After my morning walk and greetings to the farm animals, this RV park is also a working horse farm and has a “petting zoo” (think pen) full of goats, I settled for my second cup of coffee on our picnic table to do some writing. The view from our campground, is perfect, Mesa Verde is our backdrop. The first challenge of the day was dealing with our sewer hose … yes, I know, you’ve been waiting for the sewer hose story :)
Our RV, has a fresh water tank, about 55 gallons, which lasts us 2 days of use. We have 3 holding tanks to carry our “used” water and other “stuff”. We have a galley tank, that is the water from the sinks and we have a “shower” tank, that stores the water we used in the shower. We also have a “black water” tank. This holds what our toilet “gathers”. 
A full service campsite, basically means that there is electricity, water and a sewer facility … allowing us to fill one tank and dump the others. Dumping, is not hard :) … connect your hose to the RV, put the other end in the sewer hole, using a “donut” (more on this later), open the valves … presto! Nice, and “emptied” facilities.
The night before, I connected the hose, put the donut on the end … and being tired, didn’t do an elevation analysis … and opened the valves. Now … as the tanks emptied, they did so into the hose (which is basically a dryer hose), the hose filled, and when it reached capacity, it flowed into the sewer … no spillage, no problem … well, except, that I now had a 10ft, thin walled, dryer hose, full of “stuff”.
I asked for some help from Michelle … which basically, was met with a face, that cannot be described in words. Apparently, dealing with this issue was something, she was not willing to cope with. I then recruited the older two … figuring I could use this to teach some life lessons … while in concept a good idea, when they realized what the challenge was, they quickly left … I wonder if encoded in our genetic code is the fear and disgust of human sewage … hmmm.
I studied the problem and came up with a “solution”. Remove the hose from the RV, maintain the end above the level of the sewer, slowly lift the hose, so that all the “stuff”, flowed in the direction of the end that I wasn’t holding … hope that the donut held the pressure of column of “stuff”. Have the water hose at a ready to “flush” and deal with any “issues” … and audience of my family had gathered at a respectable distance … luckily, and sorry to disappoint … my plan went off without a hitch.
We left the park around 1130A, headed west again stopping in the town of Cortez for provisions … I stayed with Jack (he was sleeping), while the girls went shopping. They came back about 1.5 hrs later, with a cart full of stuff … proclaiming how “strange” this Wal-Mart was … when I asked Genna, she said … “it was full of Cowboys and Indians.” … Yep, had the statement confirmed, and witnessed those coming and going … Cowboys; hats, boots, jean, shirts … and Indians; long hair, braided, colorful shirts. We topped fuel and continued on our way.
We crossed into Utah, after several great days in Colorado and stopped at a Dinosaur museum in Blanding. This wasn’t a special museum, nor was it fancy, nor was it unique … it just was on our way and on the map. We arrived around 4P and stayed until closing (5P). It was a nice diversion, not a bad museum and had some interesting displays. They have a great collection of movie posters that feature dinosaurs. They also have a good display that show and theorize about feathered dinosaurs and their relationship to modern birds.
Somewhat reluctantly (since the kids wanted to stop) we continued west, heading for the Natural Bridges National Monument, which was only 50 miles away. This, took us close to 2 hrs to drive and provided some magnificent views. The road we drove to get to the national park was very good, mostly uphill and empty. We saw 2 cars in 2 hours. When I could, I pulled over to get some of the pictures you see … this added to the time on the road, but was well worth it.
When we arrived at this park, the visitor center was closed. We headed to the camping loop, to find that they do self registration. We drove around the campground and counted 8 (out of 13) empty spots. We decided, since we had almost 2 hrs of daylight left, to the park scenic outlook drive. This was 16 miles and had 3 major stops, to see the 3 signature bridges.
We did the remaining loop and stopped at all 3 bridges, each different, each impressive. On a future adventure, we will come out here for a longer amount of time and hike the canyons … from what we could see the access to the bottom of these canyons was imminently doable for us and kids. I wish we had more time, I think we could spend a couple of days at this park, just walking the canyons.
On our return to the campgrounds, we find only 2 sites left … after trying to park in one for about 10 minutes, I give up and head to the other. This one is much easier to get into, but not as private, as it is across from a bathroom (think permanent outhouse) and the trash cans. Regardless, it was the only one I could get into. This campground is “dry”, no electricity, no water. 
We fill in a form, put our money ($10 for the night, and the cheapest we’ve stayed at so far) in a deposit box, and head back to the site.
As Genna and I return from completing our permit, we are greeted by a ranger at our site. Now, there was a sign at the entrance to the campground that said 26ft max length, and the ranger was standing next to the sticker on the motorhome that said 2900LTD. So I feared for the worst … wasn’t the case. 
Turns out he came by to invite us (and the other campers) to a talk at the visitor center about astronomy and the planets. Nice.
We had dinner, ate outside and where treated to a great colorful sunset. Jaci, our aspiring astronaut wanted to go to the talk and she and I set out for it. We had a nice 1 mile walk to the visitor center. We passed the generating station that provides electricity for the homes of the rangers and the visitor center.
This is a field of solar cells and a generator (which was running) for the night … I didn’t realize as we drove in, but there had been no power lines for over 40 miles.
We arrive a little late to the talk, and find that Jaci is the youngest there (the next was a 14 yr old). We also find out that there are about 16 people there, representing 6 sites. Of 
the 16, 14 where German. Our ranger chose this park, for its “dark sky”, and apparently, there is a very little sky left in the US that does not have light pollution … not sure I would agree with what we’ve seen in the last couple of days. We heard all about he planets and then stepped outside for a sky show … unfortunately the sky was overcast and we couldn’t see anything.
We thanked our ranger and started on our dark walk back. The American couple (only ones), got in their car and drove back to the campground. Jaci and I, trekked with ze Germans. We found ourselves in the middle of there movement … 6 Germans in front, 8 behind. All had donned head mounted lights. The lead 2 had them on, the ones following did not. They walked in 2 lines, and had about 2 ft spacing between them. This was precision hiking.
The group in front of us, quickly outpaced us … the group behind us, was being held up by us. You could hear them talking, but we couldn’t make out what. I’m sure that it had to do with our pace and apparent lack of discipline and structure :) … Jaci got a rock in her shoe, so we stepped off the trail. This provided the opportunity for the trailing group to advance. Within 2 minutes, we could no longer see them … so Jaci and I, talked about the planets and stars and walked back to our site. Was very, very, very nice.
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1 comment:
Aw your little adventure with Jaci sounds so lovely! Give big hugs and kisses to the kids for me.
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