Cochiti Recreation Area

It was raining cats and dogs in Steamboat, and had been for what seemed like forever, so we took off on a trip south to the Santa Fe area. We had reservations at the Cochiti Recreation Area, but had planned to stop part way there since it's about a 9-10 hour drive. However, it rained most of the way, so we just kept going. We got to Cochiti close to midnight, so we didn't see much of the area. But we didn't have any trouble finding our camping spot, and the gate (thankfully) was not locked!

When we awoke in the morning, we found that we had a lovely view.

The spots are nicely laid out at the Juniper Loop of the campground, so there is some privacy. We had water and electric, making our three night stay there pretty luxurious. One night, a Native American family camped close by and came over with some freshly roasted corn to share. New Mexican hospitality!

On our first day, we visited the Coronado State Park, which is right along the Rio Grande. It's the site of (maybe) a takeover of a Pueblo village by Coronado. Our docent was knowledgeable, and the boys enjoyed going down into the kiva. Being afraid of heights and not liking enclosed spaces much, I stayed outside.

We followed that with a trip to Petroglyph National Monument, but were fairly disappointed. It is comprised of a set of separate trails, all of which are closed and locked at 5:00 p.m., even though there are several hours of daylight left. There is no driving access to the park, other than just to a very small ranger station. The trail we tried to take was littered with broken glass, making it less than desirable for walking on with the dogs.

We drove into Albuquerque to see Old Town, which is very similar to Santa Fe. We weren't in the shopping mood and had already planned dinner back at the trailer, so we went back to Cochiti for a lovely steak dinner the husband cooked on the grill. Since the small gas tanks that our camping stove is supposed to use are not refillable, we've got a hookup to a standard gas tank that we take along as backup for our trailer, so it all works out well without making us feel terrible about adding additional metal tanks to landfills!

A trip to Tent Rocks and some geocaching rounded out the weekend, with a less gourmet hot dog dinner the next night. On the way back, we detoured through Taos and stopped at the Rio Grande Gorge. The weather was attempting to spit some rain at us, and our exchange student wasn't keen on walking the 1/4 mile from the parking area to the bridge, so we just viewed it from the side and headed back to Steamboat.

Things we realized we didn't have but needed on this trip: (1) towel rack(s) in the bathroom; (2) tongs for grilling; and (3) RV toilet paper. We'll have all three by the next trip out!

Post-apocalyptic Wyoming

We took Seba up to Douglas, Wyoming for a weekend Rotary exchange student convocation, and we planned to stay in town at a city park that allows campers: https://www.wyomingtourism.org/things-to-do/detail/River-Side-Park/8542. It's free and when we stopped by, there was no one there. It's right on the river, so it seemed as though it wouldn't be a bad place to stay.

However, on the way up, we passed two state parks and we just had to check them out. Glendo State Park and Guernsey State Park are both between Laramie and Douglas. We high tailed it out of Douglas after dropping off the exchange student, and made it back to Glendo in time to find a spot before it became totally dark. Since it was before the May 15th start of the official season, and because there was a prediction of heavy rain, we had one of the many campgrounds completely to ourselves. And what a beautiful spot it was -- out on a peninsula with water on three sides and no neighbors. Who could ask for more!

There were no hookups at this site, although there are hookups at another campground in the park. So this was our first dry camping experience. The heater worked fine, the lights worked great off the battery, and all seemed wonderful. Until dinner. I discovered I didn't have the pans I needed, and the one frying pan I had was too big to allow another pan on the stove. And the microwave wouldn't work off the battery. Note to self -- change out pans! We still had a great dinner and enjoyed the peace and quiet.

In the morning, we discovered the real reason we need a generator. No coffee! It didn't occur to us that even if the lights worked off the battery, the plugs wouldn't. So plugging in the coffee pot did no good. Fortunately, there's a great little local restaurant in the town of Glendo (pop. 230), and the coffee was quite good.

We spent the day exploring Guernsey State Park, which has a beautiful building constructed by the CCC workers...

...and drop dead scenery!

This is where the post-apocalyptic part comes in. We spent an entire day in a beautiful state park, and we saw NO ONE! It was a very eerie feeling, and it truly made us wonder if something had happened out in the real world that we didn't know about. Our cell phones weren't working, so we couldn't even check. We felt as though we had two gigantic state parks entirely to ourselves.

We also visited Fort Laramie,

and saw the ruts formed by the carriages traveling the Oregon Trail.

It was a very special day, and when we got back to Glendo, we sat outside at the picnic table with wine, cheese, and an amazing view. We watched the wind pick up and blow across the lake, so we had warning before the driving rain began to fall.

This first dry camping experience made it clear that we needed a few things for the trailer. #1 -- a generator! After research when we returned home, we purchased a Yamaha EF2400iSHC Portable Generator.  It started up immediately (once we added gas and oil, of course), and when tested with the air conditioner and the microwave in the trailer, it performed beautifully. We are looking forward to being able to have the luxuries of coffee, comfort, and cooking when we boondock in the future!

Another thing that we very clearly needed was a better spice storage arrangement. I was surprised at how few wall mounted spice racks there are that would work in a trailer. I definitely don't want to take up cabinet space, and a box under the seat was incredibly inconvenient. I like to cook, and I use a lot of spices, so this is a necessity. We finally found something that would work in our small space. It's a wall mounted cabinet with chicken wire that holds the items in. We rigged up a loop to keep it closed during travel.

Since our appliances are black, it blends in quite nicely. Boxes of tea in front of the spices fit perfectly and will keep the spices from moving around while we are in transit. Now that I've got this and have also got the right pans moved out to the trailer, I'm looking forward to being able to cook a nice meal. I'd say this is a much better use of the space meant for a wall mounted TV. I mean, really, we're camping -- bring a book!

Colorado National Monument

We saw some beautiful sights in Moab, so we weren't sure how Colorado National Monument would stand up. It was glorious, though, and we saw very few people. We were deterred by the sign at the gate about the acceptable height for vehicles, but it turns out that as long as you are willing to go through the tunnels in the center, a trailer is no problem. The guard let us know it would be OK, and indeed it was. I was concerned about pulling the trailer up the steep grades and narrow roads, but it was no problem with the F150. I'm glad we made the side-trip.

Here's Seba causing much more of a heart attack than any of the roads did!

Canyonlands National Park

The first time we tried to go to Canyonlands, it was just before the heavy rain and there was fog (or was it the clouds) obscuring everything. We turned around and tried the next day. It was a glorious day with the air well cleaned after the rainstorms. Seba took a photo of the husband and me, which is a rare happening, right at the very end of the road (at the Green River Overlook).

What a beautiful park! Some of the pull outs even allowed the dogs, so we did some glamour shots of them.

The park was absolutely beautiful!

Our first night in the trailer

We started our trip in Moab in a house, and after three days moved into the trailer at the Moab KOA. This was our first experience in the trailer away from home, the first with another person (Seba, our exchange student, and the first in a commercial campground. The first night, we had an amazing sunset that just lit up the mountains in our view.

And then Mother Nature decided to get nasty! It rained harder that night than we had ever experienced, or maybe it only felt that way because we were enclosed in the trailer! But thankfully, we were enclosed in the trailer -- behind us there was a family in a tent. If we could have figured out how to get more people inside our 220 square feet, we would have invited them. As it was, with us in the queen and Seba in the bed made from the dinette, there wasn't any room except the bathroom!

The KOA was well taken care of, and there was a clean washroom. The picnic table probably needed replacing, but given the weather, we couldn't use it anyway. We played poker into the night, and then hit the sack. It was a good thing we'd gotten the steaks cooked on the grill before the downpour. In the morning, we discovered why no one else had their canopy out. Ours had filled with rain and it's just lucky it didn't tear. We won't be leaving it up in the rain any more!