarked on the way up here that it almost feels like coming home.  We love southern Colorado, and as nice as Albuquerque and Santa Fe are, we like CO even more.  We had a little bit of trepidation coming into Alpen Rose, the campground we are in.  Seems they are getting more and more unpleasant reviews on rvparkreviews.com, one of the websites we use a lot for campgrounds.  It seems as they have become "THE" campground in Durango, they are starting to take it for granted and beginning to treat their customers with disdain.  Thankfully, we had a pleasant experience, we were met politely as we pulled in and they directed us to our site which was what we had reserved, so all is well except for the horribly slow wifi.  I think if a campground offers wifi, it should be acceptable at the very least, this one is terrible!  And it's not cheap to stay here.  Enough of the rant, it just indicates once more we have to come up with a better solution to the internet issue.  I know I mentioned I was tethering my phone, well the cell service here is iffy.  So I will be looking into an amp and antenna for the cellular service.
Anyway, the weather is fantastic, it was warm when we got here about 88, and we woke this morning to 50!  Awesome, and quiet and dark, except for our neighbor's porch light, but that's another story.  Off to enjoy!

Last Day in Santa Fe

We wanted to do a little something on our last day in Santa Fe.  CT had mentioned we ought to go to Chimayo, if we hadn't already, and visit the El Santuario de Chimayo.  It has been called, "no doubt the most important Catholic pilgrimage center in the United States."  It receives over 300,000 visitors a year!
It was a pretty drive up the "High Road to Taos" to Chimayo.  The church is 60' long and 24' wide with walls more than 3' thick and was built in 1813.

There is a small room in the church called el pocito with a small pit in the floor, the source of the "holy dirt" that is felt to have healing powers.  Pilgrims, over 30,000 strong, during Holy Week, walk to the church from all over, as far away as Albuquerque, 90 miles distant, seeking blessings or in fulfillment of a vow.

The attention to detail is apparent.

Window detail

One of two bell towers

Grounds behind the church

It was a very interesting visit.  You are not allowed to take any pictures inside the church, suffice to say it was very beautiful.  The church is open every day, and has a mass every day.
Well, on the way back, we kept thinking about lunch at the Pantry, after all I hadn't gotten my Chili Rellenos fix yet.  So we veered downtown and I had awesome Rellenos, and Jan had delicious chicken quesadillos, so our Pantry fix was taken care of!
Off to Durango tomorrow morning.