Boulder

Boulder

Boulder CO is full of people from somewhere else. I guess they come for the spectacular Rockies that start to rise up before you even leave town, and of course the University of CO is there, and lots of jobs.  The first thing I noticed was that who ever laid out the parking lots did not allow for Darth Vader.  It was often very tight and finding a spot that I could get into in one shot was impossible.  To make matters worse, driving here is an aggressive near contact sport. I have never had so many near misses, people cutting in front of me, passing me in bad places, speeding up to keep me from changing lanes even though there was a red light ahead. All this was without the trailer.  And if you don’t peel out at a green light as if it was a drag race, you get honked at pretty seriously.  Geez.

I parked in the suburban street in front of Patti and Tom’s house, Airstream friends.  It is pretty tidy here, but no one seems to mind that I’m here.  To me, this neighborhood seems crowded, the yards are pretty small. There are a lot of young families and dogs, and it is cheerful, but I feel sort of exposed.  This is odd, since most campgrounds have way less space around my trailer, and many more people and children and dogs in a smaller area.  It is nice to be able to walk to the grocery store and to get a haircut, but my rural nerves are twingy.

I spent a day with a woman I haven’t seen since we were in college.  It was amazing to run through our lives since, and to put our hard earned wisdom, and pains survived down side by side.  She and her husband live up on the mountains above Boulder with a view across CO to the east that almost made me dizzy. I guess you can see Kansas from there.

I went to see the friends that live in Borrego Springs in the winter, who have a house up in a different section of mountain homes.  They live in Gold Hill, once a small mining town,  that is now a National Historic District.  The tiny cabins, stores and one hotel evolved from mining camp to summer retreat with only minimal changes, and they take history seriously, no tidy lawns, the grasses and wildflowers grow free, repairs and renovations to the buildings are largely invisibly done, and the locals don’t drive Hummers, or dress up.  I could live here, aging hippy that I am.

The friends are in the midst of fixing their house up after years of rental, new carpet and getting their furniture out of storage, it is charming and carries the flavor of raising kids in the 60’s on minimal money.  I was there too.  I get a nice walking tour of the town and then back down the precipitous roads to Boulder.

I have been busy here in Boulder, doing errands and cleaning and fixing the trailer to get ready for the International Rally.  And on Wed, we pulled out and headed north.  The Colorado Rockies faded into the less spectacular Laramie Mountains, and soon the rolling grass lands of Wyoming take over. 

At our first stop, just over the line, we meet up with 8 other Airstreamers, old friends from the El Camino Unit, and in Douglas we become our own mini-rally, a merry preview of the socializing to come.   The roads are full of Airstreams headed for Gillette, usually we don’t see others of our “kind” very often, but now there are glinting silver ships everywhere, as though we were gathering for some obscure yearly mating ritual.

Peeks

Visiting friends is one of the motifs of this summer.  I have no real timelines besides the rallies, so I sort of drift from one friend to another.

My first stop was at some friends from TX that we met while Geocaching.  They moved to the amusing and funky town of Fairplay, CO, to a nice house with a spectacular view of South Park, the wide grassy basin between the mountains.  First order of business was their 11 year old son’s basket ball game. The ageless smell of sweaty sneakers, encouraging shouts, and the egalitarian inclusion of all and any that want to play.  There are so few students that boys and girls play together, and the enthusiasm for fun clearly outstrips the need to be the winners.

Then, it is her last belly dancing class.  

 I’ve always wanted to learn this, probably for the outfit more than anything: tons of jewelry, flowers in the hair and the low riding skirt with jingling coins.  Z comes out with a turban, her black hair braided with silver, flash and glitz everywhere, and her coin belt buzzes with each step.  Z is more fun than I can explain.  She is exotically beautiful, and well padded, and moves through life with huge energy and amusement, talking a blue streak in her deep voice, and laughing at the absurdities of the world.  She incites me to be out of control, we are a dangerous pair.

I bravely (foolishly?) get up and start learning to belly dance, in my Capri  pants and t-shirt, while the 8 others do their moves.  Eastern music fills the simple hall of an old church in Alma CO; at 10,000 feet it boasts the highest bar in the US.  We are soon getting a workout.  In my old life, I would never have just joined in like that, but I enjoyed every minute.  After that, still in full regalia, we head for the bar, where everyone knows everyone, children sit at the bar with sodas, and our outfits are only a mild and short lived curiosity.  After much laughter and carrying on, Z decides to visit the recently reopened Haunted Hotel.

Built during the mining heydays, it is a huge shingle block, with great beams in the foyer and massive false columns in the bar.  There are so many ghosts, it seems, that the new owner has had it cleansed. Well, except for the bar. The ghost buster woman walked in there and saw so many spirits having spirits that she nearly gave up.  Only a few rooms are really ready for occupancy, they have a new chef from New Orleans, and it’s all very hopeful.  Z, still dressed in her finery and I appear at the bar, and the 6-8 people there turn and see us.  Astonishment. Is Z the ghost of some long ago exotic miner concubine?   Z rolls out the laughs and the fun and they relax, sort of.  We are so clearly fearless and rowdy that it is a little hard for them to know what to think.  Then we go off hunting ghosts, deep in the basement, dirt floors, a century of junk, with only one tiny LED to see by.  Z is hoping to “see” something, but between my lack of belief and her jangly coin belt, no spirits appear. Then we go upstairs and explore, one bedroom belonged to a famous lady of the night, her nude portrait and her “certificate” are on display in the lobby.  The story is that if you make love in that room, her ghost, incensed, will begin throwing things around the room.  But we are on a noisy roll and the spirits stay hidden.

Next day, I head for one of my oldest friends.  Penny and I attended the same kindergarten, but only got to know each other in the 7^th grade at Concord Academy, a private girl’s school.  She and her husband have been living out here in CO for many years tucked up in the grassy parks of the Front Range near Evergreen.  She has horses, which I visit with and muck out, and brush. There is no better creature on earth.

Penny and I steep ourselves like two tea bags in the luxury of catching up and examining our lives with someone who knows us so well, there is nothing to explain.  We compare living out west, with our shared past of staid New England upbringing, pour over our more recent lives and troubles and joys. 

Her house has two dogs, two cats besides the 4 horses, and just outside across a little creek a family of coyotes is growing up. Since Pepe is deaf and too friendly, I have to keep her close. One of the adults is crippled enough to be looking for easy pickings.  The magpies and the crows are merciless, diving at the coyotes and making a huge racket, and we often see the adults walking in the meadows boldly.  Two adolescent elk with velvet antlers blunder through the fences on their way up higher, and the neighbors all have tons of horses too.

Her daughter shows reining horses, and we drove down to Denver to watch. Reining is like dressage for western style riders: there are 11 different patterns of large and small circles, spins, and sliding halts.  The riders are judged on the exactness and correctness of each move. For a parent anxiously hoping the child does well it is nerve wracking, but the huge arena is nearly empty, and the classes are very small.  Since the contestants go individually, it can take a long time for a class, and unless you are really up on the details, it is pretty boring.  Penny’s daughter has had a difficult time finding her way to adulthood, it’s not an easy path for anyone, and she has had some additional stumbling blocks to over come. She rides extremely well, and has a stunning and clever black horse and finishes second after a ride off, to a professional trainer.  My daughter and I did horse showing together for a long time, and it was interesting to revisit the nerves and drama of young females struggling in this high powered competitive world.  When you are competing on a horse, you have to keep your own nerves under control or the horse will pick up on your fears and become afraid (what saber tooth tiger, where?).  Sports of any type are terrific for kids if well managed, and for girls the horse world is a great emotional arena to learn in.

The coyote family, tired of our constant spying, has moved the pups, and Penny and I have sorted through many things.  We will probably regroup at Ellen’s ranch in Montana later in the summer, the three “old bags” as we called ourselves back in our teenage years.

It is interesting to revisit these bits of my past, and nice to see that much of it has not changed, even though it is a long time since I did basketball or horse shows with my kids. 

I also got a taste of two radically different communities. Fairplay has retained a lot of the rowdy, anything goes flavor of its mining days, it reminds me a lot of Wales, the small MA town where I spend much of my adult life.  Short on money, not a fertile place for pretensions, and long on supporting children and having fun.  Evergreen is the high priced spread, where ranchettes have grown up on the old high mountain pasture ranches. It is spectacular, as is a lot of CO, and has Denver at its feet for work.

Next stop is an Airstream Rally, in Howard, CO with some of the Denver unit folks, many of whom I know from past rallies. 

The theme is pirates, and although few of the others dress up, you can be confident that I was decked out in my buccaneerish finery, slinging Arrgg’s with the best of them.  We had a pirate joke telling contest, which I won and other fun stuff, and I made some new friends among the Airstream crowd.   I returned from the rally with Patti and Tom, old Airstream friends from way back, and am parked in the street in front of their house in Lafayette, CO.  We just had Chinese take out, and I’m snug in my trailer in the chilly rainy evening.

Alamosa

Alamosa, CO

I returned to the El Vado Lake SP campground, and got the last elec. and water site. Very lucky as the place was packed with folks playing with boats and jet skis and grilling and generally having a splendid Memorial Day. I decided to stay put, getting a site anywhere is hard this weekend, so I cleaned and puttered and walked around.  Big yellow bluffs towering over the water, right out my back window.

Back at Chaco, I met a woman in a newish Bambi, the tiniest Airstream made nowadays, she was astonished to see that I was traveling ( and backing and hooking up and etc) alone, and also thrilled, because she wants to do the same. We showed our trailers and talked and talked about trailering and how we came to be adrift.  Another woman came to my door at El Vado to ask was I alone, and again she was thrilled, and wistful.  I remember meeting a young couple somewhere with Don and the woman said, “Oh, I want to be like you when I grow up!”  My beginnings at this life were pretty rugged emotionally, but it never occurred to me that towing and dealing with the trailer by myself was a big deal.  On the farm of my youth, I was driving things pretty early, and then years of horse shows and horse trailers made towing the Airstream seem very familiar.  Maybe these ladies are looking more at the navigation, or fixing things that break.  At any rate, I was reminded again how lucky I am to be doing this, and just a teeny bit proud that I can.

I left El Vado, heading for Alamosa, CO, and coming down a fair grade, decided that I did not like my brakes.  The front ones on the truck were smelly, and it didn’t seem like I had much on the trailer ones either. So I stopped at the Economy CG, and drove into town to Walmart. One of the recommended places was open on Memorial day, so I drove in and made an appointment for the next day, for both truck and trailer.

The truck needed new pads up front (thought I just did that…)and this time I got ceramic pads which will never wear out. The rear needed some adjustment and the truck is now stopping like a roping horse.  The trailer on the other hand…..

At El Vado, it felt like the trailer brakes were grabbing, and I found that the breakaway switch had popped out, but not before some more bad smells and in fact, I cooked the wires…. A new part was found and installed, but then the other brake on that side was NG. Opening it up we found parts just loose inside, and so more ordering and waiting.

The garage folks are terrifically nice and funny, and since my trailer still has one wheel off, I’ve been boondocking in the garage parking lot for the last two nights. I do have electricity, and for the rest, I’m getting pretty used to doing without.  Tomorrow morning, the part will come and we shall see what happens next.

Today I went up to Great Sand Dune National Park. Very strange to have these 800’ dunes of sand, with the snow streaked mountains behind, and a creek running right at the base of the dunes.  Playing in the sand, sliding down the dunes on snow sleds and frolicking in the shallow wide sandy creek water is kid heaven, and there were plenty of them there.  Pepe and I climbed part way up the dunes.  Very heavy going in the soft sand at over 7,000 feet, and after a while the sand began to get too hot for Pepe’s feet, so we came back down.

I’m in the huge flat basin that lies between the front range and the main body of the Rockies.  The Rio Grande runs through Alamosa, pretty big now with snow melt, but not far from its source in the San Juans to the west of the San Luis Valley as it is called.  There is a lot of water about, and lots of stock , but at this altitude, it’s a short growing season.  The winds swoop down from the San Juans, carrying some sand and then scour the plains, picking up more sand until they hit the mountains on the eastern side.  There the big creek and some wetlands await and the sand gets dumped, forming the huge dune field.  I guess this doesn’t happen anywhere else, and besides it’s lots of good fun.  The creek is full of sand, carrying some back out to the flats where it will get picked up again and dropped in the dunes.  For the locals, it’s like going to the beach in the mountains!

The part came but it still took all day to get the brakes fixed, so I left Alamosa at 5:30.  I didn’t want to stay in town, and I found a couple of CG’s in Poncha Springs. BUT, on the way, in I think Villa Grove, out in the middle of nowhere is a sign for camping. At this point I am at the northern end of the vast flat San Luis Valley, with the Colorado Sangre de Christo mountains rocky, snow streaked and gorgeous to the east and the beginnings of the San Juans to the west.  I passed through a long stretch where the Rio Grande has irrigated miles and miles of what looks like potato fields, the giant water dragons doing their slow circles. I think I only made two slight turns.  At the end of the valley, some old lava piles start to appear. 

This campground is one of the nicest places ever. You would be hard put to beat the views, the sites are large, with trees between.  Nicest people.  It’s called the San Luois Valley Campground, and it is a flat out 10 by my standards.