Today was a travel day. We didn’t move real fast this morning as the temps were great for just sleeping… But the normal aches and pains finally got stronger than the urge to stay in bed and I had to get up. We had a little breakfast and then started packing things up to move out. The tire that had the leak a few days ago was still up fine so the extension was the problem. After all the checks and readies and such and talking to a the neighbor as he was moving to a different spot in the same park – he wanted a spot more in the trees. We were off about 10:30. We headed East to Del Norte then across to Center and north to Saguache (SAW-watch). Here is our travel route for today.
We followed up some small rain showers at Del Norte, Center and south of Saguache and could see the rain on the Sangre mountains to the east as it kept on going that way. It only rained on us a little after we left Salida down the Arkansas River but not enough to help, in fact it made a damn mess of the Jeep and motorhome.
We didn’t stop for much on the way until we got to Salida and since it was cloudy and cool (about 71 deg) we figured to waste some time there.
Unhooked the jeep and wandered around Salida to see what may have changed. Not much, although there are always some changes. For lunch we figured to have some Moonlight Pizza. Maybe one of the better places to get a bite in Salida (personal preference). That means we will have left over pizza for later as well as we usually get the medium and that can make 2 meals for 2 people like us. Pretty good stuff.
While in Salida a storm came up out of the west and the wind blew real hard – it was raising a big dust storm. I tired to capture a pic of some of that but am sure it didn’t turn out as cool as it seems in real.
We saw this bike, and I had never seen a “triple” before?
When we finished up our “yearly” tour of Salida, we hooked back up and started the trip on down the river. At first it had not occurred to me that the river was so high. I had looked at it in Salida but had not really looked. Once on down river a ways we noticed that there was not as many rafters as usual. But again there doesn’t seem to be as many summer visitors as usual or maybe we are early this year? I did get a few pictures of the river as we moved on down to Canon City.
Note that the water is way up in the willow bushes and this is the end of June… This is how it looks in May (normally).
I saw several rafters holding to the side (resting) as it was pretty rough in the rapid areas.
There was a terrible haze in the air and it just got worse the closer we got to Canon City and once there it was really hazy. They say it is from 3 fires. The one near Raton, NM, one over by Westcliff, and one out on the grasslands in the SE part of the state. We are also told it will be above 100 tomorrow here. Just what we need to get ready for the racing trip home Saturday is to get started burning up early… If I could just have stayed in the mountains for another 3 months… WD0AJG