sunflowers at Bill's house

We took a different road out of Escalante - Posey Lake Rd/Pine Creek Rd/FH142 which takes you up and over the Aquarius Plateau so it was a winding, dirt road for part of the trip but neat to be up on the plateau with no one else in sight. Fall had already come and gone on the top so it was just flat & brown with some lakes and a few trees- but neat.

We stopped in Grand Junction, CO for the night and wound up running into an ex-Crested Butte-ian/friend at a restaurant and then we found a bar that had great live jazz music so we stopped in for a drink.

After we did a little shopping we made it back to Crested Butte - Gunnison - actually where we tied up some lose ends, got our mail, and saw a few friends again in a couple of days then headed back to Taos.

Our 2nd or 3rd day in Taos we packed the truck!? We think everything will fit then remembered we had another package coming! AH! Luckily the larger part of the package we decided to cancel since it wouldn't arrive in time and we didn't think we had room for it and we can live without it! Besides that we had fun having 24/7 internet access, hanging out with Bill and an other friend came by for a couple of days - Marco, getting some exercise and packing. Bill even let me buy him some plants for his garden! It was fun to go to the garden center but then made me miss having a garden.

Friday, October 12 we left Taos for a night's stay at our favorite B&B in Truth or Consequences, NM- the town with all the mineral hotsprings! We got the most beautiful room with it's own private hot mineral bath. Hilo had an eventful stay here at the B&B: he fell full-on into the tub!- His first real time getting dunked - and he lives on a boat! We had left the tub (we were just in the other room) to let it cool off - I feel like a bad parent. Poor guy! Then at 5:51 a.m. he got into a full-on loud screeching cat fight through a closed window (I'm talking glass - no screen ) with a resident cat! We had to put him in his cage for a little while and scare the other cat away. Then we figured we could move the table he was sitting on away from the window and let him out of his cage. It worked. Crazy!

Then onto Tucson, AZ to break up the drive. We got a plain hotel room and spend the evening driving around a strange town in the dark looking for all those last minute boat things that we hadn't found yet- fun!

Oct 14th we left for Mexico and wound up having yet another uneventful border crossing- yeah! You can't help but get stressed about it though. Got to San Carlos around 5 pm, headed over to Dean & Lorena's for a quick visit before settling into our hotel room then off to our friends new bar for some tacos and to see who's here already.

sunset in Escalante

our 1st real autumn in 3 years

Had a pretty drive from Taos, NM through Chama, NM, Pagosa Hot Springs, CO ending up in Monticello, UT at a decent hotel with a hot tub and pool right outside our room and a decent grocery store up the street.

Along the way back to Escalante we managed a hike at Hog Springs rest area to a waterfall. We bushwhacked through 10-foot high green reed grass (felt like Egypt) criss-crossing the somewhat marshy riverbed to the dry but beautiful waterfall. It's deep pool of green & blue water had magical, glittering Dragon Flies buzzing around the water and hanging gardens.

Hilo found a new favorite spot back at the trailer; in front of the heater! The temperature varies between 27o very early morning and 77-80o during the day with sun! Scott started to think 85o in Mexico was starting to sound real nice! The morning it was 27o we decided it was time to drain the cistern which means we can't shower (outside) until after noon and have to heat up the stream water 1st - we started going the RV park in town for a real shower!

We ran into some people Scott knew from Crested Butte, CO who are really nice, are living the same lifestyle (no boat just moving around a lot) as us and just bought some land up the road from where we are staying. They left for CO the day after we hung out with them but we had a nice visit and got to ask them a bunch of questions that are helping us with our decision to buy some of Kirt's land or not. We have come to somewhat of a decision for now, now we will see if is 'written in the stars' for us.

We are in the home stretch to finish getting boat supplies ordered. I just read the manual to the SSB and found out we needed some more things to hook it up which I ordered right away. Then there's the license to get...and installing it will force me to continue my Electrician's education, as it has to be grounded properly in order for it to work properly.

Scott had a nice relaxing birthday; he was waited on by his lovely wife, went for a nice fall-color drive along a ridge, got taken out to dinner and got a couple of b-day phone messages and e-cards!

We managed another hike: from Upper Box Canyon. It wasn't what we expected - more trees and colorful Autumn shrubbery along shear sandstone canyon walls! Very nice! The trail crossed Pine Creek a gazillion times and we each 'fell in' - Scott going and me coming back. Once you get your feet wet you start to think, 'why bother even trying to keep them dry'. On the way back it started to rain a little and the 1 or 2 snowflakes we saw on our rain gear turned into a full-on 'snow shower' once we were in sight of the car! Time to head south!!

rainbow over Mt. Crested Butte

We left Escalante, UT and took a different road (Rt. 12 to it's end) passing by the entrance to the beautiful Burr Trail, and wound up in the northern part of Capital Reef State Park. Scott nor I hadn't been to this part of it before - we saw more beautiful & colorful rock formations, this time a deeper brownish red as well as a bunch of petroglyphs along the river! The town right before Capital Reef reminded me of Santa Fe. We also found an organic farm out in the middle of nowhere that also sold fresh baked bread and yummy pesto - guess what we had for dinner. Drove by parts of Lake Powell again seeing lots of slick rock type canyons - very neat! We wound up camping at Natural Bridges State Park since we were making slow progress. In the early morning a loud but brief storm woke us and then we went to see the very neat natural bridges and unexpected Anazasi ruins before hitting the road again. That same storm caught up with us again while we were driving, this time with pouring rain as well as some really close lightening strikes (for the safety of the truck), which were beautiful.
After a long drive we made it to Orvis Hot Springs in Ouray, CO and set up our huge tent, barely fitting in the tent space - we almost had to tie the rain fly to our neighbor's tent! We spent 2 days here relaxing in our favorite mineral hot springs, went out to our favorite restaurants and even got in a little shopping. We finally were getting cell phone reception -so we started calling friends in CB. Hilo tired to catch a chipmunk through the tent floor but it got away!
Arrived in Crested Butte, Colorado on Friday, August 18 to check out new temporary home with friends Robert and Michele who happen to be living on the same street we lived on! Had a nice dinner while catching up, then a nice sleep in a big comfy bed.
Headed out to work on a mountain bike trail work weekend with the local club - Scott went to work, I went to camp and start on the last Harry Potter book. It was beautiful and we saw a bunch of friends!
Back to Crested Butte to settle in to our new home and hook up the laptop for some serious internet time! Robert & Michele's place is really nice with lots of nice tile work from it's previous owner including a nicely tiled steam shower in 'our' bathroom! We had fun seeing friends and hanging out and catching up even though there were a bunch of shocking divorces to find out about-very sad. Most of the time you just go walk around town and you run into people! We also had fun going through our storage unit a couple of times, it's like Christmas in August, but sad to see all the things that we can't take with us on the boat.
We went for a hike to Angel Pass with Jack & Eileen which was fun but I had a hard time keeping up with them so Scott & I turned around at one point while they continued on. We saw a herd of deer or elk off on the other side of the mountain and had a great view of the valley for lunch but wished we could've spent more time with Jack & Eileen!
Went out to the local community play 'Reefer Madness' - typical for Crested Butte and saw a bear wandering down the sidewalk on the main street on the way home! It was my 1st bear sighting! Kinda surrealistic but more of a common sight when you live in the mountains, this year just happens to be worse with the early spring that killed a lot of the wild berries.
We had a nice 5th Wedding Anniversary dinner at the place where Scott proposed, went to the farewell party to the Gothic Building on the mountain - the main building for the ski area that housed the ticket takers and the rental shop that Scott worked in when he 1st came to Crested Butte and I went to the Peoples Fair - a art/craft fair for local artisans. Every event we went to we saw different/more friends and had fun catching up!

(Scott doesn't want me to tell you where this is but you can figure it out if you read the blog - ahhhh)

cool colors of Cool Cave, Kodachrome State Park, UT