Friday was a rest day, and I finished reading my second banned book. In the afternoon, we finally got out of our chairs and took a short, ¾-mile hike up to the visitor center.
It’s a nice building, but unfortunately, the young lady working there was not too knowledgeable about the area. We read the displays and learned what we could.
Saturday, Dianne wanted to do another long hike. The rain gods looked like they were going to take the day off, so at the crack 9:20 a.m., we set off on a 5½-mile stroll down the Salmon Trail, which runs between the highway and the shore of the reservoir.
The trail was wide and easy going with benches and picnic tables providing scenic rest stops along the way.
We hiked about three miles to the Brushy Point Campground, ate lunch (bag of gorp) and began the hike back. It was so pleasant to just be out in nature.
The only thing that might make it better would be to encounter some wildlife.
Not far from the campground, we found an osprey nest, this one atop a semi-dead ponderosa pine close to the trail. The only camera I had with me was my iPhone, so this was about the best I could get.
The bird was not happy having us hang around, so we soon took off up the trail. Cold brews were waiting in the trailer fridge.
Thursday morning, Dianne was ready to test her new knee on a longer hike. She chose the East Meadow Trail, a 2½-mile path past the upper end of the reservoir.
The trail was basically flat, rolling terrain with some ups and downs. Out and back would be a good five miles.
The weather was fine when we started out.
But the sky began to get interesting as we proceeded along.
Before long, things started to look downright fascinating. We quickened our pace.
Unfortunately, we didn’t make it back to the truck before the clouds opened. We got drenched.
Longest hike since surgery and although Dianne’s knee was rain soaked, it felt fine.
After our grueling, two-mile hike yesterday, we decided that today would be a rest day. I was allowed to sleep past 7:00 a.m. in the morning, and my favorite wife made us breakfast burritos stuffed with chorizo and smothered in green chili.
While Dianne was outside griddling breakfast, a couple stopped by and offered her a fish they had caught but couldn’t keep.
Dianne had to clean the thing (unlike me, she actually knows how to do it), but the price ($0) was right. Tonight’s dinner will apparently be fresh Kokanee salmon.
After I finished my morning coffee, we piled into the truck and took off to explore the park in which we are camping. Our first stop was the Willow Creek boat ramp located a short distance up the road. There was nary a boat to be seen.
Heading back to the highway, we began a drive along the southern side of the reservoir, stopping to check out several of the park’s lakeside campgrounds. Many sported sites with better views, but they didn’t have hookups and with narrow roads and tight, tree-lined turns, it would be a challenge to pull the trailer through.
We stopped to shoot pix of an osprey perched atop its pole-top nest. Then it was off to the Rio Chama Trailhead where a hiking trail descends the cliffs on wooden stairs before crossing the Rio Chama on a footbridge.
Fortunately, the stairs and trail were closed, so we didn’t have to do that.
Instead, focused on photographing a prickly pear cactus in bloom.
We stopped by the dam and shot photos looking down to where the reservoir’s clear blue tailwater meets the murky green flow of the river.
At the boat ramp beyond, we actually encountered watercraft in the water. The flotilla we spotted consisted of two teenage girls on stand-up paddleboards followed by their parental units rowing behind in a kayak.
There are no speedboats on Heron Lake (it’s really a reservoir). This 5,900-acre pond remains totally a no-wake zone.
Continuing down the road, we left Heron Lake (reservoir) State Park and entered El Vado Lake (also a reservoir) State Park. Dianne mentioned that she had failed to bring any food with us, and it was now 2:30 p.m., well past the lunch hour. She was hungry.
Dianne must have known what lay ahead. A few hundred yards later, we reached Stone House Lodge, which offered cabins and RV sites as well as a convenience store and yes, a café. The only one on duty at the time was Michael, the chef, and he offered to fry us up a nice lunch.
I opted for a cheeseburger while Dianne, remembering the joy of cleaning our fish, opted for beer-battered fish ‘n’ chips.
On the way back to camp, we turned down a two-track dirt “road” that ran out to some primitive campsites near the edge of Heron Reservoir. What a beautiful place this would be, I thought, to tent camp for a few nights right at water’s edge. We could enjoy the magnitude of nearly boundless open space with nary a soul around.
“Not for me!” my lovely wife countered. “I’ll take camping in my trailer right where it’s parked.”
We turned the truck around and drove nonstop back to camp.
On Monday morning, we packed up the trailer, drained our holding tanks at the dump station and departed Mancos. Our route took us east to Pagosa Springs, not one of my favorite towns to drive through dragging a trailer.
Dianne suggested we stop for lunch at the Pagosa Brewery, our favorite brew pub in town, but with the help of Google, we discovered the owner has retired and the brewery is no more. So sad.
My lovely wife decided we would go to the Riff Raff on the Rio brewery instead. They assured us that there was public parking suitable for our trailer across the street.
There, seated outside overlooking the San Juan River, we enjoyed a bacon cheeseburger (Dianne) and a Homesick for Texas steak sandwich (ah, the memories of endless flatlands dotted with stinking oil wells) along with beers (root for Dianne, pale ale for me).
From there, we headed south to our campsite at Heron Lake (it’s really a reservoir) State Park in north-central New Mexico. The park sits in PJ (piñon-juniper) country with the occasional ponderosa pine sticking up like a disguised cell tower.
The campground has wide, nicely graded roads with signs warning of speed bumps ahead.
The speed bump for our loop lies nestled in the trees, well off the roadway.
The campground is mostly empty, with the reservations tags at many sites indicating they’ve been reserved, but there’s no evidence of anyone occupying the sites. Perhaps it’s the 80-degree “heat” these folks couldn’t endure?
While our site here pales to what we enjoyed at Mancos, it does have one genuinely nice feature – full hookups.
We burn electric current from the grid, not our batteries. We have water from a hose, not our freshwater holding tank. And when our waste tanks get full, we have a sewer connection. Such luxury, and it only cost $16 per night!
After setting up camp, we walked the campground loop where we discovered the Willow Creek Nature Trail, a Boy Scout-worthy pathway where buzzworms officially have the right-of-way.
Today, we hiked that nature trail through the forest to some overlooks with views of the expansive reservoir. Never had to yield to a snake.
Combined with a walk through the adjoining campground loop, we covered a whopping two miles today. Dianne still has issues going downhill with her new knee, but she’s hanging in there. Tomorrow’s hike will be longer.
With nine nights here and one of us mobility impaired, we’ll have plenty of time to just kick back, relax and read. I’m currently working on a book banned in Texas. Florida may be next.
I only hope our beer supply holds out. I want to avoid the cardio.
We had our camping trip to Mancos and beyond (plus others) planned six months in advance. Then in early-April, Dianne’s doctor suggested that it was time for her to swap her now painful OEM knee for a bionic replacement. The surgery was done on April 30, a mere 53 days ago.
Because of the surgery, we had to cancel a trip to Capitol Reef…
…and Bryce Canyon National Parks that we had planned for April-May.
This June-July trip, she insisted, would not be cancelled even if she wasn’t totally back to normal. It would be knee recovery on the go.
We wouldn’t be doing the longer hikes we had planned, but Dianne figured she’d be able to do some shorter hikes while her knee scooted toward recovery. Even though we couldn’t do as we first had planned, we were happy to get out with our trailer and drink ample quantities of box wine out here in the wild. So here we are, tucked into our little spot in the ponderosa pines, enjoying cool, semi=sunny days and nights with ground-drenching rain.
(It turns out that the leak we thought we had the first night from the overhead vent was the result of it not being totally closed. The only remaining problems are a propane tank gauge sending unit is not working and a blown fuse on the 12-volt plug I use for my coffee warmer.)
Today, we went for an easy, 3½ mile walk across the dam and up the road to the Chicken Creek hiking trail, which we found to be too muddy to follow for more than a quarter mile.
Dianne’s knee did well,
and along the way we enjoyed views of distant peaks,
wild roses in bloom,
and, of course, the shimmering blue waters of Jackson Gulch Reservoir.
Sometimes trips (like this one) don’t go off exactly as planned. No major disasters (so far) but we have experienced a series of inconveniences.
Getting ready for the trip, we had issues with the refrigerator not wanting to refrigerate and low point drain caps that leaked. We had water overflow from the gray water tank and driving to our first campground, we found a rubber trim-seal peeling off the side of the trailer.
When we got to Mancos State Park where we would stay for five nights, we discovered that we didn’t have our campsite reservation form. I checked online to verify our campsite number and found only a record of our original campsite cancellation notice.
The park office was closed, so we faced a dilemma. We could go set up in the site we thought we had, even though there was no online record of me ever reserving that site. If someone else had reserved the site and came in later, we would have to pack up and move.
The other option was to bunk down in a nearby RV park and sort it out with the state park staff in the morning. We took that option and grabbed a beautiful site at the Views RV Park up the road near Dolores.
Trailer in campsite 43, The Views RV Park, Dolores, Colorado.
The next morning, we called Mancos State Park and discovered that we did have a site reserved there. It didn’t show up online because we made the reservation in Dianne’s name. We closed up the trailer and headed back to Mancos.
We will now have four nights at Mancos instead of five, but the site is beautiful. The trailer had a full tank of water (no leaks), the fridge read 34 degrees (nice cold beer) and the solar panels had the battery fully charged. We were totally happy campers for about two hours.
Trailer with solar panels in campsite 11, Mancos State Park, Colorado.
Then the afternoon thunderstorm began. After an hour of pounding rain, we discovered that our front, overhead fan vent is now leaking (even though it’s tightly closed). It looks like tomorrow’s project will be to get up on the roof and do some resealing.
Screen.
I’m now sitting in the trailer, listening to the rain pounding on the roof and reminding myself that yes, camping is what I do for fun.
