11-20-10
Arizona
I charged off down south just after getting a new crown put on a tooth that the dentist said needed renewing. It sure cost a lot more than the original one and I didn’t get anything for my trade-in so I kept it. I tried riding the back roads around Moab, Utah but the roads are just so torn up by the Jeeps or 4X4 guys it was dangerous for me to be out on them with my bike. I brought the Texas Blue Tick dog down with me as it is nice and light but way too heavy and big for those roads. There were a lot of little dirt bikes out on them but those riders were forty years younger. This is a nice camp down south of there above Montrose. The trees are just starting to turn and since I was camped up high, it was getting cooler.
I am making pizza now for almost every evening meal and the left overs for my lunch the next day. I needed to make some dough and get it to rise a couple of times so I used the heat from the motor on my truck. Works great!
I really liked this ranchers sign over his gate. I always sign my name Rx and I would guess this guys brand is called “Rocking Rx”.
A lovely old car display on the road over towards Cortez, CO.
I went over to see Mesa Verde. I really know better than to go to National Monuments and Parks but since it was late in the year and after major tourist season I figured it ‘might’ be ok. It turned out that about half of the park was closed and the part that was open was on limited usage. The Old Ones sure picked nice places to build.
I liked this using small pieces of rock in the mortar line.
This is the biggest cliff dwelling in the US they said. It is on a guided tour ONLY site and I don’t do well in the sheep chutes especially when watched so closely, so I didn’t go. nice view from up on high though.
I forget how many
miles it is up there but maybe 15 or 20. They were in the process of drilling
underground next to the newly paved highway a 4” diameter stainless steel
water line. I cant imagine how much something like drilling through rock just
under the ground must cost. I think the new pavement and this water line must be
something to do with the ‘shovel ready’ projects that have been under way
with $$ from the stimulus money that is supposed to get the economy perking
again. It sure seems like it would have made more sense to dig a trench in the
road, bury the pipe and then pave over it.
I was in the town of Cortez and just trying to get my truck and trailer parked at an antique shop where I was going to look for a better stove top camp oven, when a car pulled up and the guy rolled down the window. He asked me I my name was Rex and if I remembered him, Paul Schwarting? Well I didn’t remember him but I sure did remember the name. He invited me to follow him home and get reacquainted over lunch. It turns out that his wife Wendy was my wife’s best friends when they lived in Florida and were raising their families. Her kids were about the same age as Susan’s. They had come up to Montana just after we had bought the Tongue River Farm just south of Miles City. They had recently bought this place up near Deloris, CO overlooking a nice lake out in the country.
Wendy and Paul are serious walkers and have found lots of artifacts in their travels.
Wendy had an amazing garden and I asked her to give me a tour. It was a little spooky as her garden was almost exactly as Susan’s gardens. They both are/were into specialty veggies and heirloom varieties that taste good. They learned gardening from each other in the old days.
This was late in the season and really a month after the first frost should have taken everything to the ground. She gave me permission to harvest as many of the tomatoes as I wanted and it was just so good to have really tasty tomatoes to eat again. I picked quite a few of the green ones and just finished the last of them the other night sliced and added to the top of a pizza. Yumm, yumm…thanks Wenday!!!
Paul rebuilt the old ranch house as well as additions and other buildings on the place. He is really a careful craftsman and is very lucky to have a sawmill that cuts rough sawn lumber just across and down the highway from his place. they just deliver it to him…. wow!!!
Paul was a serious canoe racer and is still a serious motocross racer (in the antique class). He rides a 125cc Hodaka. He had just bought this ‘Caned Ham’ trailer and they are hoping to get out on the road and do a little camping with it.
I stopped in at this gas station and had to go ask the guy about this cute little race car. He said it was a Dwarf race car and has a Hyabusa motorcycle engine in it. 1800cc I think he said. With that engine it must just scream…
Ah, finally down on my ridge above the Windspirit commune at my old camp. It had been really hot and almost too damn hot to take a nap in the afternoon. I would get on my bike and make a run either over the pass to Globe or down to Winkelman for an ice-cream cone. This time I was down in Winkelman and over a dozen Harleys rolled in. Jeez, those Harley guys are a bunch of gray haired (the ones that still have hair) and fat. Man, it must be a requirement that you have to be about 80 pounds overweight to ride a Hog. Anyway as I was sitting there admiring their girth of the riders a BMW pulled up to get gas. As he walked up to pay for the gas he sees my dirty old Texas dog and points to it and then to me… yeah, I nod my head, “it is mine”. He came over and we talked for a while. He was headed to Albuquerque and since it was so late in the day I invited him up to my place and he could either spend the night in his tent there or go down and stay at Windspirit. We had supper and he spent the night down there. Dicon lives in Alaska and paints houses. He was on his way soon to deliver his bike to the LA area so it could be shipped over to New Zealand. He had done it two years ago and it seems the price is still $500. Well, I got all head up and decided I just might as well do the same thing myself. I loaded up my bike and hooked on to the pod and headed up to the doghouse.
Things are different up at the doghouse. Just as this snow was starting to fall, I was online checking on prices to fly to New Z. As the flakes fell I pulled the trigger and bought a ticket to fly down. I fly out on Tuesday the 23rd and will land in Auckland on the 25 which is Thanks Giving… ah, deliver me from the Montana winter… many THANKS!!! I will buy a bike down there and ride around for the winter (summer down under). I’ll be back end of February and hopefully get a few cows to eat the grass on this place. Stay tuned…..
Oh, the temperature on the morning I leave is predicted to be –16F / –26C
