Broken down in Vegas

To summarize, our year-long circuit of the country took us across the lower US states through Texas and Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle and down into the Florida Keys, then back up along the East Coast through the Carolinas and the New England states into Canada all the way to Prince Edward Island, then back down to Maine and across upstate New York and Vermont to Michigan's Upper Peninsula and down through Wisconsin and across Iowa and Nebraska to the mountains of Colorado and the parks of Utah.

And finally it's time to head back to Santa Cruz.  Our first stop on the way home (Am I allowed to call Santa Cruz home, when we no longer own a house there?) is at the Las Vegas RV Resort.

Our motorhome has three slideouts.  Slideouts are extensions which at the touch of a switch slide outward to create more interior space or inward when it's time to hit the road.  The biggest slideout on our coach has been balky for some time, so I took the opportunity to call in a repair technician to see if it could be fixed.  Unfortunately, that guy wasn't too knowledgeable, and by the time he left, the motor that moves that slide had stopped working entirely.

This isn't good.  It's unsafe to drive a motorhome with any slide extended, as this one is, not only because of the increased width but because the rear-view mirror on that side of the coach will be blocked.  And believe me, driving a big rig without being able to see what's on your right and left would be suicidal.

So we're stuck here until we get the slide back in.  Luckily I found a mobile mechanic with slideout expertise.  He was able to determine that the slide motor's gearbox had seized up and had to be replaced.  He ordered parts from the manufacturer but it will be several days before they arrive.

And so we're stuck here in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Will there be enough going on in this town to entertain us until we are roadworthy?

The internet and brochures from the campground office tell us that there are casinos and restaurants in Las Vegas!  Who knew?  So maybe we won't be bored by our forced time here.

The Las Vegas strip was about twenty minutes away from our campground.  We drove there one afternoon and found space in the parking garage of the Venetian Hotel and Casino.  We spent several hours exploring the shops and restaurants of that one hotel/casino and were struck with the absolutely incredible amount of money that had been invested in building and developing it.  One could take an indoor gondola ride if so inclined.  (Nancy and I passed.)

The interior architecture radiating from the casino area was impressive.

There were five or six restaurants in the Venetian catacombs that looked awfully enticing, including some headed by celebrity chefs.  Nancy is not a professional shopper, but if she were, high-end stores lined the walkways for what seemed like miles.

And when we stepped outside, there were many other casinos visible along the street as far as the eye could see.

On the following evening we returned to the strip, and this time we used Uber.  We've always found Uber to be dependable and reasonably priced, and the Vegas version was no exception.  On this visit we chose Caesar's Palace as our focus.  Google tells me that it isn't the largest casino/hotel on the strip, but it looks truly enormous from the outside, and the interior goes on and on.  But as fancy as Caesar's was, we were less impressed there than we had been by the Venetian.

We walked along the crowded streets past casinos and stores of all kinds and restaurants both fancy and modest.  Teams of bosomy "models" in skimpy and spectacular dress asked men to pose with them (and who knows what else).  Vans drove by advertising girls who would be sent to your rooms.  One difference we noticed from our previous visits to Las Vegas was the absence this time of hawkers handing out brochures of lovely young ladies available for massage and other services at your hotel.  I suppose the city fathers had decided to outlaw such activity as beneath the dignity and morality of that great city.  (Not the service, just the sidewalk advertising of it.)  We dropped into several other casinos, including Paris Las Vegas (which seemed a bit faded), but ended up back at the Venetian for dinner.

After extensive study, we selected Bouchon, whose executive chef is Thomas Keller, the owner and chef of Napa Valley's French Laundry and the legendary Per Se in New York City.  It's a beautiful venue on an upper level of the Venetian.  This is the opulent hallway leading to the restaurant.

And this is Bouchon itself.

Our table was outside, looking up into the sky .. although no stars were bright enough to be visible in competition with the Las Vegas lights.  Bouchon, unlike Keller's flagship restaurants, is meant to represent simpler French bistro fare.  I'm sorry to say that the food, wine, and service were more good than great.  Still, it was a lovely and enjoyable evening.

Our Uber ride back to the campground was memorable in that our driver, Huntington, talked honest-to-God non-stop during the half-hour drive to the campground and regaled us with the story of an intoxicated lady who as he described it "went number one" on her seat, which was disgusting to the passenger who followed her.  Ah, Las Vegas.

Zion National Park

Zion National Park is different from the other Utah national parks (and Grand Canyon National Park) in that most of its tourist areas are on the floor of a great canyon, with majestic sandstone walls and peaks rising above them.  Maybe that's why it remains our favorite national park.  In fact, our campground, the Zion Canyon RV Park, just outside the national park, has probably the most awesome setting of any campground we've ever stayed in.

Even at this time of year - after school was in but before winter weather got established - the park was very crowded, and wait times for shuttle buses - which were the only way to explore the park - were long (partly because the yearly highway maintenance was underway).  This photo is taken from the area of the Court of the Patriarchs and shows the kind of scenery that lines the roads.

At the last shuttle stop we got out and hiked the Riverside Trail, which took us alongside the Virgin River.  At the start of the trail was a sign giving an estimate of the danger that day of flash flooding, which can potentially pose a danger to hikers.  I found it interesting that the danger indicator had a padlock on the bottom, to prevent jokers from moving it.

On the day we hiked, the pretty Virgin River was modest in size. but - as we learned from the voiceover during our shuttle ride - had in fact carved the canyon over millions of years, and even today periodically swells to flash flood volume and is capable of reshaping the landscape.

The trail took us to the Narrows, so named because it's the narrowest section of the canyon.  It leads eventually to some of the most spectacular and beautiful sights in the park, shown on many of the tourist brochures, where the colorful walls are only feet apart.  It's a popular hike for folks who rent boots and are prepared to ford the stream in places.  That wasn't us on this day.  Flash floods can appear almost instantaneously and have supposedly even killed hikers in the past, but that wasn't why we didn't go in.

A hike we took on another day was along a lovely trail that took us to the Lower Emerald Pool.  This is a little waterfall that feeds that pool.

We continue to love Zion Canyon.  I'd kind of forgotten how magnificent it is.

Capitol Reef National Park

Six years ago we went on a motorhome trip to Utah and Colorado and toured three of Utah's five national parks - Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Arches.  That trip was chronicled on this blog, but you'd have to scroll WAY back to read about it.  This time we completed the set.  Last week we traveled to Canyonlands, and we planned to visit Capitol Reef National Park before going back to our favorite from last time, Zion.

On the road from Moab, just before turning off onto the road that would take us to Capitol Reef, there was a sign: "No services for 100 miles".  That gives you an idea of how sparsely populated the area is compared with most of the nation.

This was high desert country.  And when our GPS told us we were still about 30 miles from the national park, we began seeing fascinating and majestic rock formations of various colors lining the road.  What was remarkable was the variety that random chance, through the actions of water and wind erosion and land upheavals, had yielded.  All the way to the park's entrance we were saying to each other over and over, "Look at that!"  While the landscape around our previous stop, Moab, looked like what we saw in old western movies - and in fact many were filmed there - this area made us think of a science fiction dreamscape.

We stayed in a very nicely run campground a few miles from the national park.  One drive from there took us to Gooseneck Canyon, where we looked down on a trail where at one point we saw some intrepid hikers far, far below.

Here is Nancy looking up at petroglyphs - carvings made by prehistoric Native Americans into a rock face.

Capitol Reef's "scenic drive" was a ten-mile road featuring one magnificent formation after another.

The road surface was pockmarked, with lots of exposed rocks, and the ride - at least in our pickup truck - was bone-jarring, but the scenery was amazing.

At the end of that road was a hiking trail that Nancy and I took to the end - a mile each way - along a dry river bed.

At one point there was a sheer face with six individuals' names and a 1911 date carved into it thirty feet or so from the canyon floor.  I guess as long as it's early enough - and this was long before the area because a national park - it is designated a historical feature rather than graffiti.

When, tired but happy, we returned to the trailhead Nancy made a pit stop at a little toilet building, and when she came out she said, "That's the nastiest bathroom I've ever used.  There wasn't even any toilet paper!"

And so we began our uncomfortable drive back along that primitive road.  About a mile into it, Nancy cried out, "I left my phone in that stinky toilet!"  Afraid of having her phone fall out of her back pants pocket while using the facilities, she had put it on the top of the empty metal toilet paper dispenser and forgot to retrieve it.  We turned our pickup around, made our way back, and Nancy was relieved to find her phone still there, visibly, at least, no worse for the experience.

Before this trip I hadn't heard much about Capitol Reef, and I don't think it's visited as much as the other four - partly because it's relatively isolated, partly because its charms are not as easily displayed photographically on tourist brochures.  But it turned out to be one of our favorite national parks.

Canyonlands National Park

Wounded but not broken, we pulled our motorhome into a campground in Moab, Utah.  This is high desert country, not our favorite kind of landscape scenery, but the snow-covered tops of the La Sal Mountains in the near distance were quite beautiful.  Their sharply-pointed peaks suggest that those mountains are quite young, geologically speaking.

We had visited Moab six years ago, and it's grown a great deal since then.  This may be the offseason, but traffic is heavy, and the locals will probably be relieved when the tourists leave in a few weeks.

My watch - a cheapie - stopped, and I looked for a shop that could put a new battery in.  But there were no jewelers in town - shocking for such a tourist mecca.  Then we realized that the visitors here were young and fit, many of them wearing backpacks, ready for hiking and climbing adventures.  Few old moneyed folk who would toss away big bucks on a bauble.  Finally a gentleman from the Netherlands at a tourist center told us that the local drug store performed that service.  A lady at Walker Drug and General Store opened up my watch, found that that particular battery size was on order, and asked that I call on Wednesday to see if it had come in.  When she replaced the back, the watch started working again, so I'm in business, temporarily.

Moab is the jumping-off place for two national parks - Arches and Canyonlands.  On our 2012 visit there, we went deep into Arches National Park, the one that is closest and has the more spectacular individual formations.  This time we traveled to Canyonlands National Park, which is about an hour's drive away.  Six years ago we were in Moab in late spring and the weather was uncomfortably hot, but this time there was a chill in the air - it got down to below freezing last night - and it was much more pleasant for exploring the scene.

From the road we hiked to Mesa Arch.  The other national park in the area, Arches National Park, has many arches that are much more spectacular.  (Maybe that's how it got its name.)  But the distant views from Mesa Arch were great.

At the end of the paved road was Grand View Overlook, with spectacular views of what nature has wrought.  The huge canyons below were formed by the Colorado and Green Rivers over millions of years.   (Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona was also created by the actions of the Colorado River as it flowed south to the Gulf of California.)

I read that most of the rocks here were carried from elsewhere and that there are twenty or so distinct layers that the rivers cut through - sandstone and shale, mostly.  Plus there were earthquake upheavals along the way, and both wind and water erosion.  In other words, the geology is incredibly complicated.  The Grand Canyon in Arizona has steep walls and is therefore more picturesque, but the vastness of Canyonlands is jaw-dropping as well.

Here's a little senior beefcake at the canyon rim.

On Wednesday the watch battery had arrived at Walker Drug and General Store, and it was inserted into my watch.  Now I'll be able to maintain precise timing on our tight vacation schedule.

Tragedy in Carbondale

Tammy Faye, one of our two little dogs, the reddish-brown one we suspect of cocker spaniel and poodle parentage, has developed a funny cough.  She has been having episodes, mostly at night, when she makes a series of harsh, almost musical sounds; then she's fine.  She's not overly active, but then she never has been.  She eats, walks, and sleeps as usual, and the cough is not exacerbated by exercise, food, or anything else we've been able to identify.

But we decided to have her evaluated by a veterinarian.  Nancy had been unable to get her in at the vet school in Fort Collins, but once we were staying at a campground in the relative sticks of Carbondale, the local vet's office had an opening.

Dr. Ben was a very nice young man who sat on the floor as he examined Tammy Faye.  He found nothing much on physical exam but took a chest X-ray.  He showed us the film and pointed out that the heart appeared to be slightly enlarged and possibly pressing on the trachea.  But he also noticed an ominous finding - a possible abdominal mass, rather large, in the area of the spleen.  At first he suggested going to an ultrasound specialist in Denver or Salt Lake City, but Nancy said that she would be unable to stand waiting, so he arranged to have an ultrasound study done at 11:00 the following morning at a clinic near our next campground stop in Grand Junction.  Needless to say, we were distraught.

We arose early the next morning and drove our motorhome to Grand Junction.  Because that clinic provides medical care for horses as well as dogs and cats, there was a parking lane for horse trailers that we were able to park our motorhome in while we completed the paperwork.  We left Tammy Faye with the clinic, checked in at the RV park, and anxiously waited there for our 3:45 appointment that afternoon to discuss the ultrasound findings.

Dr. Boyd, a gentle, sympathetic lady vet, explained that the study showed what was almost certainly a splenic hemangiosarcoma, a malignant tumor that appeared to have already spread to the liver.  She told us that an oncologist could offer several treatment options, but that they were ordinarily only effective short-term at best, and she didn't recommend going that route.  (I'm sure that she offered that option because some pet owners will try everything to save their beloved animals, but Nancy and I are determined not to put our little family members through a treatment process that might be miserable for them, with little chance of success.)

Dr. Boyd informed us that life expectancy after this diagnosis was in most cases measured in a few months, and the most likely scenario was that this tumor would partially rupture at some point, spill blood into the abdomen, and cause significant pain.  In most cases this initial rupture would not be fatal and the symptoms would gradually improve, but would be followed by further ruptures.  I asked her if this were her dog, at what point would she consider euthanasia, and she said that she would do so after the first rupture episode, in order to spare Tammy Faye further misery.

The cough, she said, was most likely unrelated to the tumor and might be cardiac in origin, so she prescribed Enalapril, an ACE inhibitor.  I can't help thinking that perhaps it would have been better if the X-ray hadn't been taken and we wouldn't have learned of the cancer, but at least this way we will be able to give Tammy Faye extra love and extra treats for as long as she's with us, and we'll be better prepared to handle things when she gets worse.

The humans in the Wilson household are devastated.  Luckily, Tammy Faye is unaware of her fate and remains the sweet, happy dog she has always been.  I know that she has enjoyed this motorhome trip enormously and that with all the attention and walks she and Sophia have received this has been one of the happiest times of her life.  That is comforting to us, but only a little.  We've become reluctantly accepting of our own mortality, but it's hard to deal with that of our dear little dogs.

In the Colorado mountains

The road to our next campground took us into the high Colorado mountains.  With snow falling, our slow but steady motorhome reached as high as 12,000 feet of elevation.  We passed the roads to the ski areas of Keystone, Breckenridge, and Copper Mountain, and later looked down on the magical villages of Vail, which were then showing good Colorado color - splashes of the orange-tinged yellows of Aspen trees among the evergreens and condominiums.

Finally the road descended to the more reasonable altitude at Glenwood Springs, and then from Carbondale we drove to our KOA campground on Crystal River in the shadow of Mount Sopris.  That's Mount Sopris below, partially obscured by clouds.

This is one of the prettiest RV parks we've stayed in, especially with its nice fall colors.

As I stepped out of the motorhome, the retractable steps hadn't fully deployed, and I landed awkwardly and hurt my left knee.  Damn!  I had always felt younger than my stated age, but after the last two weeks, with my pulmonary emboli and now my sprained knee, I wondered if I was almost ready to be put out to pasture.  I found the knee brace I had been given in North Carolina, applied it, and soldiered on.  Presumed initial diagnosis: quadriceps tendon strain.

I was unable to drive our little pickup truck because pushing in the clutch was too painful, so the next day Nancy drove us up the road that leads to Snowmass and Aspen, where we had skied so many years ago.  We stopped in the charming little town of Basalt.  Ah, the memories from way back in the early 70's when as young squirts we drove a primitive little motorhome from southern California to a campground in Basalt (since closed) which we used as a base for skiing Snowmass and Buttermilk.  We remember fondly those incredibly cold winter mornings in our poorly insulated motorhome when we argued over whose turn it was to crawl out of bed and relight the pilot light on the propane furnace. 

Basalt has undergone dramatic further development over the years but is still gorgeous, and if we were ten years younger we might seriously consider moving there. 

We drove on to Aspen, which is where the rich and famous have played for many years.  We loved it back in the day and especially have fond memories of dinners in the Parlor Car Restaurant and the Ute City Bank.  The Parlor Car is long shut down and today Nancy could buy haute couture in the Ute City Bank building, were she so inclined.

We walked up to the tourist booth in the center of Aspen.  I said, wouldn't it be fun if it's the same lady we talked with when we visited six years ago.  And it was!  She was visibly six years older, as are we, most likely.  She is a long-time resident and in fact had worked in both of the restaurants we mentioned above, and our guess is that in this sky-high real estate market her home is paid off but she needs to supplement her income with this job. 

She suggested a lunch spot nearby - Meat and Cheese - which was classier than its name suggests.  We enjoyed our sandwiches and especially a wonderful Napa chardonnay from John Anthony Vineyards, which we weren't familiar with.  We asked the manager how that wine happened to be on their menu, and it turned out that he had met John Anthony at one of Aspen's amazing Food and Wine Classic events, which cost around $1700 per person for three days of bacchanalia.  (Shall I put you down for several?)  We told him that we would visit that winery on our next trip to Napa and let Mr. Anthony know about our experience in Aspen.

Aspen is still something special.  Fun to stroll by the upscale shops and wonderful restaurants.  Shame that the price of housing has become even more astronomical and beyond the reach of mere mortals.  Unfortunately I failed to take adequate photos of the Aspen scene except that here is a view of one of the ski runs, waiting for snow, at the end of a pretty street.

Driving back to our motorhome, I was struck by the sheer beauty of Colorado.  It may be second only to Alaska in scenic splendor, at least for those of us who are most moved by spectacular mountain views.

Boulder and Denver

Golden is not far from two larger cities - Boulder and Denver - and we explored each of those a bit.

Boulder we had visited about five years ago and at that time were impressed by the youth, slimness, and physical activity of its citizens - to the point that Nancy and I worried that we were just not a fit for the town.  But we loved its big and beautiful Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall, which boasted outstanding street performers and wonderful restaurants and shops.  This time we found it a bit less exciting, though still quite nice, and enjoyed a very tasty dinner there.

A day later we drove to Denver, which is only about eleven miles from Golden.  In the past we had avoided Denver, partly because it always seemed to be shrouded by ugly brown smog.  And the internet tells us that Denver is still the 11th worst city in America for pollution - though it is improving.  On this day there was some haze but less than expected.

It happened to be the day for Denver's annual Zombie Crawl, and some of those critters had spilled over to the downtown pedestrian mall we visited.

There were on the mall, of course, street performers.  The one who seemed to be pulling the most cash from the passersby was a swami with no visible means of support.  I think I know how the trick was done.  How about you?

In our opinion Colorado does downtowns better than any state we've visited, and we love the ambiance of a good downtown.  In fact, it's almost a must-have for us.

On our last day in Golden we drove to the nearby town of Broomfield, home of Anthem Ranch, a "master planned community" - that is, a series of neighborhoods built by a developer that also include some facilities - swimming pools, country clubs, restaurants, shops, tennis courts, and so on - that can be used by its residents.  There are a lot of those developments across the country.  Some of them are age restricted - meaning that residents must be over 55 years of age - and some are not.  We don't believe that we'll end up in one of them, but life is unpredictable, and the concept behind them has some appeal.

From a distance, Anthem Ranch looks like a huge hive of similar-looking homes on a barren landscape.  We drove to the sales office in its interior and were told that the current section under development was indeed an over-55 community, so that all the homes were ranch-style (meaning one floor and no stairs to the upper floor that might be problematic for the elderly).

We were directed to the model home next door.  It was a three bedroom, 2100 square feet house and had an open floor plan, extremely high ceilings, a high-end kitchen, a sumptuous master bedroom, and two fireplaces in the living section.

A bonus for me was that down a long flight of stairs was a huge basement which I would be able to convert into a home theater.  The design and finish of the home were excellent, and we could imagine ourselves living quite happily in such a space.  Except that it was kind of in the middle of nowhere (though it did have nice views of distant mountains), and the price - $615,000 - seemed high for a home that was packed tightly among so many similar structures.  So our search continues.

Golden, Colorado

Remember when Coors was kind of an exclusive cult beer?  After its 1873 founding in Golden, Colorado by Adolph Coors, a German immigrant, it was available initially only west of the Mississippi, and it wasn't distributed to all 50 states until 1991.  And remember those commercials in which the spokesman told us it was the Rocky Mountain water that made the beer special?

We're currently set up at a campground in Golden, where Coors is still brewed.  Golden is a pretty little city at the base of the Rockies, with a nice downtown shopping and outdoor restaurant area, and Clear Creek - carrying that fine mountain water - runs through it.

The Coors Brewery offers tours of its plant there in Golden.  Nancy and I waited in line for 45 minutes until a shuttle took us up to the incredible buildings within which the magic is accomplished.

We began by proving that we were over 21 by showing the gatekeeper our driver's licenses.  Truth be told, Nancy's is expired, and her attempts to get a new one from the California DMV have failed - but I don't think the lady looked too closely, and she was allowed to accompany me.  It was a walking tour of the facilities, and considering that we had been in line for so long, somewhat boring, partly because not much was going on.  I suppose the brewing of beer isn't a seven-days-a-week activity, because we saw only a few workers on the floor.  But maybe the hops mash was working away in the insanely huge copper-topped vats we looked down upon.

At the end of the tour Nancy and I - along with fifty or so of our best friends - were given the opportunity to indulge in up to three glasses of free beer each.  Nancy drank a Blue Moon, and I had a Killian's Irish Red.  (In 2004 Coors merged with the Canadian giant Molson, and the corporation is now officially Molson-Coors Brewing Company, producer of a number of different brews.)

On another day we drove to the Buffalo Bill Museum and Gravesite, up on Lookout Mountain.  Buffalo Bill Cody (not to be confused with a contemporary of his, Wild Bill Hickok, who was killed at Deadwood) was a frontier cowboy of the old West, a Pony Express rider, a gold miner, and a soldier in the Civil War on the Union side.  He became well known for his skill hunting the buffalo that were so common on the plains at that time.  A number of books were published featuring him as the hero of largely fictional exploits, and that made him a very famous man.  Later in life he put together an enormous show of cowboys, Indians, and horses - Buffalo Bill's Wild West  - that for many years toured the US and eventually even Europe.  But as famous as he became, he had trouble paying his bills and eventually lost his show to creditors.  Apparently show business wasn't the path to riches in those days that it is now.

Bill was buried on Lookout Mountain, one of his favorite places on Earth because it looked out upon the mountains and plains of the old West.  The mountain views up there are indeed awesome, but today it also overlooks Golden and Denver down on the plains.  A museum dedicated to his life stands near his gravesite and contains an amazing number of truly beautiful vintage posters advertising his Wild West show, along with guns and saddles and other paraphernalia from the show, and costumes that were worn by Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and Sitting Bull, who all appeared in the extravaganza, and of course Buffalo Bill himself.

Two Colorado downtowns

A couple of days after my hospitalization I was feeling better - no more shortness of breath - and we drove to a nearby town, Loveland, which is favorably reviewed as a place to retire.  It's quite a nice community, with lots of art galleries and outdoor sculptures.  (Yes, that's Ernest- I think.)

The downtown has a good mix of restaurants and shops and several performing arts theaters, one of which - the Rialto - will present in the coming months a number of musicians I like, including Richard Marx and Jim Messina (of Loggins and Messina).  A friendly lady saw us trying to figure out where to go and told us what a wonderful place Loveland was to live.  Unfortunately, the surrounding town and landscape aren't attractive enough for us to consider it.  We're hard markers.

Our last night in Fort Collins we had a very tasty dinner downtown at The Still Whiskey Steaks restaurant and took the opportunity to explore the nightlife in that area.  Certainly Fort Collins' downtown is the best we've found on our trip, by far, and it's hard to imagine a larger or more exciting downtown in any small city anywhere.  Street after street of upscale-looking restaurants and stores.

Among other delights we came across an impressive-looking cooking school there called the Cooking Studio and read their menu of innovative upcoming classes, any number of which Nancy or I would want to sign up for if we lived there.

To be honest, I'm a bit skeptical about moving to Fort Collins, since it isn't as beautiful as other parts of Colorado, and real estate prices in the area we like are scary  - but damn! we loved that downtown.  And we've confirmed first hand that medical care here is first-rate.

At our campground Nancy ran into a nicely-dressed gentleman who said that he was a lawyer from New Orleans and was running for president.  He handed her a very professionally produced bookmark which laid out his program for America which included universal medical care for all, a $22 minimum wage nationally, and free education through college and post-graduate work, among other things.  To pay for all that, he proposed a 70% tax rate for those making over $3M annually.  Nancy didn't want me to meet him, believing that I might think him a bit off.  On the contrary, I'm prepared to support him, and I hope the fact that he's living in a modest trailer in a trailer park isn't considered a negative.

Our time in Fort Collins has been memorable, to say the least.  Never forget it.  We now head out to visit some of the ski towns and other destinations boasting that remarkable scenic beauty that Colorado is known for.