Salida

The Denver Unit of the WBCCI and the westerners in the Vintage Club put on a Rocky Mountain Vintage Rally every year in August. This time it was an all boon docking rally, with the trailers all in a circle around a tent. I signed up immediately, and so a week a go we set out.

Don’s trailer went in for some repairs while we were gone, so much had to be removed from it, and my usual and apparently unavoidable need to stock the Airstream for a 6 month trek went on at the same time. I know there are stores everywhere, I just hate to spend fun time looking for them and shopping.

We dodged the pivot and went on our way, down through the rolling hills which are now the soft brown furry rolling dunes of late summer. Barley is being cut, pivots running for the second hay cutting, and all manner of irrigation is being put to corn, and sugar beets.

The Bighorns drift by, obscured by smoke from fires, still spots of snow on the highest peaks, then we are out on the vast cattle plains. Sometimes a set of rocks will appear jutting out of the smooth hills. They cast sharp shadows, have unsettling silhouettes, and grab the eye tired of endless rolling grass lands. I tend to have a second’s though that they are man made, ancient battlements, or temples, because they appear so abruptly, and so singly.

At Douglas WY, we pull into a city park that has free camping, parked around the grassy islands. There is even a bath house with brands burned into all the wood trim. Free camping brings in other drifters too, a thin gray bearded man living in his van, and three youngsters in a tent. There is a limit of 2 days, which may explain why the van man was keeping a sharp eye out and periodically driving off. The youngsters went for a walk downtown and were told by the police to stay in the park and off the streets. I suspect the police don’t like the free parking. In addition, the sprinkler system comes on in the night making the lush lawn a bad place to pitch a tent.

We roll on south, into Colorado where the Rockies rise vaguely from more smokes, and we are soon in the Ft. Collins-Denver version of Rte 128. Like a piece cut out of the urban eastern seaboard, suddenly the drivers are all in a terrible hurry, rude, aggressive. A side trip to a Ham radio store in Denver leads us through detours and traffic which would be a pain in a car, towing a trailer it was no fun at all. ( Don has recently taken and passed the first two levels of his Ham License, and talks to other hams about their radios mostly ).After that we head up towards Evergreen where my friend Penny lives. More aggressive folks in SUV’s passing me, rushing, competitive, elbowing me and my trailer aside so they can get up the mountains faster. So why live up in the tranquil mountains if you are going to drive ( and probably behave) like you live in Brooklyn?

Penny and her husband welcome us, and we set up in a pasture above their house. A nice evening, and get together, it is remarkable how little we have changed in the 50 years we have known each other, well, inside that is, we are both wider and grayer. It is very reaffirming to talk to someone who has known you that long.

Next day we head over to the South Park, a wide plain of grass with the mountains all around. It lies at 10,000 feet and covers 1,000 square miles, not too many people live up here in this magical place, no doubt a nasty winter and no jobs to speak of, but it is remote and very beautiful, a lot of cattle out on the lush mountain grass. And quiet, and no SUV’s.

Over another pass and down into Salida where the Arkansas River tumbles out of the mountains and makes giving river raft rides the going business. I have followed the Arkansas River for several long trips, so it feels like an old friend. It occurs to me that while Don knows all the route numbers and where they go, I am more oriented toward the river drainages. Up on the Yellowstone and the Bighorn Rivers, they were the highways of history, and everywhere the rivers are the carvers of the rocks, and the water in them brings life to the valleys. The highway numbers seem sort of peripheral information.

We are here for the Rocky Mountain Vintage Rally, one of my favorites because of the congenial folks and terrific planning.. Our Airstreams were born and bred to rally like this, and us die hards take great pride in our ability to be happy off the grid, no water, no electricity, no sewer. We happily join in an endless round of feasting and talking about our trailers.

One afternoon we went off in a geocaching foray and wound up 4 wheeling up on the slopes of Mt Shavano, an amazing place. The name of the cache was 360, for 360 degrees of mountains, all around a wide-open field of late summer flowers. Coming down another way, we followed a creek bed as the walls got higher and higher, and finally it dead-ended. Turning my truck around was a bit of a trick but we had a grand time.

Back in Montana, we go back to ranch life. My friend has two granddaughters, 3 months and 15 months that spend a good deal of time with her. It is hard to get anything done with them around, and sometimes hard to handle both, so we have been double teaming the grandmother deal. Fun unless you are trying to get something else done, so I hold the fort while she gets lunch. Nice to know I can still burp a baby, and interesting to see them grow by leaps and bounds.

The big project, stripping and restaining the 400 square foot deck is nearly done. I had no idea a wooden deck was so much work. Another reason to be glad I am trailer trash. I also made 4 raised bed vegetable plots in old tractor tires, and cucumbers and tomatoes are really starting to bear. That’s the only part of being a rolling stone that I don’t like is no vegetable garden. I do carry 4 large pots of cooking herbs with me and one house plant.