Yesterday, relatives from all over the western United States descended on Avon, Colorado for Terry’s son’s wedding today. In the early afternoon we drove to Avon, which is sort of a bedroom community to Vail, to get together with everybody at her son Cody’s house.

We had not seen Cody and Jonna’s place before, and it was pretty impressive. Located high on a hillside overlooking the valley, they have a great view, but I really wouldn’t want to drive down the steep roads they have to navigate in the wintertime.

Terry’s mom and dad, and her sister Dani had arrived from Arizona just a few minutes ahead of us, and her son Shawn pulled in from New Mexico an hour or so later.  Then we all headed to a Mexican restaurant for a family dinner. The kids’ father, Larry Wyse,  and his significant other, Jane,  were in from Wyoming and met us there, as did the bridal couple, Casey and Leslie, pictured below.

Here is a picture of (left to right), Shawn, Leslie, Casey, Cody, and Cody’s wife Jonna. If Casey and Cody look very much alike, it’s because they are identical twins. Terry and I have been married over thirteen years, and I still can’t tell them apart. I think they should wear name tags like RVers do. It would sure make my life easer! (Yes, it really is all about me!)

And here is one the waiter took of our dinner party. That’s your truly on the left, then Terry’s dad, Pete Weber, Shawn, and then from the far back right we have Cody, Jonna, Casey, Leslie, Shawn’s date, Faith, Terry’s mom, Bess Weber, Miss Terry, and her sister Dani.  The young man in the dark shirt and head brace next to Shawn is Casey and Cody’s friend, Bob. He broke his back in a bicycle accident just two weeks ago and is in a body brace and looks pretty rough, but there was no way he was going to miss the nuptials. You can just barely see Larry’s cowboy hat behind Bob, and Jane was hiding someplace.

This area is very pretty, but I have to tell you, it’s just not for me. Too many people crammed into too little space, and every inch of that space is very expensive. Cody told us that a small run of the mill two bedroom, one bath apartment, goes for $1600 a month, plus utilities, on a year lease minimum, in this slow economy. When things are booming, the same apartment will cost upwards of $2,000 a month. It is not uncommon for as many as four to six people to share a small apartment, all of them working two or three low paying jobs just to make ends meet. All so they can live in this natural outdoors playground.

Cody pointed out what he called “get away homes,” perched on the mountainside, owned by wealthy out of town people who come here to ski in the winter and mountain bike in the summer, and said the lowest priced house costs over $2 million. Since Cody is the accountant for one of the major development companies in the region, he knows what the current values are at any given time.  A lot of sports and Hollywood celebrities have homes in Vail and Avon, and enjoy coming here to rub shoulders with the ”little people.”

Don’t get me wrong, the area is beautiful, but I wouldn’t trade our life on the open road for the fanciest, most expensive house here. Our motorhome may not have as much square footage, but we can turn the key and go wherever we want, whenever we want.

Today we’ll get those two young people hitched, and spend some more time doing the family thing, and then things will get back to normal and we’ll get back to real life.

Thought For The Day – A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.

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We slept in yesterday morning, taking advantage of the calm before the storm of activity this weekend, when Terry’s son Casey marries his lady love, Leslie.  River Dance RV Resort has cinnamon rolls on some mornings, and Rusty and Rebecca, in the office, had insisted we allow them to treat us to a couple, as compensation for the short delay getting into our RV site yesterday. 

We appreciated the gesture, and the cinnamon rolls were huge, but since Miss Terry makes the very best cinnamon rolls in the world, it’s hard for anything else to compare.

It was another hot day here in Colorado, well over 90 degrees, and we are finding that our Norcold refrigerator doesn’t keep things like milk nearly as cold as the residential style refrigerator we had in our bus conversion. Our awnings help shade the sides of the motorhome, which helps a bit, and the air conditioner keeps it nice and comfortable inside, but the refrigerator is definitely working hard just to keep things cold.  

The Eagle River runs right along the edge of the campground, and we walked down to check it out yesterday afternoon. The water was moving along pretty well, and it would have been fun to get our kayaks wet.

At one point there is a wide gravel sandbar just a couple of feet off shore, and Terry rolled up her pants legs and went wading. She said the water was cool and felt wonderful on such a hot day.

The water is very clear, as you can see in this picture. We didn’t spot any, but the folks in the campground office said beaver are seen frequently in the river.

While Terry was out wading, I took some photos of the river and the campground. It sure is located in a scenic spot. The campground stays busy all season long, and because it’s the weekend, it’s even busier. All day long everything from popup trailers to huge motorhomes were pulling in.

I spent much of the afternoon working on the schedule for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering in Elkhart, Indiana the end of August, and I hope to have the preliminary schedule posted on our main website by sometime Monday. I’m still waiting for last minute confirmation on a few seminars.

About 6 p.m., Terry’s son Cody and his wife Jonna came by to visit, and we went out to dinner at a place in Eagle called Moe’s Barbecue. It was pretty good, but not in a league with Hog Wild in Cottonwood, Arizona, or any of the Bandana’s Barbecue or Famous Dave’s we’ve been to at different places in the country. But, it was nice to spend time with Cody and Jonna.

Back at the RV, we chatted for another half hour or so, but since Cody has a lot of responsibilities with his twin’s wedding on Sunday, including the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner today, we soon called it an evening.

We’ll be busy with family activities the rest of the weekend. Terry’s other son, Shawn, and her daughter Kelly, are arriving today, from New Mexico and Nebraska, respectively; and her parents and sister Dani will arrive from Arizona this afternoon. So we’ll have lot of family to spend time with.

Thought For The Day – My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.

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Like most fulltime RVers, we always say that our plans are written in Jello, because, while we may think we know where and when we’ll be going someplace, we never know when something will come up to change our minds at the last minute.

We had planned to leave Show Low on Tuesday and take a trip up through the northeastern corner of Arizona, including Canyon de Chelly National Monument, the Four Corners Monument, and maybe Monument Valley, since I have never been to any of those places, even though we lived in northeastern Arizona for years before we hit the road. We planned to spend a few days, maybe a week, on the road, and then come back here to get the next issue of the Gypsy Journal ready to print.

But, in researching RV parks along our intended route, we began to have second thoughts. There doesn’t seem to be much to choose from, and what we found had some pretty dismal reviews. I also discovered that Four corners Monument, where the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah come together, is currently closed except on weekends. Hmmm…. this wasn’t coming together at all like we had planned!

So we stirred up the Jello and rewrote our plans. I extended our stay here at the Elks campground for two more weeks, and instead of taking the motorhome, we’ll do some day trips up north in the van. We may even make an overnight trip if time runs short.

Sometime about mid-June, once we get the new issue finished, we plan (keeping that old Jello thing in mind) to wander over toward the central California coast. We honeymooned in Morro Bay, and we love that area between Pismo Beach and Cambria. Then we will move a bit further north to the Morgan Hill Thousand Trails preserve, where we will do some exploring and sit out the Fourth of July holiday.

As most fulltimers do, we try to plan ahead to be settled into a campsite well before summer holidays arrive and we stay put until all of the weekend warriors go back home to their schedules and their responsibilities. Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day are the three times we always try to have reservations ahead of time, because we learned in our first summer on the road that if we try to find something at the last minute, it isn’t going to happen.

We also have reservations for mid-July at a campground in Colorado, because Terry’s son Casey is getting married July 18 in Vail. That is one commitment we can’t miss, so that is written in concrete instead of Jello.

Then we have to make a beeline for the Midwest, with a stop in Traverse City, Michigan for Terry’s annual oncologist checkup, and then on to Elkhart Campground in Indiana to get things rolling for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally August 30 to September 3, another commitment written in concrete. After the rally we’ll have just over a week before we have to be in Hershey, Pennsylvania for the big PRVCA RV Show.

As you can see, we have a lot of traveling planned for this summer. But who knows what might happen if we stir the Jello again?

Thought For The Day – It’s lonely at the top, but you eat better.

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Yesterday we had a party to celebrate Terry’s dad’s 80^th birthday. My father-in-law, Pete Weber, is one of the kindest, nicest, and most loving men I have ever known. Pete is a retired Air Force NCO, and even though he won a battle with cancer a few years ago, nothing slows him down.

He still walks several miles a day, he can do 25 pushups before I could even get down on the floor, and he can outwork most men 30 years younger. In fact, a while back Pete didn’t have enough to do, so he got himself a job as a WalMart greeter, working the graveyard shift four nights a week.

But that wasn’t enough of a challenge, so he volunteered to spend two of his nights retrieving shopping carts from the furthest edges of the parking lot! Here’s a picture of the happy birthday boy

Terry’s sisters Dani and Lisa, Lisa’s husband Jim, Dani’s beautiful daughters Lauren and Andrea, and their guys, joined us. Terry’s twin sons, Casey and Cody, and their ladies came down from their homes in Colorado, and her son Shawn and his girlfriend arrived from New Mexico, to help Pete celebrate his special day. Here is a picture of Terry and her dad. Can you tell how much she loves him?

That many people demand a lot of food, so Terry, Lisa, Dani, and their mom, Bess, prepared a feast that included Miss Terry’s delicious barbecued smoked ribs, beef sandwiches, all kinds of side dishes, and a huge chocolate cake that would destroy anybody’s diet. We all ate until we couldn’t eat another bite, and then we ate some more!

It was a great day, and everybody had a good time. We stayed until after 9 p.m., and by then everybody’s eyelids were beginning to droop, especially the Colorado contingent, who had to get up at 3 a.m. yesterday morning to be at the airport in Denver in time for their flight. I know Pete really appreciated having so many of his family with him for his birthday.

Friday I put a picture of the grapefruit tree at our RV site in the blog, and longtime reader Dave Burman thought I might want to see what life was like in his little corner of the world. Dave and his wife Mary are stuck in Frederick, Maryland, waiting for retirement so they can hit the road next year. Dave said he promised Mary that this will never happen again, and that he will drive their Winnebago Journey to Mexico if necessary, but they will be warm next winter!

I don’t blame you, Dave. We were stuck in Traverse City, Michigan during the wintertime years ago, while Miss Terry was battling cancer, and I don’t think I have completely thawed out yet! Our daughter Tiffany and her family live in Show Low, Arizona, only about a three hour drive from here, and I’d love to be up there spoiling my two granddaughters. But, until it warms up and the snow melts in the high country, that just isn’t going to happen.

Today we’re going back to Terry’s parents’ house to enjoy some more family time, and I bet there are plenty of leftovers we’ll have to wade through. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it!

Thought For The Day – Birthdays are good for you; the more you have the longer you live.

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We said a reluctant goodbye to Mike Steffen and left his place in Salt Flat, Texas a little after 9 a.m. yesterday morning, headed west on U.S. Highway 180. It’s always good to see our friends, and always hard to leave. But, the good thing about the RV lifestyle is that we can always go back and see them again. 

We made a brief stop at Cornudas, a wide spot in the road that has an interesting history. Cornudas started life as a stagecoach station, and today the “town” is owned by May Carson, a feisty lady who is the mayor, heads the water department, and owns the entire town.

May will serve you a great hamburger, and a piece of pecan pie to  die for, but if you give her any grief, she’ll show you the baseball bat she keeps behind the counter and let you know she means business. May is a character, as are most of her customers.

A while back May sold the town on eBay, but the deal went sour and she had to take it back, which made her many fans very happy. Cornudas is one of those places you have to stop at, just to say you’ve been there.

An hour after leaving Salt Flat, we got on the Loop 375, which took us through Fort Bliss and across the Franklin Mountains, past the National Border Patrol Museum. We did a story on the museum years ago, and I recommend it to anyone traveling through El Paso.

Loop 375, also called Transmountain Road, is a divided four lane road up an 8% grade over the mountains, and the Winnebago did fine. We were not setting any speed records, but we went up as fast as I wanted to, and I left our Allison transmission in fourth gear and let the exhaust brake carry us down to the other side safely.

Well, almost safely. As we were approaching Interstate 10, a jerk in an eighteen wheeler pulled out of a business on the left side and across the highway directly in front of us. I slammed on the brakes and managed to stop before we hit him, but it was darned close! I got on the CB radio and told him what a jerk he was, and that I hoped that when he got home, his mother ran out from under the porch and bit him, but he ignored me. He was a typical OPOP, which is a term I stole from one of our readers a few years back. It stands for Only Person On Planet, because idiots like that seem to think that nobody exists except them, and they’ll kill you to prove it.

After our blood pressure dropped back down to a reasonable level, we got on Interstate 10 only six miles from the New Mexico state line. The loop was a steep climb and descent, but a good road, and it sure beats the heck out of driving through El Paso on the interstate. There was about a mile long stretch where it was on surface streets after we left the military reservation, but it was an easy drive.

Except for slowing down for the Border Patrol checkpoint west of Las Cruces, we made good time, and arrived at the Escapees Dreamcatcher RV Park in Deming about 12:45. This is a regular stop for us when we travel west, because it’s right off the interstate, with easy access in and out.

We got parked and hooked up, and then ran to the post office to send out some orders that had come in over the weekend. Our good friend Deb Peters lives in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, about 90 miles away, and we had not seen her in a couple of years. Deb drove down to Deming and we had a nice dinner together, catching up on our lives since the last time we were together. It was a real treat to see her again.

We had thought about staying here a couple of nights, but for some reason we only have the slower National Access signal on our Verizon air card, even though our cell phones both show high speed EVDO signals. I took the air card out of our Cradlepoint router and put it in my computer and updated it, but it did not help our speed at all. We have a lot of online work to get done, and it’s frustrating to keep getting knocked offline, so we’ll see how the day goes. We may hang around, or we may get fed up and say the heck with it and hit the road. Tune in tomorrow to see what we decide.

Thought For The Day – Laughter is the medicine of life.

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