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| From my truck | At my desk | Front View | Right view | Rear view | Left view |
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October |  |
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| View entire year's route | 
546K |
| View year's Camps |
90K |
| View this month's route | 
48K |
Thursday, October 1
We're still in the same campground. Today we started off with a day long visit to Arches National Park.  In the evening we went to the Bar M Chuckwagon for an evening of good cowboy food and cowboy music. Then we returned to the park so Frank could shoot some night time photos of some of the beautiful sandstone cliffs.
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We were going to stay in Moab for another day but we would have to move the trailer to a different site so we moved on instead. We had intended to move south east and stay at a dude ranch for horse back riding, but we found they had closed for the season so we headed north east to Grand Junction.
Saturday, October 3 Sunday, October 4 |
Today was a short drive from Grand Junction, Colorado to Montrose, Colorado. We are camped in a beautiful riverside campground with the back of the trailer backed up to the Uncompahgre River. We can hear it babbling as it rushes along. There are very few campers here and the owners seem to space their campers well away from each other. Overall a nice place, but tonight we will have to disconnect and drain water hoses, because it will be near or below freezing here.
Tuesday, October 6 |
A nice short drive today as we headed east traveling just south of the Gunnison river. We traversed several passes around 8,000 feet. The final leg of the trip was along the edge of Blue Mesa Reservoir of the Curecanti National Recreation Area, part of the National Park Service. Here are a few webcam captures of our journey.  Yesterday the server at home was experiencing some troubles and our traveling webcam images weren't working, but Frank was finally able to get the server reset later in the evening. This campground's website is one of the best I have seen. Far superior to most and fun to browse. The owner is a professional photographer and their website is full of some great photography of both the campground and surrounding areas. Check it out on the link above. Frank went out just before sunset and shot a few photos around the campground.
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Today we traversed the Continental Divide across Monarch pass at 11,312 feet. Beautiful views as the aspens are turning gold. On the way down the east side of the divide there was an 18 wheeler truck who was riding his brakes and driving about 20 miles an hour. Not once did he pull off on any of the numerous pullouts to let anyone around. Frank was worried, as the truck's brakes began to put out huge clouds of smoke, that the truck would lose control, or burst into flame. And since Frank didn't have his full attention where it should be, he bit into his bagel the wrong way and his temporary front bridge broke loose. Later in the afternoon we found a local dentist in Buena Vista who glued it back in place, but it is not secure and will need to be replaced when we get home. There is a small chance of snow here tonight and it will definitely get down below freezing. Looking at traffic web cameras around Colorado, it appears that it is raining in lower areas like Denver and snowing on the passes.
Friday, October 9 |
We began today with a truck that wouldn't start. After hooking up the charger for about 15 minutes we finally got it started. We believe the batteries are getting old so will look at getting them replaced in Denver. We headed east and paused for a few minutes in Jefferson, Colorado while Frank made a conference call with his rodeo association. On the way we passed three blue roan horses and we got a photo of two of them. Then we headed up Kenosha pass and on toward Denver. The temperature in South Park was in the 30's but as we descended toward Denver the tempeture dropped to a low of 16. Apparently the pass had experienced fog this morning and all the trees were covered with hoar frost and the trees were beautiful. See camera and webcam images that follow.
Sunday, October 11 Monday, October 12 Tuesday, October 13 Wednesday, October 14 Thursday, October 15 Friday, October 16 |
Well, today was the day we packed up and headed south. IGRA Finals are in Albuquerque, NM and we want to be there. We drove half the north to south length of Colorado, and now we are in Raton, NM. Raton is the Spanish word for a "small rat". Our KOA hostess's name is Betsy, but her name on the campground receipt was RatBetsy. It is warm and sunny here, but we see how much rain Northern Virginia is getting.
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We're just outside Santa Fe and the weather and sky are beautiful. Frank's pollution allergies are non-existent. This evening we went over to visit some good friends, Brian and Don. Brian is a great cook and made us a dinner of Filet Mignon, baked potatoes, and a great salad. They have a beautiful 12 acre horse farm with spectacular views.
Monday, October 19 |
We arrived in camp a bit after noon. Good thing too, as about an hour later it began to rain. It rained, hard at times, all afternoon and into the night.
Wednesday, October 21 Thursday, October 22 |
We're getting the next 3 nights free as part of a rodeo buckle sponsorship. Basically a parking lot but we are inside the fairgrounds and within walking distance of the rodeo. Frank got Windows 7 yesterday and is just about finished getting his main computer upgraded and setup.
Saturday, October 24 Sunday, October 25 |
We moved from the fairgrounds back to Kirtland, AFB. But en route we went to Albuquerque Brake and Alignment and had the trailer's axles aligned and four new tires put on the trailer. It looks like they did a terrific job, at least we hope so. Without aligned axles, the tires were wearing unevenly and lasting for only about 10,000 miles before needing to be replaced. For lunch, while the trailer was being repaired, we ate at the Black Angus. This is a very nice restaurant chain.
Tuesday, October 27 Wednesday, October 28 Thursday, October 29 |
The region between Albuquerque and Denver is having a heavy winter storm so we have decided to head east into the Panhandle of Texas rather than directly north to Denver. This will occupy us for several days until the warmer weather comes into the region and hopefully most of the snow will be gone by the time we get back into Colorado. The snow of the last few days, while not staying around very long, has turned the roads of the campground in Albuquerque into mud. The truck's running boards and tires were covered with adobe mud, so after setting up camp here we drove into the town of Tucumcari and washed it in a car wash.
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We have now turned northwest and are in the Panhandle of Texas in Dalhart, same campground we were in last spring. Dalhart is the home of the XIT museum in memory of the largest fenced cattle ranch in history which was originally 3,000,000 acres. W The XIT ranch no longer exists but we see the name in many places around this region such as the XIT cattle feed lots we passed as we were coming into town. For the first time we have seen another Ameri-Camp brand trailer that is being used. They drove in just a few minutes ago. Oh, if you are following us as we travel tomorrow or watching any of our webcams, we decided to stay in Mountain time rather than drop into Central time here in the Texas Panhandle. We will only be in Central time tonight and part of tomorrow morning, so it wasn't logical to change time zones on all the computers. Anyway we drop into Standard time tonight anyway. Too many time changes aren't good for the brain.
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