Back at work in Nebraska, writing and researching

   ASHLAND, Nebraska - On our second day at the Eugene T. Mahoney State Park we settled in for a day of rest (in the sweltering heat) and also for me to do prep work for next week's Finger Lakes Times column.

Checking the wine list at Cellar 426 Wines and Vines

     The research for the piece - about the horrific Trumpian 'policy' of wresting children away from parents at the Mexican border - was sooooooo depressing that we decided to make a stop at Cellar 426 Wines & Vines facility just outside of town to soothe our nerves.
     I tried five different wines, all produced locally. And (drum roll please), they were all good.
Honestly. All good.
     Just as we got done with that errand, we had one of those amazing Midwest lightning storms roll through. We sat in The Red Writer trailer wondering when would happen should lightning decided to take a whack at us.

Making notes for a smokin' column

     In the middle of the storm son Dustin Fox called to wish me a happy father's day. And in that conversation he said something about how the trailer would act as a Faraday Cage or something should we be victims of a supercharged bolt of electricity from the sky.
     It was comforting, sort of. But it was even nicer when the storm moved off and the the temperature dropped 10-15 degrees.
     Another full day planned here tomorrow, starting with a morning spent drafting the FLT column for next Friday.
     It's past time to kick the four spineless GOP Congressmen representing the Finger Lakes squarely for their lack of morality, ethics, and basic sense of humanity.
     Cowards all they be. That's likely to be the nicest thing I say about them.

First heat, now humidity - welcome to the Midwest

   ASHLAND, Nebraska - After days of high-altitude camping in Colorado, Admiral Sylvia Fox and I dropped down to North Platte, Nebraska last night, then quickly scurried this morning for three hours to arrive at Eugene T. Mahoney State Park near Omaha.

The Red Writer at Eugene T. Mahoney State Park

     The heat has been about the same as the mountains.
     Hot, hot, and hotter, sprinkled with momentary lapses of slightly cooler air, followed by blast-furnaces doses of more temperature spikes.
     But when we got out of the Toyota Tundra at North Platte, we had something else to contend with: Humidity.
     It was like walking into a sauna - a really hot one.
     Today we are set up in a nice shady spot at this state park and plan a three-day stay. Or longer. The air conditioner is doing yeoman service. And unlike last night in North Platte, there is a nice breeze - even if warm.
     I visited this state park two years ago when I was driving my little red Nissan truck from NY to California.
     It's just as fabulous as I remember it. Hiking trails, small lakes, the Platte River, a fabulous aerospace museum within walking distance and a very neat town just four miles away
     Now if I could just breathe a little easier. Humidity and I have never been close friends.
     On our way into the lodge an hour ago (where this is being written), we got a close up look at the new Airstream trailer design. Several people who have come to take a peek at our T@B trailer have mentioned they were debating between getting a new Airstream like this and a T@B.
     It's very space-age but I think I'll stick with The Red Writer.

Not your father's Airstream trailer

The pressing need to break out my camera more

   NORTH PLATTE, Nebraska - Thank God Admiral Sylvia Fox keeps her cell phone camera on ready alert all the time.

Father and son (photo by Sylvia Fox)

     Whenever I go to write one of these missives, I almost always ask if she has a photo of the event, incident, animal, person or place to illustrate my point.
     Case in point, a great series of visits with oldest son Jason Fitzgerald, now a resident of Minturn,
Colorado and still a girls volleyball coach at Battle Mountain High School in Edwards. We had a great visit one evening, followed by a trip to nearby Glenwood Springs the next morning.
     Then two days ago we got together in Minturn, walking the length of the town, even washing The Red Writer trailer at at car wash.
   How many photos did I take? One or two. How many of son Jason? You guessed it.

The Barford fire crew (Photo by Sylvia Fox)

     The same thing happened when we visited Hector amigos Ann and Paul Barford at their fabulous home in Golden Colorado. We had great shots of the firefighters who had tamped out a blaze in an adjacent forest-park.
     But Ann and Paul? You guessed it again.
   I did pull out my big-gun camera today when we hiked through Chief Hosa Park to check on a herd of bison.
     No joy on finding the huge mammals, but lots of good scenics and we spotted a cigarette butt obviously stamped out on right on a pile of dry pine needles -  in the middle of the park.
     Santo Crappo! The idiot that did that could have ignited a firestorm like the one that decimated Santa Rosa last year.
     The photo, sadly, is just a damned cigarette butt on the ground, hardly worth printing.

Meeting a real hero and spotting a real Dog

   GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado - Our overnight in the Glenwood Canyon Resort, about 10 feet from the Colorado River, was as hospitably cool as Moab was hot.
     We even needed blankets. Imagine.

Eric Thompson - also know as E.T.

     And in the early part of the morning, Admiral Fox and I had a conversation with a fellow named Eric Thompson - who goes by the sobriquet E.T. He is disabled a fellow who pilots and builds the most amazing equipment to give persons with challenges access to whitewater rafting and other adventures.
     He will be part of an upcoming Finger Lakes Times column - and perhaps even a magazine piece someday soon.
     E.T. is traveling here and there all around the nation spreading the good word about accessibility and giving demonstrations. Check out his Facebook website HERE.
    The guy is a real hero.
 After lunch, while Admiral Fox and I were standing on the sidewalk outside the Slope and Hatch restaurant, (great tacos!) we saw a fellow move quickly out of an SUV and duck into a doorway.
     He looked vaguely familiar with a wild mane of bleached blonde hair. But he  at least a decade older than the photo of him posted below.
     The two young women we were chatting with said yes, it was in fact Duane Chapman, the star of Dog the Bounty Hunter.
     When one of the women with us tried to grab a cell phone photo of him walking in, Dog's guard dog female friend started shouting "No photos, show some respect."
     Honestly. She said that:  "Show some respect."

The Dog from a few years ago

  That left me speechless momentarily. Then I said, "Hey! We're journalists..." But by then the Dog's dog was already piling into the SUV to move it.
     Yup, she had parked illegally.
     We haven't set a departure day from Glenwood Springs yet for The Red Writer trailer. Too nice a place, too much to explore.
     And who knows? If Dog the Bounty Hunter hangs his handcuffs here, who else might we run into?
     Besides E.T., of course, the real hero we met this morning.

Fallon-Austin-Delta-Moab and the Colorado river

   GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado - Admiral Fox and I didn't make it to Bears Ears National Monument after all.

And 'freaking hot' barely covers it

     And we now have a first-hand knowledge of what the expression 'blistering heat' means. Consider me blistered.
     But first...
     We spent an uneventful evening at the Austin, Nevada RV park Wednesday night, a clean, well-lighted place owned and operated by a local church.
     It was a quiet as a nearby graveyard, as was most of Austin. (Note to campers: When you arrive mid-afternoon at a town like Austin, get out and see what there is to see right away.)
     By 5 p.m., most of the sidewalks were rolled up tight except for a couple of restaurant-bars.
     But if you want to pick up an inexpensive house, Austin might be the place. There were a dozen vacant houses, some with Realtor signs out front. Others sported trees growing through broken windows. Admiral Fox was not impressed with any of my potential dream houses.

Lawn mower and weed eater not inlcuded in price

     We barreled out of Austin early in the morning, landing in Delta, Utah at an RV park where we stopped last year. It was a quiet interlude that included an all important domestic chore - laundry. Refreshed and clean Saturday, we barrelled on with a pit stop in Ely, Nevada for gasoline and supplies, and then pushed on to our goal Moab, Utah.
     That's where the blisters of blistering heat smacked us right across the forehead and everyplace else.
     It was 103 when we arrived, humidity in the low single digits, and wind.Wind! Gusts up to 30+ mph.

Three campers, three air conditioners that Moab's heat defeated

     It was so hot, the air conditioner in The Red Writer went on strike. I was distressed until this morning when both my RV park neighbors confided that the AC units on their 40+ foot motorhomes also quit.
     I'm pretty sure I was dehydrated. My usual swill-beer-to-keep liquids up strategy failed miserably.
     But the story has a happy ending.
     After considering that we had been driving fairly relentlessly six days, often buffeted by high winds on the highway (and in the campgrounds) and were being slowly baked in extreme heat, we hightailed from Moab to Glenwood Springs where we have locked in for at least three days of camping 10 feet from the Colorado River.
     Ten feet, no kidding. And the temperatures are in the high 80s in the daytime, 60s at night. Pretty close to perfect.
     Admiral Fox says she might not leave this campground until the first snow.
     I think she's kidding.
     But I don't like the way she is studying the schedule of exercise classes set for the rest of the summer in downtown Glenwood Springs.
     More tomorrow after she goes to town to check out the schedule for the hot springs, too. 
 

Even the grocery stores in Nevada give you a chance to hit the jackpot

For sale at a Moab winery - perfect for a Finger Lakes musician

A soft landing in Fallon, NV - except for the beds

   FALLON, Nevada - The drive piloting The Red Writer from Sacramento was remarkable. You see a so much more going 60 mph - or slower. My new driving glasses might be part of the reason, too.
     The slo-mo trek also yielded 13.5 mpg on the leg from Sacramento to Applegate (CA) and 14.5 from there to Fallon. And gas prices? $3.19 in Nevada.
     After one quite long-in-the-tooth RV park turned us away because they only rent by the month, we soldiered on another 20 miles where we found a nice park with cable TV, ice cold Corona beer and clean rest rooms and showers.

Home sweet home in Fallon...

     We got set up quickly, a good thing because a wind storm roared through at cocktail hour, spreading dust and cottonwood debris in every direction. But the cable TV gave us a chance to watch the Golden State Warrior's win.
     It was all going along swimmingly, as the British sometimes say, until we crawled into the bed to sleep.
     Our two previous overnights had prepared us for less-than-first-class comfort while sleeping. But most likely our sore backs this morning were more sore when we looked ahead to three weeks of overnights on thin inflatable mattresses.
     At our next stop - possibly Ely, Nevada - my knife is already sharpened to cut up some foam.
     Adm. Fox probably will no doubt have a lot more to say on the lumpy-bed topic on her travelblog about the trip: Never Too Old...
     Check it out...

No lack of things to buy...

Finally out of space dock and on our way East

   SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The expression "a journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step" was on my mind Monday when Adm. Fox and I rolled out of Point Richmond at 2:43 p.m. and hit Interstate 80 for points east.
     From the dateline, you'll notice the point where we landed was Sacramento where we are staying  at the home of Pam DiTomasso and Steve Lovotti, good friends for decades.
     There was a moment Monday when we considered simply waiting one more day before catapulting off on this trip. But we persisted.

The Red Writer at rest in from of Pam and Steve's house in Sacramento

     Ultimately, we were really glad we did. Daughter Anne Allen, granddaughters Sami and Kami Allen, and amigos Jen and Scott Noble all came to the house for a visit and to celebrate our launch. Great fun all around.
     
     The early stages of voyages like this always have their pitfalls.
     First, I neglected to sufficiently crank up the jack stand on the front of The Red Writer trailer. I was reminded of my error by a steep dip in the driveway right in front of our condo accompanied by a horrible scraping sound of metal-on-concrete.

One helluva speed bump stole the cap

     Second, in taking some familiar streets in the Fabulous 40s in Sacramento, I hit two speed bumps at a velocity waaaaaay beyond what's reasonable for a full-size Tundra pickup dragging a 15-foot trailer.
     When The Red Writer returned to Earth  from a big bounce, the plastic cap on the outside of the black water drain came off. The only evidence it ever existed is the safety cord hanging sadly.
     A Camping World store is about 18 miles from here and no doubt has a shelf full of replacements. I expect to buy a couple of spares in case I miss seeing the speed bump signs again.
     Those speed bumps also wreaked havoc on the interior of the trailer, sending the neatly folded bedding and cushions into such a melange it looked like someone had had a pillow fight.
     After Monday's pell-mell rush to get out of Point Richmond, the Admiral and I decided we will take today to regroup, repack, relax and rewind. I haven't been swimming in the Lovotti pool in years. We will be able to have a nice dinner with Pam and Steve. And a new blog by Sylvia (under construction at the moment) will be made ready for prime time.

Repacking the back of the Tundra is high on the priority list

     Moab and the Bears Ears National Monument lie ahead on the travel agenda along with stops in Santa Fe and ultimately, of course, Seneca Lake.