Tahoe

Back into beautiful California, heading for Truckee in the Sierra Tahoe ski region.  For the first time on our trip, the weather turned cold, and we even wore sweaters and jackets.

We arrived at Coachland RV Park and pulled into our assigned site, but our roof satellite dish was unable to see the DirecTV satellites, because of pesky tree limbs in the way.  I was pretty sure that if we moved to an empty site just a few spaces down, we'd be able to pull in DirecTV signals perfectly.  (Some might say that camping and television don't go together, but we disagree.)  I went to the campground office to see if we could move, but the host lady said, "No!"  When I asked why, she said that somebody else had been assigned that spot.  I suggested that they could take our site, but she said, loudly and angrily, "SIR, I'm trying to work out another problem.  You'll have to wait."

A half hour later I returned to see if we would be allowed to move.  She said, "SIR, I don't have time to switch you around."  I said to her, "THIS is why your internet reviews weren't so good."  She said, "That's right.  Sometimes we get busy."

About fifteen minutes later Nancy's cell phone rings.  The woman was very apologetic, probably relieved not to have to deal with me, and told Nancy that we could move - which we did, after which our DirecTV reception was perfect.

A male staff member dropped by and told us he hoped we weren't upset about the unpleasantness.  I told him, "I know the lady was frazzled, but I have one customer service suggestion for her: Soft voice." 

"She's my wife," he said, "and I don't think she can do a soft voice."  My sympathies.

Years ago we used to ski at Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows, and Northstar and were curious as to how much they'd changed.  Alpine Meadows was shut down for the offseason, road access blocked.  Northstar had seen heavy construction of residences and condos, plus an expansion of the village, and the ski lift we remembered at the base had become a gondolo.  We didn't see a lot of new housing at Squaw Valley, and the village looked much the same.

Squaw Village

We had both thought that life could be sweet living year round in a condo on the slopes.  This trip taught us that it would be impractical.  Ski villages are mostly deserted outside of winter, and we found out that year round residents at Squaw number only around 300.  So it would be difficult to feel a part of the community.  Too lonely, except for interaction with tourists.

We drove to Tahoe City, which was hosting a wine tour that weekend.  Views of the lake were amazing.  We hiked a recently completed trail along the water.

Of course Truckee is a charming town.  On Sunday they were advertising a chili cookoff, which we attended.  Lots of different versions, all of them tasty.

What a great trip this has been!  The four of us give it two thumbs and two tails up.  As unreliable as our motorhome was last fall, it was a paragon of consistency this time.  We're already looking forward to a fall trip to Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Reno

Our campground in Reno was one of the best of our trip - wide sites, concrete pads for the motorhome, nice green lawn which turned out on further inspection to be good quality astroturf.

The National Automobile Museum in Reno is among the best in the world.  It was established by Bill Harrah, one of the pioneers of Nevada gaming.  His collection is extensive and the quality of the restorations is remarkable.

When I first met Nancy, she owned a red Volkswagen bug convertible, exactly like this one that we saw at the museum.

My birthday was on Thursday.  We had brought from Ben Lomond a fine and expensive bottle of wine - a Merryvale Cabernet from 1997 (Napa's greatest year ever) - in anticipation of using it to celebrate the occasion at an upscale restaurant.  There was some concern that it might have deteriorated by being tossed around in the motorhome the past two months, but we were determined to enjoy it no matter what.

The next step was to choose a restaurant worthy of myself.  We drove around, auditioning several of the better casinos, and settled on the elegant Atlantis Steakhouse at the Atlantis Casino Resort.  The wine had not gone south but didn't blow us away, either.  We had a nice meal; the Oysters Rockefeller were excellent, and the steaks were good but to be honest not the match of the ribeye steak we had cooked for ourselves in Basalt.  But the ambiance was nice, the servers were great, there was meat left over for the next evening, and we enjoyed the evening immensely.

After dinner the Atlantis blackjack tables were calling to me, and I decided to risk $21 at a $3 minimum table.  After 45 minutes I was about $25 dollars ahead.  Nancy was concerned that our doggy bags might be going bad, so I cashed in, and we left.

Doing the math, I realized that I could make a good living by moving to Reno and playing blackjack five or six days a week.  If I bet $10 instead of $3 dollars a hand and played eight hours a day instead of 45 minutes and had the same success, that would be an extra $23,000 a month.  I'll have to recheck my logic before trying to talk Nancy into making the move, however.

Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City, founded by Brigham Young in 1846, is the capital of Utah and the headquarters of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints - but currently slightly less than 50% of its residents are Mormons.  Surrounded by mountains, SLC's air is a little polluted, as seen from a distance, but it's a well kept up city with trees everywhere.

Nancy and I drove to the Salt Lake Temple but were not allowed to enter it on account on not being members.  We wandered around the beautiful grounds. 

Nancy discussed the Mormon religion with a gentleman volunteer and learned, among many other fascinating facts, that if you are married in a temple, the marriage is consecrated both on Earth and in heaven.  But if you marry in a chapel, the marriage is only official for your time on Earth, and you're not guaranteed to be with your spouse through eternity.

One of the buildings at Temple Square is the Family Tree Center.  It's a wonderful resource for anyone wishing to research his or her ancestry.  The church has collected and maintained geneological data for the United States and all over the world for more than one hundred years.  This must be the largest such collection of documents anywhere.  What's remarkable is that anyone can go into the center and watch a brief movie, and then a voluteer will direct you to a huge room full of computers and assist you in looking into your past.  I found that I am a descendant of kings and knaves, but Nancy comes from a long line of investment bankers and hedge fund managers.

Leaving Salt Lake City, we passed the beautiful big lake from which the city gets its name.  Then there were vast fields of white on both sides of the road for mile after mile.  Finally we pulled into a rest stop and a sign informed us that we were at the Bonneville Salt Flats, where most of the world's land speed records have been set.  The course is about seven miles from our vantage point, near the distant mountain range; it is ten miles in length, 80 feet wide, with a black stripe down the middle.

The salt flats are what is left of the ancient Bonneville Lake, which became isolated and slowly evaporated, leaving perfectly flat plains of salt.  I wandered out onto the flats and felt compelled to confirm that the surface on which I and many others had walked was indeed salty.

Park City

Park City, Utah, less than an hour away from Salt Lake City, is home to three ski resorts and near several others.  The Sundance Institute, founded by Robert Redford, is located there and presents the largest festival of independent films in January each year.  Many of the events at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games were contested in the Park City area.  The area is lush and green and looks like Colorado.

Our RV park, a pretty one, was a few miles from the town center.  We went hiking behind it, climbing hills for a panoramic view.  Here you see our campground in the foreground and the ski jump area from the Olympic games in the background.

Park City's Main Street is the longest and best street I've seen at the base of a ski area.  Lots of restaurants and shops, some of them quite upscale. 

We took the beautiful drive up to the Deer Park skiing area.  To get to the restaurants at the St. Regis Hotel, you climb aboard the funicular - a mechanism similar to the cable car at the Shadowbrook in Capitola but much grander - which takes you to the top.  There are several dining venues, all of them beautifully designed, and the executive chef is the famed Jean-George Vongerichten.  The staff is very friendly and low key for such an elegant establishment.  However, the menu was somewhat limited during the current offseason, so we passed.

We also drove to the Snowbird skiing area, about an hour away, where I once attended a medical conference, and happened to show up during a "brewfest", with good live music and the opportunity to sample a bunch of local beers.  It's an absolutely stunning area, but as Nancy said and I remembered, the lodging looks like something built in the Soviet Union.

Dinosaur Country

At the midpoint of the road between Steamboat Springs and Salt Lake City is Vernal, Utah, which is the gateway to the Dinosaur National Monument.  We stayed at the Dinosaurland KOA, which was fairly nice, but that may have been the narrowest campsite at which we've ever parked our motorhome. 

Utah is the world's most important site of dinosaur bones from the Jurassic geologic period.  Nancy and I visited the Utah Field House of Natural History (a dinosaur museum) in downtown Vernal, which reminded us of the amazingly brief time we humans have been on the scene (between 100,000 and 200,000 years) compared to the reign of the dinosaurs (around 135 million years) and especially compared to the age of the Earth (about 4.5 billion years).  There were dinosaur bones and full size models and all sorts of exhibits explaining the collection of specimens, the kinds of dinosaurs common to the area, and other fun dinosaur facts.

My interest in dinosaurs is greater than Nancy's, so I took a solo trip to Dinosaur National Monument, about 30 miles away.  A tram carried me and the other visitors to the Quarry Exhibit Hall, which houses a quarry wall about 150 feet long still containing a huge number of visible dinosaur bones.  I suppose that the scientists had found so many bones there that leaving some for tourists to see was no hardship.

Just down the road from the Exhibit Hall I took a hiking trail, about two miles total in length, where there were embedded in the rock face a few dinosaur bones visible to an observant eye.  The weather was quite hot.  A sign recommended that you carry a quart of water with you and notify someone of your hiking plans, but the path wasn't really long enough to get a prime specimen like myself in trouble.

Steamboat Springs

The route we had planned on taking to Steamboat Springs, Colorado - the scenic mountain drive along Hwy 14 - was closed because of the forest fire that had darkened the sky over Fort Collins.  On the national news it was now being called the High Park fire, and the experts were telling us that it was caused by a lightning strike (the storm that passed over us) in an area where almost half the trees were dead from that pine beetle infestation I mentioned previously.

We detoured north into Wyoming, which looked like Western movie country, then west across the southern part of the state, and eventually back south into Colorado, fighting heavy crosswinds for most of the day.

Steamboat Springs is a pretty town adjoining a major ski area, whose top runs are visible from downtown.  It's another of those friendly, low key Colorado places where everybody is healthy and nobody is fat.  We had great shrimp po-boys for lunch one day at a restaurant with tables outside overlooking the river.

It's a scenic area, and Nancy and I took a few hikes.  One of them took us to Fish Creek Falls. 

We drove up to Steamboat Ski Resort, which was pretty much deserted at this time of year. 

Nancy and I always check out property values everywhere we go, particularly if it's a place we like.  I took a tour of an open house - Nancy is always too embarrassed to waste the salesman's time - in an upscale development.  Five thousand square feet, five bedrooms, big but not exactly a stunner, in my opinion - $2.5M.  But we also saw condos on the slopes advertised for sale for under $200,000.  So I think there are bargains to be had.

Fort Collins

Fort Collins is high on every list I've seen of the best retirement cities, so we wanted to see how we liked it.  On a flat plain, it's surrounded by mountains in the distance but doesn't have the transcendent physical beauty of some other towns in Colorado.  And because of rapid expansion, the traffic situation isn't ideal.

What Fort Collins does have is one of the great downtown social scenes anywhere.  Partly that's because the sidewalks are extremely wide, and just about all the restaurants have European-style outdoor dining areas.  On the Friday night we visited, there was a great mix of young and old, several musical groups played, and we felt a wonderful vibe.

Our KOA campground was a good one, well kept up, with large sites and a lot of amenities.  Everybody was friendly, and we had a delightful evening with a nice couple from Florida Nancy had invited over for appetizers and deep conversation.  There was a big lake which was fun to walk around with our dogs.

Tammy Faye and Sophia especially enjoyed trying to chase after the numerous rabbits on site.  We maintained a firm grip on their leashes, although I wonder how much danger their prey would have been in had they broken free.  By the way, I don't think I've ever before seen our girls so happy as on this trip.

Fort Collins is about an hour away from Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park.  We left the dogs in air-conditioned comfort and drove our pickup truck up the mountain to see the sights.  The landscapes were beautiful, but disturbing because of so many dead and dying trees.  In fact, that had been a familiar sight, particularly when we passed Vail some days earlier.  It's apparently a beetle infestation, aggravated by the drought Colorado is experiencing, which weakens the trees' resistance, and the usually warm winter, which allowed the beetles to flourish. 

As we neared the treeline - the altitude at which trees become sparce and then disappear - we encountered a "million dollar highway" situation.  No shoulders, no guardrails, no hope if a wheel goes a few inches past the white line.  Dizzying to look over the edge and imagine yourself tumbling down the vertical face.  Would your vehicle burst into flames when you hit bottom?

Nancy began feeling a little queasy.  Then she closed her eyes and said she didn't want to go any higher.  At one point she told me to pull over and let her out and she would wait for me to come back down.  For some reason I got the giggles, probably because of high altitude cerebral edema; at least that's my story.  I finally pulled over at a view site at nearly 12,000 feet elevation, and we joined some other tourists walking along a path to a promontory overlooking a spectacular view of snow-covered mountains.  Nancy had taken offense and didn't want to be within ten feet of me.  Finally she called me over, asked for the camera, and said, "Why don't you climb over there where those fellows are sitting on that high rock at the edge of the cliff, and I'll take your picture." 

I realized that this was a half-hearted attempt to send me to my death, but didn't take offense, and started on my mission.  Nancy told the guy next to her, "I should have asked him for the keys before he headed out."

I think she started feeling bad about her homicidal gesture and called to me to come back, but as is well known, I don't always have good sense, so I kept going, gingerly climbed up the rock, stood up, looked over the abyss, and scrambled back down.

Safely back at our campground, interpersonal relations more amicable, we experienced a remarkable light show that night when we stepped outside.  There was almost constant lightning all around us - but no thunder.  It was eerie and exciting, and it went on and on.  The storms must have been far, far away, even though they seemed very close.

The next afternoon the sky darkened, and we learned that there was a fire in the mountains about fifteen miles away, with no immediate hope of containment.  I'm sure that the unseasonably hot weather was a factor, and possibly the lightning storm from last night that had eventually moved through.  Toward evening we observed the terrible beauty of a sunset seen through the smoke of that nearby forest fire.

Boulder

Statistically, Colorado is the least obese state in the union, and Boulder, Colorado is the least obese city.  It may be the most physically active place in America, with the fittest people.  What, you may ask, were Nancy and I doing there, other than messing up their statistics?

Always looking to save a buck, I had located on the internet an Elks Lodge (I am a proud Elk!) which one web site said had services for RV's, on the outskirts of Boulder.  When we pulled into the parking lot, we saw hundreds of Hispanic young people all dressed up - not the usual Elks demographic.  A bit of searching led us to an area in back where there were electrical and water hookups, and no other campers.  After setting our motorhome up, I went looking for an Elk official, to make our visit legal, but there were none around; they had rented the facility that evening for a huge Quinceanera party. 

We remembered a great downtown pedestrian mall - Pearl Street - from a previous visit.  It's a big, wide, tree-lined boulevard of several blocks, with interesting restaurants and shops on both sides, and room in the center for a variety of street performers.  We spent at least a half hour watching a guy doing comedy, juggling, and unicycle riding, impressed by his ability to draw a crowd and extract money from it. 

What I'll always remember in the future about Boulder is the incredible number of bicyclists, all of them young and slim and dressed for the Tour de France.  Colorado in general has unbelievably extensive bike paths, and Boulder is an extreme case.  Nancy asked someone where they keep their old, fat people, and the answer was that backsliders feel uncomfortable and move out.

An artist friend of Nancy's had recommended the Leanin' Tree Museum - the best collection of Western art - cowboys and  Indians and landscapes - I've ever seen.  There were many magnificent large sculptures outside, and wonderful paintings inside.  Don't miss this museum if you ever go to Boulder.

I also visited the National Center for Atmospheric Research, just outside Boulder, set against dramatic stone hills.  The impressive facility was designed by famous architect I.M. Pei, who camped out in the area before deciding how best to integrate it into its environment.  Inside were exhibits describing the current status of climate research.  In the basement was a room full of supercomputers working on computer simulations attempting to predict future climate changes.

On our last morning in Boulder I assigned Nancy a mission: to find, in this temple of health and fitness, a doughnut for my breakfast.  She drove around for at least an hour, asking people where she might find a Winchell's, a Krispy Kreme, a Dunkin' Donuts.  No luck.  Finally, she spotted a chocolate glazed for me in a Safeways Grocery Store. 

Pretty good doughnut.

Aspen and Basalt

Almost forty years ago, when Nancy and I were young squirts, we had a tiny class A motorhome, and a couple of times in the winter we drove it to the Aspen ski area. At that time there was only one RV park with electricity anywhere close to Aspen, and we stayed there. The walls of that primitive camper were paper thin, and it got so cold at night that the furnace pilot light would go out, and we had to negotiate every morning as to who was going to get up and relight it.

All these years later, and that RV park is still the only one in the area with services. It didn't look much different to us.   If improvements had been made, they were too subtle for us to identify.  The campsites and driveways were still gravel, not concrete. There were a few high end motorhomes parked there, but most of the residents were permanent, living in trailers that had seen better days.

We had wonderful memories of Aspen when we were young and hoped we would still love it.  Back then Aspen was the jewel of American skiing, with great restaurants, upscale shops, and an aura of money and class. Even so, we peons had felt comfortable there. Everybody seemed friendly and the snootiness factor was low. We remembered several fabulous restaurants fondly – the Ute City Bank, the Copper Kettle, and especially the Parlor Car Restaurant, which consisted of several railroad cars on a siding, with Victorian decor, private dining rooms, and haute cuisine.

Driving into Aspen, everything looked familiar, but altered. Two wide downtown pedestrian streets were still there, but the trees were much taller than we remembered.

What had been the Ute City Bank restaurant was now a Burberry clothing store.  The shops looked new money instead of old money and didn't seem as classy or charming as before – or maybe we were just nostalgic for what had seemed so magical in our youthful experiences there.

At a tourist information kiosk we asked a lady about the restaurants we had loved. She said, “Believe it or not, I worked as a prep cook at the Parlor Car and the Ute City Bank many years ago.  They're all gone now."  We couldn't find the row of colorful Victorian houses that we remembered.  They've probably been torn down.  Okay, enough senior whining.  Aspen is still a beautiful, picturesque town at the base of the Ajax Mountain ski area. 

One shop that was still there was the Butcher Block, which features overpriced but delicious meat and gourmet items.  We splurged on a rib eye steak and grilled it that night, and it was so good that we didn't share it with the dogs.

Another memory I have from those days is trying and failing to find a Benedictine monastery outside Aspen.  This time I got good directions, and we drove through wonderful landscapes until we reached a modest group of buildings at the base of a magnificent mountain range.  Unfortunately, we didn't see any monks and simply explored the areas in which we were allowed, including a gift shop run on the honor system.

Back at our campground, at the fifth-wheeler parked next to us, we said hello to two couples a bit younger than us - a Canadian man and his Australian wife, and friends of hers from when she lived in Australia.  In the course of a spirited political discussion, the Canadian told me that when Obama delayed the pipeline for a year, his prime minister, Stephen Harper, told the US to screw itself; they were going to sell their oil to China.  I told him that they'd better be careful about going to bed with China; China would try to take over their country and we might not save them. 

I figured that with that promising start, international relations had been dealt a fatal blow - but in the meantime Nancy had asked the others over to our motorhome for a drink before dinner.  The three Australians joined us while my debate opponent remained on the phone with urgent business.  By coincidence, in the refrigerator we had an Australian sweet wine to serve our guests.  We learned all about the great things to see in Australia, and Nancy and I were assured (probably incorrectly) that Australia would be delighted to take us in if we ever wanted to move there.  By the time we exchanged pledges to visit each other, it was ten o'clock, they hadn't eaten dinner, and I suspect the Canadian was fuming.  Unfortunate.

Our campground, by the way, was in the town of Basalt, about fifteen miles from Aspen.  There wasn't much to Basalt when we visited all those years ago, but it's now a charming little village, with several excellent restaurants, cool shops on a pretty main street, and the best modern public library I've ever seen.  A Whole Foods Market is just a couple of miles away, in an adjacent town.  Nancy and I added Basalt to a list of places we might consider if we we're ever run out of Ben Lomond.  In fact, we've talked about possibly returning to our Basalt campground this winter, in February or March, to get back into skiing and see how well we would tolerate the seriously cold weather.

Colorado Wine Country

Stowing our gear inside, disconnecting from water and power, hooking up the pickup truck for towing - everything went so smoothly that Nancy said, as we pulled out from our campsite in Ouray, "Don't want to get cocky, but we're really getting good at this." Thirty seconds later, when we pulled onto the road, a bumpy maneuver at that campground, one of the sliding doors between living area and kitchen jumped open and couldn't be retracted. It turned out that a screw which holds the track in place had never been seated properly, and I had to figure out how to remove the sliding door, sink the screw, and return the door to its track. So we continue to have a problem now and then, but truthfully we're delighted that on this trip they've all been minor and owner-correctable.

Colorado isn't considered a wine mecca, but there are now around one hundred wineries in the state. One of the most prominent winemaking areas is along the western Rocky Mountains. On the way to Aspen we stayed over the Memorial Day weekend at a state park near Palisade, near the center of wine country. It was an attractive campground, surrounded by impressive sandstone cliffs. Families were out for the holiday weekend. The weather was beautiful. Ah, Colorado.

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We drove into the town of Palisade and stopped at a liqour store, thinking, who better to advise us as to which wineries to visit.  The clerk didn't seem to know, but a lady customer who looked like someone who had sampled a few bottles over the years gave us a couple of names.

One of the recommended wineries was some miles out of town, past manicured fields of grapes and pretty fields of peach and apple trees. The other tasting room was a two-winery showcase in town. Our impression of the wines we tasted was that the usual varietals – chardonnay, merlot, and so on – were perfectly okay but nothing special. They also offered a number of fruit wines, and I enjoyed some of them more than I expected to. The lavender wine, however, was not a favorite of Nancy's; she detected notes of soap and potpourri.

A bartender/owner of a restaurant in Ouray had told us, when he learned we were from California, that we shouldn't expect good wines from the Palisade area, because the vines were too young, and that for a quality alcoholic beverage we should go to a brewery instead. For lunch we dropped in to a Palisade brew house and sampled some excellent local beer with our sandwiches.