Exploring Forest Rd 345

Hello Family & Friends,
Darrel drags out all these trail maps and today we headed up Willow creek to take FR 345 across the mountain that connects with County Rd 14 out of Del Norte or the back way to Summitville.  We started out late (the wind has been horrible here with Red Flag Warnings -- NO BURNING of any kind) -- so we thought we would see how windy it gets in the mountains!

The first leg was pretty easy driving, the 2nd leg was full of rocks and dips and bumps, and the last leg was decent again.  We traveled through Aspen groves that lined both sides for the "road".

Here's the pics from today -- we found some streams and it was pretty green (I think there is still some snow melt from the backside of Del Norte peak flowing in them.

Small stream but nice water flowing down the rocks!

Lots of new pine growth, there is so much better kill (see the left side of the pic) that the new green is pretty spectacular.

This stream had a great appeal and Darrel had to stop and try it out, of course, looking for a gold flect or 2

Susan climbed up the side and decided to sit on the rock (not comfortable on the butt).

It was a pretty setting!

We climbed up a littler further, following the stream.  Lots of green!

On the way home, we couldn't decide which way to go, it was a long way home -- we decided to go over Summitville to stop in South Fork at the grocers.  We took about 1.75 hours to get home!

One stop was for the scenery -- it was much better in person!

OBTW, as we traveled up the mountain, the temps kept dropping and we finally got to 54 degrees!

Over the top of Summitville, Darrel said, I wish we would see some wildlife and lo and behold, here's a deer in the meadow, chopping down on dinner --- 

Tried to get her to turn her head toward us, not cooperating!

Six pictures later (ahem, now you know why it took 1.75 hours to get home), she disappeared into the forest -- I guess she was tired of the photo op 😊

It was a beautiful day (windy) but nice temps and wonderful sunshine.  We had a great adventure on a new trail and saw not only the deer, but lots of chipmunks, rodents, etc.  We saw a big raptor bird, not sure it was a hawk or young eagle -- it had a white head and breast with dark wings???  It had a big wing span so not sure, maybe?

Well, headed for bed, got to get that beauty rest for the next exploration!

Blessings from the road,

Susan & Darrel

Alive & Well in CO Pt 2

Hello Family & Friends.
This is a continuation of the previous post that catches you up with what the heck the Pendergast's have been doing the last couple of weeks!!!!  If I don't write it down, I would not remember the next morning.

OK, hunting and prospecting for gold requires lots of stamina -- we are wimps and come home really tired.  We did take a day off to explore today after most of us getting really wet in the upper Park Creek I mentioned in the last post --- here we go:

OK the first thing we found after hauling all the equipment down the bank, was baby bear paw prints!

This one is a little blurry, so I kept an eye out all day along the meadow edges, looking for mama bear and baby bear to return!

Less water to more difficult to set up the sluice for Darrel, anyway!

We, of course, had a rain shower and huddled under the big pine trees, but you can see, it cleared off nicely and of course, we continued to sluice for gold!

Peek a Boo, Darrel is around the bush, with the sluice, hard at work, running material, which Susan digs, then classifies and hauls in buckets to his location -- sometimes, it can be several hundred feet?

I put 12,000+ steps on my Fitbit one day hauling "material" to sluice 😝

We usually take a "break" day after working either in the stream or if you are dry washing -- need a body break day to relax and not feel so worn out when you go the next time.

We headed up the back road to Summitville, it is really a nice drive --- we were checking out the snow melt which we saw in early June.  Very little of what we saw the first time was still on the ground.

But the rows and rows of Aspens is amazing -- it should be awesome spectacular when they change colors in the fall -- I think it will become one of my favorite drives!

They are so thick when you look out the window, it is one big stripe of white.

You can see the pines squeezed in between, I wonder how they get enough sunlight to grow?

We stopped at this really big pine -- yes, that is me at the base and no, we aren't in the Redwood forest in California 😄

I told Darrel to zoom out and get the entire tree with me at the bottom, see what I mean??? The picture is kind of dark as we can dark clouds behind us as we were driving towards the sunshine skies.

We took a different county road from Del Norte (County 15) and caught an Antelope grazing -- he/she didn't want to cooperate for a fact pic but I managed to catch his/her white rear end.

It was a lovely day and Darrel caught the sunset highlighting the mountain in the background.  No, I don't know if it has a name or not as I can barely figure out which direction I am standing -- but it was a pretty sunset.

NOTE:  Darrel was trying to capture it without the RVs in the foreground but we weren't high enough to get over the tops of them. -- it is beautiful anyway!

So I close with the sunset and wish everyone a wonderful July 4th weekend coming up!  I hope to get another post up but we are having some intermittent Internet/cellular issues again with the holiday crowds descending upon South Fork.... if you don't hear from me, you'll know why.

I hope you are enjoying your sunsets wherever you are!

Love,

Susan & Darrel

Alive & Well in CO Pt 1

Hello Family & Friends,
Last week seems like a blur and we are already on Wednesday of this week???  Where does the time go?  I guess quickly when you are having "fun" 😊

This is a two part post to keep them from being so long that you don't want to read them (ha ha).

Here we go:

Since it has been dry here we are searching and searching for spots to pan and/or drywash.  We have hit Embargo, Park Creek (by the Hwy) and upper Park Creek (which is more mountainous, is that a word?? -- more on that in Post 2)

Heres the pics you'll enjoy more than my ramblings!

Darrel running the sluice off the log dam by Embargo

Wildflowers are out and even with limited moisture, they seem to be survivors!

A mountain Iris -- lots of them had already bloomed

Not sure, but pretty

NOTE:  Mickey took the wildflower pictures and sent them my way!

Next was a panning trip to Park Creek that flows along Hwy 160 to see if we could find any gold as that creek seems to have lots of flowing water.

The aspens along the road are amazing and seem to be thriving.

It was a girls' hike to the falls upstream a ways -- Mickey (left) -- Susan (right) and McKenzie (who is the daughter of Mickey's RV park owners).

The falls were amazing but difficult to get down to any closer.

Susan and Darrel were using the sluice to run the material, hoping for gold!

Next we headed to Buena Vista to the peruse Roc Doc's (which is a prospecting establishment).  We made a day of it and also went to Salida before heading home.

You can still see snow on their mountain tops -- ours is pretty much gone now.

We had a busy week and still post #2 has more adventures.

Blessings for the road,

Susan & Darrel

Two Years on the Road

Hello Family & Friends,
No, I didn't forget that we made our two year anniversary on May 28 (yep, 2 years) -- but with the plans to depart from the hot Arizona weather to the cooler Colorado weather -- we were busy packing and putting things away to get ready to haul.

The first year I did a post on the "pros and cons" of being on the road -- this post will be a little different on the reflections on year 2 --- it has definitely become a lifestyle with so many other people doing the same thing.

There are many different ideas of full time RVing --- we are not so traditional as that we live in a RV fulltime --- we split our time between two locations (for now).

With a large rig like ours, traveling and finding places to fit is a challenge.  It can be done, but I find that what some people think a 43' RV will fit in and in reality what a 43' RV will fit in, doesn't always match.  Remember, we are the size of a semi-trailer -- if you see the 53' stamped on the trailer, with our truck (20' long) we are at 55'+ since the RV hangs over into the truckbed.

One of my favorite shots of Beau and Zoe

actually when we purchased the RV in Kansas -- our stay at Glen Elder State Park near Beloit, KS

Many times, I have been thankful that we had our first year to learn so many things without the COVID-19 impacting our decisions.  It was stressful enough to know if we could leave AZ and head to CO for cooler temps or if we were going to have to tough out (and I don't think I could have) the heat of AZ in a RV -- I keep telling Darrel if I could find the perfect place that stayed 68-75 degrees year round, that is where I would love to be.  RVs get cold and they get hot -- you try to find the in between with spring like temperatures that are not always consistent.

I still miss family and friends -- part of my life that was in Topeka for 30+ years.  I enjoy meeting new people and have made a lot of new "transient" friends -- you never know when they will move on and you enjoy the time you have.  One of the RV ladies explained to me that people come in and out of your life for a lot of reasons -- this is part of the RVing lifestyle I mentioned above.

I am getting better at traveling to stock up on supplies -- I can't really say I dislike it or like it, I guess mostly ambivalent -- it is the reality of living away from "bigger" towns.  In Arizona, we can get to groceries in 20 mins or so, but bigger shopping needs are either online or a trip to Surprise or Prescott. In Colorado, we have 50 miles one way to have better prices and more choices -- a Dollar General and a local grocery store are within 10 mins.

I miss not having a smaller vehicle than wide-hip Beau (F350 dually truck) at times -- he just doesn't fit in small parking lots and definitely doesn't do "drive thru" at all.  I am blessed to have UTVs in Arizona to traverse the desert and I can even go to the Post Office off road if need be.  Also, the drop in fuel prices has made Beau more affordable, with diesel as low as 2.07, we were ecstatic with the savings in fuel this past year.

The first year I remember about 5 times that if someone would have offered me a home for my RV/Truck, I would have said yes, I am done -- I don't recall having any of those moments this year so I guess I have adjusted to my RV home.  I get to see some awesome scenery (yes, the desert can be beautiful and mountains, need I say more?), try to stop and smell the roses, and appreciate the day God has given me.

So I guess I am settling into the RV lifestyle, as a person who was always schedule oriented, I have learned to be more flexible, someone comes along and says, "hey, want to .....", I think yep, what I had planned can wait until another day, and off we go on a new adventure.

Here's to new adventures that may come our way,

Sending blessings from the road,
Susan & Darrel

Back Road to Summitville

Hello Family & Friends,
After mostly settling in, we took the backroad to Summitville -- there are a couple ways to get there -- so we call this the backroad since we usually take the route out of South Fork.  It has been cold here in the mornings (not chilly, but 32 degrees cold) -- so just before lunchtime we headed toward the new route to see if it was any closer than going through South Fork.

It is a county road out of Del Norte where you take 14 up until you hit Forest Roads.  It was paved a little longer on the climb up then the turn off from South Fork -- the road seemed a little smoother but it is early in the year.  Anyway, it was nice to try it out to see how it differed!

Here's a few pics of the journey:

Not as much snow as we saw last year, but you can find the capped mountains in the distance.

As you can see, really melting off under the summer sun.

Such a lush green mix of Aspens and the darker green Pines.  This year is the beginning of a drought and they could use rain.

Beautiful scenery and it seems more open than the other route.

Darrel caught this picture of pines in front of the snow ridge.

We stopped for a stretch break and I found snow (along with pinecones) under some of the shaded trees that were along the north side.

Not a lot, but noticeable from the distance.

Darrel tried to catch a Marmet sunning himself on the rock ledge, but he didn't zoom quick enough and missed his dissent into his burrow near the culvert.

We took a hike up one trail and discovered more snow along the mountain tops.

A better view!

And along our path, was snow tucked in the tree line, not seeing much sunshine yet -- temperatures were chilly, probably mid-50's.

We headed home the original route and found things pretty quiet in the campgrounds.  I think things will pick up soon, but it is still light travel and the crowds aren't here yet.

Not sure what our next week looks like, but will try to capture some highlights along the way.

Sending blessings from the road,

Susan & Darrel