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

White Sands

We left Titusville, Florida three weeks ago on August 1^st, on a leisurely trip towards Colorado in our COVID-19 bubble, aka motorhome.

We spent a couple of days in Destin, but didn’t go to the beach because there were too many families on vacation milling about. We stopped in Biloxi for a couple of nights, then on to Louisiana and Texas. We headed to Castroville, just west of San Antonio, to Alsatian RV Resort. We met Jeff and Carol there, who drove up from the Rio Grande Valley, in their motorhome for the weekend.

The following Monday, we visited Julie’s 89-year old mom through the glass at her assisted living facility in San Antonio. We had made previous arrangements with the staff for the visit. The visit was especially hard for Julie’s old mom, as we don’t think she fully understood the coronavirus and why we couldn’t see her in person.

Later, we met old friends Peggi and her dad Buzz at Tiu Steppi's for a mid-afternoon lunch. It was the first time we had been inside a restaurant since early-March. There was hardly anyone there and I was impressed by the restaurant taking our temperature at the front door. The Italian food was really good.

We headed to Kerrville on Tuesday, August 11^th, where we had an appointment to get our motorhome’s AquaHot unit serviced and two new chassis batteries installed. We hunkered down at Buckhorn Lake Resort for three nights. While there, we ended up changing our plans to go to San Angelo, and instead added another three nights at Buckhorn Lake.

We left Kerrville this past Monday for the long drive across west Texas, with stops in Fort Stockton and Las Cruces, NM. On Wednesday morning, we drove east about 35-miles from Las Cruces to the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range garrison. 

We’re staying at the military campground on post for $10/night. It’s our first-time here. We have a great view of the mountains and the hummingbirds are very active.

Our new home construction is coming along nicely. They have finished the drywall installation, taping and texturing. They have finished painting the outside of the house. We chose paint scheme 7 where the house body color is “reclining green”. They’ll paint the inside of the house next, followed by tiling the whole house.    

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Headed West from Titusville

Our four-month stay in Titusville, Florida has ended as we head west tomorrow, August 1st. We’ve enjoyed our time here as we’ve been able to watch our new home being built at Latitude Margaritaville Daytona Beach.

The Minto new home construction sites have been super busy with activity, so we’ve only gone up on Sunday afternoons. We’ve really enjoyed seeing the progress each week and taking photos of our house and our neighbor’s homes to email to them.   

As many of you know, Julie and I have been full-time RVing in our motorhome since May 2013. we got rid of all of our furniture and lots of “stuff”. We only kept a few things (photo albums, some pots and pans, a few dishes, a Turkish carpet), but no furniture, in a small 5x10 storage unit, before we sold our house and moved into our motorhome.

So we’ve been busy the past four months buying furniture for our new home. We bought two-bedroom sets, a reclining love seat for the den, a small kitchen table and chairs, some chairs for the kitchen island, a sofa, end tables and entertainment center for the great room, three large area rugs, and a washer and dryer.

We found out early on that all of this furniture had to ordered and would take 2-4 months to come in due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The good news was that the furniture stores would keep our furniture at their warehouses until after we close on our house and ask to have it
delivered. 

We met with our builder yesterday afternoon to do a walk-through of the house. Afterwards, Julie and I went out for lunch at an outside bar & grill in Ponce Inlet. The bar & grill was on the water, adjacent to the national historic landmark Ponce Inlet Lighthouse, 175-feet tall and built in 1887.

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Still Hanging Out in Titusville

We’re still hunkered down in Titusville, Florida, but we’ve been busy. On Tuesday, June 30^th, we witnessed the SpaceX launch of a GPS III satellite from Cape Canaveral. The clouds cleared enough so we could plainly see the rocket from our campsite at the RV park. SpaceX recovers their stage 1 boosters, to be used again, by having the booster land itself on a barge-like ship in the Atlantic. Very cool!

My sister Cathy drove across Florida from the Tampa area on Wednesday, July 1^st to spend July 4^th weekend with us. We also had my sister Marcia, brother-in-law Mike, and niece Stephanie come in on the same day in their motorhome for a week-long stay. They were here to meet with their Latitude Margaritaville salesman, their pool builder, and visit the home models to get ideas for their flooring, cabinets, countertops and other decorating for their new home. Their home will be on “Cheeseburger Drive” (upper left-site of map) while ours will be on “Sand Bar Lane” (upper right-side of map).

We spent July 4^th just hanging out and playing cards at our RV park clubhouse. It was relaxing.

Julie and I have been watching the progress the past three weeks, as Minto builds our new home. We take a short trip up I-95 to Daytona Beach on Sunday afternoons to check on the progress. All the construction workers are off on Sundays, so it’s the best day for us to go take a look.

The finished house should look like this in a few months (late-October or early-November).

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius