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Bev's Journal We Proceeded On... Part II: The Journey West |
| 16 Mar 2003 Farmington MO After leaving the Flagstaff area, we drove to northern New Mexico, and then up again into Colorado to visit Antonito, a tiny town in southern central CO. The purpose - to visit a lodge that John had stayed at with his family over 30 years ago. It was a lovely old place, very rustic and secluded - apparently one of the oldest dude ranches in the state - Rainbow Trout Lodge. We hope to go back sometime when it's open. We next headed for Roswell, NM to visit the UFO capital of the world, and were not disappointed. Just south of Roswell, in Lakewood, NM, we stayed at "The Ranch", an Escapees-run campground. Nice friendly people, but we found all the hugging just a little much - when you drive in, the hosts ring a bell, and anyone who's free comes over to welcome you with lots of indiscriminate hugging - oh well, we're probably just uptight about that sort of thing from strangers. From there, we started to make our way back to our home base, which involved crossing Texas, which goes on forever. Lots of oil rigs, the purpose of which John was able to explain to me from his oil field days (he grew up in TX and OK). We also saw cotton being harvested and stacked in the fields. It was November by this time, so we wondered if they grow two crops a year in this neck of the woods. Amazing that we lived in GA for 12 years, but never saw cotton being grown - of course, we stayed primarily in the northern part of the state. We arrived back in Farmington the first week of December, having successfully dodged winter storms all the way home. Since we've been here, we've been making upgrades to the rig - especially our telecommunications equipment. We are internet junkies, and discovered that our old cell phone/laptop setup was just not adequate. We have invested in a King of Hearts cellular modem and a new cell phone which will allow us to access the net both in digital and analog areas. We've also added signal-boosting antennae for the trailer and a mobile one for the truck and to use with landlines. John's installed a new exhaust system in the truck, and a computer chip which is supposed to automatically adjust the engine for maximum performance in altitude changes. He also just installed some halogen backup lights which should really help with backing up at night. |
| I have been spending a lot of time organizing the family photos into scrapbooks while I've been here, and scanning as many as I can. Part of my motivation is our newly discovered English cousin, John Summers, who is the son of my uncle Cyrus and an Englishwoman he met in England during WW2. We have been avidly corresponding via email, and he and his family hope to visit us in April. I've also taken up quilting, and my first quilt is a memory quilt - some of the blocks are old family photos that I copied onto fabric and added to the quilt. I'm now working on a crazy quilt, a much bigger project. We hope to hit the road for Colorado sometime in the next few weeks. |
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| John and Val Summers on their boat - sailing is John's passion. |