my travels in pixels

Laramie, Wyoming We are on our way to Utah to have a few warranty issues fixed on our trailer. We must be quite high as it’s snowing. The nighttime forecast was for -5C, so we got our sleeping bags out as they are rated to -4C. The wind howled around us all night – it’s a horrible place. Lindsay asked the girl in Walmart if it’s always this warm, to which she replied yes – and she was wearing a t-shirt! There were warning signs all along the highway to alert drivers with light trailers not to proceed because of 50+ wind gusts – too late if you didn’t take any notice of the first one. We are pretty heavy, even more so with a full tank of water as we knew we would be dry camping the night. Even so, we were pushed sideways more than a few times.  The wind was mainly head on, so our fuel economy was crap. One of the reasons Lindsay decided to stop is that he didn’t want to fill up twice in one day! We left our new heater on low for most of the night until I got too warm as it kep...

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado 480 acres of land was given to the City by the children of Mr Perkins who had wanted his land to be a free park for the people.  There are many unusual rock formations that you can either walk around or rock climb if you obtain a permit. Siamese Twins with Pikes Peak in the window

We booked the Taos Valley RV park which Tom Tom found extremely hard to find. We gave up and looked it up on Google Maps. The RV park is very nice and the staff are helpful in giving you suggestions of what to see in the area. The first afternoon we just spent walking around the shops in the city centre.  The second day we went to the Taos Peublo – the oldest living Peublo in the country. We took the walking tour with one of the local students and learnt a little about everything around us. They don’t like to give away much about their culture as it has been used against them, so they don’t even write anything down and never will. Their traditional values are guarded as sacred. The town doesn’t use electricity or running water, lights are propane.   Some houses use wood stoves while others still use the fireplaces to cook. The adobe buildings are made from earth, straw and water, and sometimes stones or rocks. Bricks are made and baked in the sun to make them waterproof...

An hour and a half north west of Santa Fe is the Bandelier National Monument. There are walking trails that take you to the Ancestral Pueblo villages dating back to the 13 th Century. Most of the dwellings are now in ruin but you still see the outline of many of them and see that the small rooms were for storing food, other rooms were bedrooms and the Kiva’s for meeting places.  The visitor centre hosts a talk and movie about the park to give people a better understanding of how they lived their lives. A class from one of the local schools was there and the kids really knew their history and we able to answer all the ranger’s questions. There are a number of cliff dwellings along the main trail, then another trail leads to the Alcove house which is reached by climbing four wooden ladders that span 140 feet to the top. Alcove House (inside) Looking down from Alcove house

The oldest house in America A leisurely one hour drive brought us to the lovely city of Santa Fe. There are a lot of adobe style buildings and trees and gardens! They had a light sprinkling of snow a few days before we got here and it has rained every night, but the days are clear and a bit chilly.  We stayed at the Trailer Ranch RV Resort where they have nice large, clean sites, with trees! We took the bus into the city so that we didn’t have to worry about parking, walked around the shops, saw a museum and a few churches including the one with the famous spiral staircase.  The Upper Crust pizza restaurant had been recommended to us and when we saw it near the oldest house in America we decided to have one for lunch. It would have to be the best pizza we have both ever eaten. The crust is left to rise three times over a couple of days so that it is like Italian Ciabatta bread, so it’s firm on the bottom, but soft and sponge like above the base.  It’s Ea...

We are on a time limit as we need to have some warranty work on our trailer before the 12 months is up, so have booked it in at Draper, UT for the 1 st May. We have devised a quick trip into New Mexico just to see what it’s like – mainly Santa Fe and Taos, with Colorado Springs tacked on the end. We will only stay in Albuquerque for a short time. We arrived at the High Desert RV Park without a reservation and someone was leaving early, so we just got a spot.  It's a fairly nice park and we would stay here again. We transferred our AT&T contract phone over to a Verizon prepaid, having already got a Verizon jetpack (wifi) for our data when we were in CA. Even though using a smartphone as a personal hotspot was easier, it locked us into a $40 mobile plan that we just didn’t use. Lindsay found a guy who makes up rubber hoses and sends them all around the country.  We will now be able to use our smaller gas heater in places like Ye...

The Petrified Forest is in Arizona just off the i40 on a side road leading off from Holbrook. The first fossil/petrified rock shop/gallery is huge and has some amazing fossils on show as well as lots of polished petrified wood made into whatever their imagination could come up with. The wind from the previous day had reduced a lot and if you found a protected spot in the sun, it was quite warm. My Allstays app showed that the campground was in the southern section of the park. Just before the entrance there are two shops selling polished petrified rocks and other nick knacks. One of them told us that camping was $10.75 a night on both sides of the road, while the other one said it was free but there were no facilities. The actual sites were on the “free” side and it was probably once a thriving business with shelters and tables on concrete pads. The electrical outlets were now non functional but we don’t need power all the time. Unfortunately, the park is only open from 7am to 7...

Our new Beginning There’s a new NAB ad on TV where a little boy is asking his grandfather what the people in the exhibition are doing – he says, “they are in retirement”. What does that mean? he asks again. “It means they can do whatever they want to do”   While we have been doing some pre retirement toe dipping over the last few years, it felt real when we got on the plane on the end of March; we really are now “in retirement”. Over the last few months when we’ve told people what we were planning to do, they would say: “you are living my dream!” Yes, we are living ours too. This retirement took a lot of work, but as with everything, it will be worth it. I’ve been packing since January which has allowed me to go through a lot of clutter and fill up our bins to the brim every week. Ebay has been an easy way to get rid of items that we didn’t feel were worth putting in storage. The renovation on the house had to be finished so that we could rent it out and the garden had...