Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

We arrived at the Balloon Fiesta RV grounds on Wed, Oct 9^th for four nights. Julie’s Mom drove down from Colorado Springs to see the Balloon Fiesta and stayed with us in our motorhome. Our friends Kris & Jan, their daughter Stacy and son-in-law Brett, my sister Marcia, brother-in-law Mike, and their friends Bob & Joanne from Tucson all got together to see the balloon launches, evening glows, and fireworks.

We all enjoyed the balloon festival and getting together in the evenings for happy hour, dinner and conversation. Next, we head to Las Vegas for a week. We've got tickets for a Jimmy Buffet concert on Saturday night at the MGM Grand.

 

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Breaking Blog – Albuquerque

We arrived at Pueblo State Park on Monday, Sept 23^rd for 4 nights. We got our boat winterized at Rocky Mountain Boats and took care of a few other things before heading to Westcliffe on Friday afternoon. We spent a really nice weekend with our friends Vince & Lisa and put the boat away for the winter.

On Monday, Sept 30^th, we headed south to Albuquerque. We went to Kirtland AFB to the FamCamp but they were full and had campers waiting for a spot in their dry camping area. Most of the campers were there for the Balloon Fiesta, which began on Saturday, Oct 5^th. We wanted a full hook-up, since we were staying for 9 nights before we headed to the Balloon Fiesta RV grounds. We stayed at Isleta Lakes RV Park on the south edge of Albuquerque.

We met our friends Kris & Jan for dinner during the week and invited them out to our motorhome to watch the Broncos-Cowboys football game on Sunday. It was a close, but good game.

Kris & Jan are big fans of the TV program Breaking Bad, which was filmed entirely in Albuquerque. The TV series has won many Emmy awards over the six seasons it was on the air. Julie and I missed watching Breaking Bad on AMC, so we purchased the first 5 seasons to watch it. We watched all of the first and second season and 11 of 13 episodes of the third season in a week. Kris & Jan took us around Albuquerque to see where much of the filming was done and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing those places from what we had seen so far in the TV series. Maybe you’ll recognize them too.

Julie’s Mom is driving down from Colorado Springs to see the Balloon Festival with us. She has never been to the Festival and we’re looking forward to her visit.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Lake Powell – Page, Arizona

We left Lake Navajo and headed to Page, AZ and Lake Powell on Sunday, Sept 8^th for a two-week stay. My sister Marcia and brother-in-law Mike joined us and we also met our friends from Albuquerque, Kris and Jan. We all arrived at the same time and picked out our campsites in Wahweap Campground.

 

Our friend Wendy flew in from Colorado on Tuesday and spent five days with us. The first few days of the week it rained off and on, hard enough to cause minor flooding and close the main entrance road to the park. It finally cleared off and we went to Antelope Canyon, just outside of Page, on Friday.

 

 

On Saturday, Sept 14^th, we took our boat and went 42 miles up lake to Dangling Rope marina where enjoyed ice cream and great views of the lake.

 On the way back, we spotted this guy at Antelope Point marina enjoying himself with a water-powered jet backpack.

We celebrated my 65^th birthday at Fiesta Mexicana with dinner and a surprise dessert.

On Monday, Sept 16^th, we went on a guided fishing trip. We met the guide at 6AM and the sun was just coming up. We caught stripers, small mouth bass, and a couple of catfish. Our guide picked out the fish to keep and we threw about 20 back into the lake.

 

Tuesday, I went water skiing, an annual ritual to celebrate my birthday. Later that week, we got some great photos of the harvest moon.

My sister Janet, her wife Nancy, and their friend Shirley arrived on Friday for a 2-night visit. Janet and Nancy had hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back earlier in the week.

We left Lake Powell on Sunday, Sept 22^nd, and headed back to Colorado to get our boat winterized and put away until next year.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Lake Navajo, Colorado

We left Colorado Springs on Saturday, August 24^th, after hitching up the boat to the motorhome. Julie followed me in our GMC Yukon and we headed down I-25. We had planned to stay a RV park outside of Monte Vista, but it had gone out-of-business and was overgrown with weeds. We had stayed there last September on our way home from Lake Powell.

We looked at our RV park guides and decided to stay just west of South Fork at the Riverbend Resort. They told us on the phone that they had a pull-through site that would be long enough for our motorhome towing a boat. We had driven past this RV park many times over the years but had never stopped there. We learned while checking in, that the resort was used in the movie “Vacation” with Chevy Chase, as Clark Griswold and Bevery D’Angelo who played his wife.

The Riverbend Resort was a typical RV park in the South Fork area, with many, many Texans staying there for the summer. We had a challenge leaving the next morning getting out of our site and the RV park as the turns were a little tight with the boat in tow.

We stopped for breakfast in Pagosa Springs on our way Navajo State Park. We really looked forward to our 2-week stay at Navajo as it really feels like we’re full-timing and not on the road every couple of days. The majority of the lake is in New Mexico. You cross the state line right outside of the boat ramp we launch from.

The lake level was down 70-feet, the lowest it’s been in over 10-years, according to the park rangers. The lake is low because little snowpack last winter and because water has been released for crop irrigation downstream.

We took the boat out on Wednesday and although the lake was down, it was still 150 to 190-feet deep in the main channel. The water was beautiful blue-green and we went 25-miles down the lake to the dam. We stopped at the marina and enjoyed ice cream before we headed back to Colorado. While at the marina, we saw an improvised “houseboat” using a tent trailer camper. 

My sister Marcia and brother-in-law Mike joined us at Navajo on Wed, Sept 4^th for 4 nights. On Friday, we rode the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge railroad train up to from Durango to Silverton and back. It was the first time any of us had ridden this train and we had beautiful weather. We head to Page, AZ and Lake Powell next.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

sandjcornelius@msn.com