Enjoying McPhee Campground

WELCOME to our new Followers, Sandra and Crystal!

Sandra has two blogs, one is in another language that I can't read, I and the other is about quilting.  The quilting blog is in English, and then again in the other language that I don't think is Spanish, but looks like it might be one of the romantic languages.  [NOTE: Per Bob and Gypsy, it's Portugese. That's where my maternal grandfather was born - on the island of Pico in the Azores. :)] If you scroll down through the posts, there are some interesting things to read other than quilting, one is how to easily stretch tight shoes.  So easy, but I wouldn't have though of that method.  Thanks for joining Me and My Dog, Sandra!

Crystal doesn't appear to have a blog, but from her Google + page, is definitely a dog lover.  Katie and I are happy you are traveling along with us, Crystal.

Welcome aboard to you both!

This morning I woke up to sprinkles on the roof.  Such a nice way to wake up.  When I go to bed at night, at least lately, Katie is in her bed and it's too warm to cover her up.  Usually when I wake up she's sitting on her brown and white blanket right below me, looking up waiting for me.  I usually ignore her and she goes back to sleep on her blanket.  I think she's a little cold, so after I've felt guilty for a little while, I climb down and cover her up with a corner of the blanket, and she'll sleep for another hour or two, nice and warm.

This morning after her potty walk, she snuggled right back up into her blanket and I covered her up again.  She is now sound asleep, warm and snugly in her blanket.

It feels cool in The Palms this morning, although it's 72 degrees.  I actually had the heater on for a few minutes to take the chill off.  It's raining really good outside right now.  I'm in heaven. The weather forecast for the next four days is for thunderstorms and at least 30 percent chance of rain.  :)

I was so sorry to hear that Donna and Russ's wonderful dog, Rusty, died yesterday.  He would have been  15 years old this month, and was one of those super special dogs that made their lives a happier place.  I was lucky to meet Rusty when I visited Donna and Russ at their home last year.  I was in tears at the end of Donna's blog post about Rusty's last day - I was very stoic when I put my last dog and cat down, but for some reason Rusty's death really affected me.  Rest in peace, Rusty, and my best wishes go to Donna and Russ.

Here are some photos I took yesterday at our current location, McPhee Campground.

Lots of Blue Jay's around here.  I think this one is a Western Scrub Jay, a juvenile according to my bird books, because his head isn't blue yet (I think) :

Our first deer sighting - I think she was as surprised by us as we were by her:

There's just something about having deer in your yard, you know?

This is a bush with weird spirals growing out of it - not a flower, but...?  I've never seen anything like this.

NOTE:  Per Gayle on 7/15/12 this plant is Mountain Mahogany.  She saw it at the Anasazi Heritage Center, "where many of the trees and shrubs along the trail are labeled."  Thanks, Gayle! 

 Close-up of the feathery spirals.

We have taken a few good walks so far. Venita, our camp hostess, said our loop is one-half mile, so if we do that a few times a day, we're getting in a lot of steps for an altitude of 7,400 feet.  At least it's good for me.

There is a sign near one of the nearby restrooms pointing to a trail, so last evening Katie and I went that way for a little bit.  The sign said it's a one-half mile walk which doesn't seem like much, but it said it's a very strenuous walk, and it probably is.  It ends up at the boat ramp which this campground overlooks, so there must be some pretty steep areas.  There are four or five rest stops with benches at intervals along the way.  Katie and I only went to the first bench, which was pretty much right behind the restroom. :)  Really pretty views from there, though, of McPhee Reservoir.

Looking to the right.

Looking to the left.

This is the first bench.

Sunset walking back to The Palms.

From me and Katie, have a great Saturday, everyone!  :)

Settled again - at McPhee Campground, CO

We got everything necessary for our departure done yesterday, and I woke up early this morning raring to go.  I had to get Katie out of bed for her morning walk to the dumpster with our little garbage bag. That might have been a first. We were on the road before 8 am and stopped in Cortez at the Walmart for some food, a tall Cosco 3-step stool and lots more chew-toy treats for Katie.

We were soon on our way to McPhee Campground, which wasn't a very long trip.  So far I like this campground; it has lots of trees and bushes.  There is a lake nearby that we saw on our way in, but I can't see it from the campground. There are some electric only sites, some full hook-ups, and lots of dry camping sites, which is what I have.

 View from my kitchen window of our picnic table area

I drove around one of the two loops, then the other and chose a site.  Good Verizon here, The Palms is pointed West for my solar panels, and pretty much in the open.  Our picnic table area is behind us, with a nice tree west of the table, so if it's hot, the table will be in the afternoon shade.  Lots of Restrooms and water spigots around the loops.

We got settled and paid for four days (in this loop, you can only pay for four days at a time in the "open" - not reserved - sites.  I like that best, anyway, because if I want to move, I've only got four days in the site.  The Camphosts' names are Venita and Spanky Bear, they are the only bears in the campground.  They said no problem, they are slow this summer and there will be lots of empty sites.  If I DO have to move because someone else wants my site on the fifth day, I'll just find another one.

Female Black-headed Grosbeak

I can receive UPS packages here, so I'll see if my daughter can mail my Sirius XM radio here.  They don't have US Mail service, though, just package shipping companies.  I need to get the mailing address from Venita.

Female Black-headed Grosbeak

There are deer here, I've already seen one walking through the neighboring campsite, and the birds above that I snapped at Venita's bird feeder.  She said there are doves, pigeons, hummers, lots of birds. When I saw the Grosbeak, I knew what it was because of the one I snapped at Mesa Verde, but this one looked a little different, so I looked it up, and yesterday's was a male - black head - and this one with the white on her head is a female.

It's cloudy and there has been a lot of thunder, and we just had a nice rain.  I'm hoping for more.  I was told the Mancos Fire, the one I drove past on the way to Mesa Verde, has been put out, so I think the area I'm in is safe, fire-wise.

With my Senior Pass I'm paying $8.50 per night, a much better rate than the $14.63 per night at Mesa Verde.  There is a 30-day limit.  I don't know if I'll stay that long, we'll have to see how it goes. 

Here's the recipe for the croutons, it's a great way to use up the end of the loaf of bread:

Homemade Croutons

6 slices bread
¼  cup olive oil plus a little more
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt

Slice your bread into 1/2” pieces. (Or into quarters if you're doing snack squares.)

In a large skillet, heat your olive oil. Add the minced garlic and saute for 1 minute, or until the garlic has started to brown. Add the salt and bread to the skillet, making sure each piece has plenty of room. (If you crowd the bread, it won't brown correctly.) Let cook 2 minutes, gently shaking the pan every once in a while.

Turn each piece of bread over and cook an additional 1-2 minutes, or until golden brown.  (The oil never seems to be enough for me, so I always take out the bread, add more oil, and put the bread back in, trying to make sure they are all turned over.  You could toss the pieces in a bowl to coat both sides before putting them in the pan.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spread the coated cubes onto a baking sheet and bake until golden, about 10 minutes.  (I usually then turn off the oven and keep them in there a while so they get pretty crunchy.)

This doesn't make a LOT of croutons or "crispy toast squares," so I usually make two batches.  I keep them in a sealed baggie in the cupboard. 

From me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone!  :)

Happy 4th of July!

 

We are getting ready to leave – today I’m taking care of tanks and doing the laundry.  Tomorrow morning we are leaving, heading north toward Delores, CO where there are many camping spots. We're going to leave early, do a little shopping in the closest town, then head to a couple of places that I’ve found through blogs and Forest Service websites that look good.

I have various wrap-up photos that I want to post – lots of different subjects.  Since I haven't posted much, they are piling up. 

I’ve taken a lot of bird photos, these are the best, and I think I’ve got the correct names:

 Black-headed Grosbeak

 Isn't he beautiful?

These Whitebreasted Nuthatches, there were a lot of them, caught my attention because they were running up and down the trees in front of The Palms, singing away, pecking at the bark of the trees.  They were very busy.  In reading about them, I learned they were pecking at the bugs and larva in the crevices of the bark.  They were fun to watch, and very pretty little birds.

 

This first little Thrush was minding his own business when the second one came along and started dive-bombing him, then they were flying at each other. 

It looks like he has something in his beak?

My little Katie, as I’ve said before, doesn’t usually have a lot of expression on her face, but this is her “just back from a walk and now I get a treat” face:

 Just look at that big smile!

The way she is laying here makes me think of a deer – and she is at least part Deer Chihuahua:

 This is an interesting plant – I thought it was pretty. 

Squirrel that came through our campsite:

Butterfly (moth?) on flowers.  There are a lot of black butterflies and white butterflies here. 

And finally, I’ve been making my own croutons; I can’t believe how good they are.  Whenever I make a salad, I eat the croutons before I’m done making the salad.  Then I thought, instead of cutting the bread into little squares, why not cut each slice into quarters?  So the other day that’s what I did.  They are such great snacking crackers, and twice now I’ve made them into a dinner.  I put each square on the plate, slathered it with mayo, and added sliced tomatoes and ripe avocados.   OMG, they were sooooo good.  This is a photo, I didn’t make it pretty or cut the tomatoes and avocados evenly, it was already made when I thought about taking a picture.  I got the crouton recipe from the Internet, tried a few and settled on this one – so easy and super delicious!

 Crouton toast treats with watermelon balls - so good. Notice the bite, I couldn't wait.

From me and Katie, Happy 4th of July everyone!  :)

We're still enjoying Mesa Verde National Park in CO

WELCOME to our two new Followers!

TravelBug-Susan  says in her blog profile that she is an enthusiastic, fun-loving traveler and hopeful romantic. She and her husband have been gate guarding for two months at a 24/7 gate in Cotulla, TX, and as of today are in San Antonio, TX where her husband is starting a new job that will allow them to still travel.  Good luck in this new adventure, Susan, that's what this lifestyle is all about!

Helga Vater, welcome to you, too.  Helga's info is all in German, and she doesn't appear to have a blog, so I'm assuming she has an interest in RVing, but can't tell anything further than that.  Thanks for joining us, Helga!

Thank you Susan and Helga for following along with me and Katie - We're happy to have you both on board!  :)

We're still here in Mesa Verde.  It's a very quiet, peaceful park with lots of birds and deer to enjoy.

Three deer just pranced down the path to our campsite and ran around the stand of trees near us.  There is a family camping behind some other trees, and I think the little boy yelled something and scared the deer.  I love watching them run.

There are deer here that come right into the campsites, snacking on the tender leaves on the trees and grasses.  They are aware of us when we walk by, but don't move unless we get too close.  They keep their eye on us until we've passed by.  It's pretty much an everyday sighting, which is fun.  The other day a large doe layed down under the trees next to our picnic table and just stayed there looking around. Katie seems okay with them; she just watches them for a while then ignores them.

 YUM!

We met Teri (her blog is Teri’s World) on Friday, another Blogger who is workkamping here for the company that owns the campground in this National Park.  She works outside the park about 5 miles down the mountain at their main office and is their comptroller. It's a six-month stint, and she said she loves working there.  I met her last Thursday when I went down to pick up a package from Amazon.com, and then on Friday she came up in the morning and we had coffee and talked for almost three hours.  The morning just flew by.  It was nice meeting her; she is another solo female RVer and we had a lot to talk about.

Teri, thanks for coming over for coffee, I enjoyed our visit!  :)

I originally planned to stay here for three nights, but I liked it so much I extended our stay until July 5.

 My Sirius XM Radio is on the blink and still under warranty, so I called the company and they said they would mail me a new radio (and I'll mail them back the one that doesn't work.)

Unfortunately they mailed it to my daughter's address in California, the one they have in their files.  That's after I gave the "warranty technician" the address here at the park - I gave it to her twice, and had her repeat it back to me.  I specifically told her I was on the road and the radio HAD to be mailed to me here in Colorado.  I asked her how long it would take, and she said, "Since you're in California, it will only take a few days because it'll be shipped from California."  I said, "No, I'm NOT in California, I'm in Colorado – at the address just I gave you as a shipping address?  That's where it will be coming."  Oh, Yeah.  I think she wrote it down and tossed the paper.  The CO address never made it into the warranty file for shipping, so the radio ended up in Vacaville, CA on Saturday.

So now my daughter has to ship it to me at her expense because Sirius said they would not pay for a second address delivery, and it won't go out until tomorrow, so I may be here longer than Thursday morning. If it's not here on Wednesday, I'll pay for another day, and keep paying day by day until it arrives.  I could be waiting in worse places! 

First a radio that doesn't work right and then customer service that sucks.  It took a phone call of more than 40 minutes and talking to three people yesterday at Sirius before my phone battery died and I gave up and later called Kristy to just send it on to me.  I hope the replacement radio works!

It seems pretty empty in the park, but there are a lot of roads with loops on each that come off the main road, so you can't see all the campers from the main road.  I've had people come and go near me, most stay for only a few days.  Most of them are gone for the day and come back to camp later in the afternoon. There are a lot of things to see further in the park about 10 to 15 miles.  (This is a huge park.)  I started to drive up there the other day to see what I could see.  After 8 miles I gave up and came back to camp.  There’s a narrow, dark tunnel you have to drive through. Usually tunnels don’t bother me, but that one did.  Also the road is very windy and honestly, I enjoyed the photos on the brochures and decided I didn’t want to do any more driving up that mountain.

So that’s it for now.  I don’t know if I’ll post again while I’m here.  Although I get 1 to 3 bars on my cell phone, it really isn’t very good for uploading and downloading and I can't talk on my phone unless I stand outside right near The Palms. I wrote most of this last night, but couldn't save it, so luckily I did a copy/paste into Microsoft Word and copied it over here again this morning. I couldn't bring up any photos at all, but this morning I have better connections, so I hope I can post this.  I have been able to pretty much keep up with your blogs and my e-mail, and that’s about it.

Here's a really pretty sunset from last Friday.

From Me and Katie, have a great Monday, everyone!  :)

Mesa Verde National Park – Morefield Campground

After driving all day Sunday, stopping here and there, I finally settled on Mesa Verde National Park to spend the night on Sunday.   

We stopped at Durango to see if we could overnight at the Walmart or Home Depot, but they both said no. It's a city thing.  I need a short ladder, but I'll wait for a Walmart that allows O/N parking to buy it.  So, I checked my Atlas and on-line info and it was onward to Mesa Verde National Park. We got here around 5 pm.

Morefield Campground is within the park, and has tons of campsites.  You can make reservations, but according to the website, there are always campsites available.  All the sites with hook-ups were taken or reserved, but that’s okay, because I didn’t want h/u. The sites are all very natural, no concrete or cleared areas. There are a lot of trees and grasses and low bushes, which I'm sure keeps the dust down.  I like the feeling of the campgrounds.

The website said the dry camping sites were $20, but the price went up this year, and the site I was on had not been updated.  The daily one-half price with tax was $14.63 with my Federal Golden Age card. 

We kind of did the check-in backward.  They have a nice system that I didn't know about.  First we came in and drove around a few of the loops and found a site that wasn’t reserved or taken and it was perfect.  I looked around for a place to pay, you know, the little posts with envelopes?  There were none.  I asked a neighbor up the road how they paid, and they said you need to go to the store and check in, pay, and they give you a piece of paper with your name and check-out date and you put it on the campsite number post.  Once you have the paper, you drive around and find your campsite. So if you decide to come here, go to the Moreland Campground Store first to check in and pay.

So I drove back to the “store” and paid for three nights.  They have a grocery store with food and also souvenirs, shirts, all that stuff.  There is a café, free showers for people camping here, and a coin-operated Laundromat.  There’s an evening program every night at the Amphitheater, and an all-you-can-eat pancake/sausage breakfast every morning between 7 and 10 am for $7.95 I think she said.  There are some nice trails, but Katie isn't allowed on the trails.  That's okay, at this elevation just walking around our loop is enough for me.

 

The Volunteer checking me in said there is a Momma Bear in the park with her two year-old cubs.  Also several coyotes have been sighted and they have already lost one dog.  I’m going to keep a tight rein on Katie, that’s for sure!  I've lost my Bear Bell that used to be on Katie's leash, but my whistle is attached, which was also suggested.  If I see the bears, I hope it's from the inside of The Palms!

I think we're going to enjoy being here.  The sites have a table and b-b-q pit, which you can’t use with the extreme fire situation going on in the state, actually in the area.  People are not allowed to even smoke outdoors, they have to smoke inside their car or RV.

Here's our site:

This path goes from our site to one of the restrooms:

View out the dinette window:

.

On our way here, I could see weird looking clouds in the distance, and as we got closer I realized those were clouds with smoke under them.  We went through an active fire zone with emergency vehicles parked on the side of the road and a helicopter over the nearest fire dropping water or fire retardant.  Flashing signs said “Do not stop for the next 5 miles.”   

There were lots of fires along the way, a couple that were spewing a lot of smoke and some that looked very small, just starting.  Some dark thick smoke, some white smoke. It was kind of scary, and then we were through it.

As we climbed the mountain to the Mesa Verde Park Entrance, there was a huge canyon between us and the fires, which were very visible from the road up to the park. 

I was told the smoke is going in the other direction so it shouldn't bother us here in the park.  I hope they are able to put the fires out soon.

I was able to update my Verizon tower access signals, but the coverage here in the park is minimal. One of the brochures I was given says there is no cell service in the park.  As I was driving around I was able to get one or two bars, though, that were soon dropped.  The Morefield Campground Store has free Wi-Fi, and I saw some people sitting at tables with their computers.  The volunteer said it’s not very good, but I will be able to get e-mail, and I’m sure I will be able to also upload my blog posts. 

So far so good, I like it here and plan to stay the full three days. Katie and I need to relax for a while and not worry about driving.

HEY, I just realized (last night when I wrote this) that I was getting 3 Verizon bars in this campsite if I put my tethered phone next to the window - we might even extend our stay!

From Me and Katie, I hope you have a nice Monday!  :)