Lake Powell 2020

 

 

We left Colorado Springs on Thursday, September 10^th and had a nice drive to South Fork for an overnight stay. We saw a few snow-covered peaks along the way. The next day we drove over Wolf Creek Pass on US-160. We were really surprised not to see any snow on the western side of the pass. The hills and valleys were all green.   

On Friday, we got to Cortez and the West View RV Resort around 2PM. The weather was warm and beautiful. We met Kris and Jan, our Albuquerque friends, and Marcia, Mike, and Stephanie, my sister, brother-in-law and niece for a two-night stay.

We all headed out on Sunday morning for the trek to Page, AZ and Lake Powell. We’ve been coming to Lake Powell the weekend after Labor Day since September 2001. About 10-years or so ago, it rained pretty much every day during the week we were there. The following year, we started staying for two-weeks to improve our chances for good weather.

Another sister Janet and her wife Nancy from Sacramento met us here on Sunday, September 12^th. We enjoyed that first week with Janet and Nancy staying with us at Lake Powell. That Monday evening, we all celebrated Janet’s and my birthday with Steve-O-Ritas and dinner. We had rented a pontoon boat from Aramark on Monday and Wednesday. The boats we rented were nothing like what the photo depicted. They were simply worn out.     

The second week of our stay at Lake Powell was busy with phone calls back to Florida to make arrangements to have our new furniture delivered. We learned last week that our new home walk-through is scheduled for Friday, October 16^th and our closing will be on Thursday, October 23^rd.

We’ve enjoyed our nightly get-togethers with Mike, Marcia, Stephanie and Kris and Jan. A few nights ago, I went old school and fixed Grasshoppers with vanilla ice cream as an after-dinner drink. It was Stephanie’s first-ever Grasshopper.

Last night, Mike, Kris and I wore our new Lake Powell tee-shirts for our traditional photo.  

Today, Julie and I drove over to the trail head of Hanging Garden Trail. We’ve been coming to the southern end of Lake Powell since 2009 and had never hiked this half-mile trail to see the Hanging Garden. It was a nice hike, even in the 90-degree heat.  

Stay safe out there!

Steve & Julie Cornelius

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