set off heading south, drove up into a big cloud that was rolling over the mountain top - this is called rotoring when a cloud does this - see below, it's quite hard to make out but i'm sure you can do it, cloud kind of merges with top of mountain:
drove over a gorge and wondered how they made free standing bridges over such deep canyons, like how do they stick the sections together when there’s no supporting structure underneath?
bert waving goodbye before jumping off the bridge, having experienced my driving...listened to a song called watch out for lucy, by eric clapton, on our one-sided tape player. i also heard a song the other day called loose lucy, by the grateful dead. hmm, somebody should write some more positive lucy songs if you ask me. we read in today’s paper (oct 1st) that the girl that inspired lucy in the sky with diamonds had died. bought some pencil crayons so i could do some drawings of all the nice scenery we were going through; so far i’ve drawn a buffalo and some trees - what do you think?
i drove the rv for a while, which was a bit hard work as it’s so wide and veers a bit to either side.
also saw some antelope on the side of the road; tidied up monty and cooked chicken with orange and honey marinade; stayed the night in walmart carpark in a place called casper in wyoming.monday 28th september: casper, wyoming to arapaho national forest area, colorado
ate breakfast with the scenic view of the denver mattress company and walmart and various other outlets. i bought a pencil sharpener for my new pencils. i wondered why it’s so much colder in montana, wyoming, and colorado where we now are, than in england, even though when you look on a map England is at a higher latitude than these states. i presume it’s to do with altitude too. it really gets freezing cold here which is no good for monty, we have to be careful not to let anything freeze up, like the water heater, pump etc.
i counted up the mileage that would be involved if we drove all the way to belize, and miscalculated it to be 5000 miles, on checking again we figured it’s more like half that distance. maybe i’d got my km muddled up with my m’s. anyway it’s a long way, but once you set off on a long journey it gets shorter as you go along, and it really isn‘t the big deal you anticipate it will be. it‘s funny how our brains get all worked about things that are yet to happen and then when they are happening it‘s kind of obvious how they pan out. we stopped for a coffee in a place called fort collins, and stole some internet from a nearby hotel. this is a very fun thing to do getting wifi connection for free.
we noted that colorado scenery hadn’t been quite as stunning as montana. we saw some goats eating some antifreeze at the side of the road - that’s what bert said they were doing anyway, and that they would die soon which was a shame. it was indeed a shame, but i guess we will never know if that is really what happened, hopefully they just sicked it back up.
we came to a place called estes park, on the outskirts of rocky mountain national park, and looked at some elks on a golf course.
hey mr elk, can't you read!we then drove through the park (free entry thanks to bert’s national parks card hooray).
we drove right over the top of the mountains, which goes up to 12,183 feet, which is very high. i ran a little bit to look at a view, and nearly vomitted due to lack of oxygen. the views were stunning and the sun was just setting so it was a great time to be there.
really cold - i touched some snow.
it was like the alps up there, and we weren’t expecting it as we hadn’t even planned to visit this park, it was just a nice looking detour from the highway and was going the right way. always much nicer to come across places like this i think, rather than plan to go and see them and look forward to them and then get there and they don’t quite match up with your expectations. best to have no expectations of anything. we ate biscuits with cream cheese all the way down on the other side, i think the altitude had made us hungry.
bert's special watch that is also an altimeter, amongst other things - we didn't record the highest height as bert wouldn't stop because he said we'd cause an accident. he is sensible like that.we slept in a lay-by on a side road near a lake over the other side of the park, and i woke with a jump in the night to a big banging noise. i didn’t know if i’d dreamt it so i didn’t mention it, but a few hours later it started again. it turned out it was the heater, not firing up properly, maybe due to the cold. we drove off somewhere further from houses so we could fire up the generator to try to mend the problem, which seemed to work. all in all a strange night’s sleep.
tuesday 29th september: arapaho, colorado t0 jim and amy's house, salida, colorado
had porridge and coffee by stillwater lake, watching the sun come up.
i looked at some little information boards about the continental divide, which basically divides the country to east and west in terms of water, so that any water to the east of it drains in to the atlantic, and to the west it drains into the pacific. i don’t fully understand this, but that’s it in a nutshell.
we found out that a fuse had blown as half our lights weren’t working. i got the little monty instruction book out and found where the fuse box was and to my glee i found the broken fuse (you can just about see below in the picture, the broken middle bit of the fuse):
we stopped at ace hardware, which really is ace, and bought some new ones and put them in and lo and behold the lights started working again. this was very very satisfying as it meant i had understood something vaguely technical.
we saw a hot air balloon on the ground and then in the air.
went over another high pass, of 11,000feet this time; we ate a muffin (seems to be a common theme); stopped in a mining town called leadville (presume they mine for lead) and looked at the thrift shops - i bought the screenplay of 2001 a space odyssey by arthur c clarke as i have never understood what happens at the end and here it was for $1; bert bought a bucket because that’s what men buy.
some colorado views:
note the amazing tree colours - they don't come out too well on this pic, i am working on a drawing of them
falling rock, the famous indian.
ace clouds
mt princeton, the highest peak you see here just left of centre, is where bert and jim and others used to hang glide. they once got up there and none of their radios would work, and they saw flashing silver lights zooming around the sky. the local sheriff got wind of this weirdness, and came and videod it, and it got on the news. the local radio station hadn't been able to broadcast either that day. spooky. the peak is 14000+ feet.we arrived at jim and amy zieset’s place just outside of salida in southern colorado that afternoon and looked at the machines that make the plant bands that i talked about earlier. writing this blog sometimes makes me feel like i’ve gone through a worm hole in time and space because it gets confusing writing it in stages and having to jump backwards and forwards. i am determined to write it in the traditional order from now on, ie not going backwards and upside down all the time.
that night we went out for drinks in salida with jim and amy. amy is making a dress for a wedding they’re going to in boston next week, so she showed me a picture of it. she won’t let me take a picture of her in it because she doesn’t like having her picture taken. it’s a vintage type green dress, i’m amazed at anyone who can sew things and then wear them - it’s all i can do to not have a breakdown at sewing a button on (i did 3 buttons today and am still recovering). i drank a mojotini, which is a mojito with a splash of champagne. this is about the swankiest thing i’ve done for a very long time - i think it even beats my walmart wedding shoes, which are kind of sparkly. after our drinks we went to see jim’s son Zach briefly, and then to see jim’s planes in his hangar - he has a sailplane, which is an enclosed fixed-wing glider, with a really long wingspan - you have to get towed up to fly it as it’s got no engine. he also has a cessna 320, a 6 seater little plane, like the one frank the mennonite has in belize. it’s really a nice plane, i hope we get to go for a flight in it before we leave.
jim showed us a promotional clip that some tv channel (discovery channel i think) had made about him and bert’s water gliding business, around 10 years ago. it was really weird to see bert on tv looking 10 years younger, which wasn’t that much different. he comes across very intelligent - they both do - apart from the bit where he says - ‘well, dara (dara torres, the olympic swimmer was interviewing them and going for a flight from the boat), the great thing about water gliding is um you’re gliding over water‘… tee hee. it’s really unfair of me to pick on bert like this as he doesn’t have a chance to retaliate as it’s my blog, so please don’t think i’m really being horrible, it’s all in the name of art.
jim and amy have a really cute dog called mundy, she sat next to me in the car and i stroked her. i would like a dog like her for the rv.
wednesday 30th september and thursday 1st october and friday 2nd october
basically i’ve been busy writing my blog these last 3 days; i also sewed 2 buttons on my thrift shop coat, and one on bert’s shirt; found an old bees nest in one of our exhaust pipes; met a man who knew lots about rv-ing and gave us some tips; had dinner with jim and amy and their friend bob gomez who bert told me was from mexico so i asked him where he was from in mexico, but he’s not from mexico at all he just has a mexican surname, and later i told bert he can’t assume people with mexican surnames are from mexico.
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