Albuquerque to Colorado Springs

 

We had a nice drive up I-25 from White Sands to Albuquerque two weeks ago last Saturday. We stayed at the Kirtland AFB FamCamp for two nights. On Sunday morning we headed up the street to a small stand where they were roasting Hatch green chiles. These chiles are grown in Hatch valley, NM and have very good flavor. Hatch valley is known as the “Napa Valley” of green chiles. Julie uses Hatch chiles to make her special green chile. 

Sunday afternoon we visited our Albuquerque friends Kris and Jan. We enjoyed catching up with them and talked about meeting them in Cortez on our way to Lake Powell.

We left Albuquerque on Monday morning and overnighted in Raton, on our way to Fountain, CO to the Colorado Springs KOA. We took our motorhome into Transwest on Wednesday, with an 8AM appointment for its annual Freightliner chassis servicing. They finished around noon and we went back to the KOA and set up, leaving our cat Shasta in charge.

We took off for Westcliffe, CO to visit old friends Vince and Lisa. They’ve been hunkered down and doing well. We thoroughly enjoyed visiting with them and the haze finally cleared enough to see the mountains across the valley from their house.

We moved from the KOA to Cheyenne Mountain State Park on Friday. It’s a beautiful, quiet state park. However, we just can’t get over how expensive it’s gotten to stay here. $41/night for camping plus a $9/day entrance fee.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife do waive the entrance fee for military/veterans during the month of August and that saved us $36. Overall, it’s still a lot less expensive than the KOA with much, much nicer campsites! 

One of our major tasks on this visit to Colorado Springs was to clear out our 5x10-foot storage unit and load our stuff into a 7-foot POD moving container for shipment to Daytona Beach. Last Monday we got some boxes, packing material, and tape and headed to the storage unit. We repacked Julie’s 12-setting china set and another set of dishes. We also got rid of some clothes we won’t need in Florida (ski jackets, pants, gloves, etc.) with a donation to Goodwill. We went back on Wednesday and packed more loose stuff such as framed pictures. Our POD was delivered on Friday morning and only took us about an hour and a half to pack. Glad that’s out of the way.  

We met my daughters Kim and Jen and two granddaughters Audrey and Hannah for dinner on Tuesday night. We sat outdoors at Hacienda Colorado which has a great view of the mountains to the west. My oldest granddaughter Audrey is a Senior and youngest granddaughter Hannah is a Freshman.

On Labor Day we visited old friends Rick and Diana. Rick and I worked together at Scitor Corp. until 10-years ago when I retired in November 2010. They’ve made a point to see us in their travels to Las Vegas or Florida when we were staying there with our full-time RVing.   

Our new home construction is progressing nicely. The tile floors, kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room cabinets, counter tops, crown molding, and base boards have all been installed. There are still quite a few things to be done. We expect to hear from the builder in a week or so what they project our closing date will be. We’re currently thinking mid to late-October.

We leave Colorado Springs today and head to South Fork and Cortez, Colorado. We're on our way to Page, AZ and Lake Powell for two-weeks. We'll meet up with my sisters Marcia and Janet and their families and our friends Kris and Jan. It'll be different this year as we sold our boat in June, but we're renting a pontoon boat to go out on the lake. 

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius