Next stop was Lake Powell, at Hite. The Lake is slowly filling again but still 100-150' low. Nothing to report there except the 3 bikers who asked if I had any gasoline to sell. "Nope," was my reply, "but turn right, head across the bridge and there's gas available at Hite Marina less than 2 miles away." They nodded, drove off and proceeded to turn left, 50 miles to Hanksville. Huh??? Fuel and instructions seem to be a problem around here. See Dave and Doc's Adventure here with a description of some inane tourists who also had a fuel problems - amongst others!

From Hite, took a scenic Hwy 95 in between rain showers to Blanding and then from Blanding down to Bluff, Ut. While the goal was to get to Monument Valley, Bluff looked intriguing so pulled in to Cadillac Ranch RV for the night (no, not that Cadillac Ranch, sadly.) Hosed down the motorhome and the FN JP just so we could find them underneath the now dried clay and proceeded to head west, towards Valley of the Gods. (Yeah, everything seems to have a goofy name out here.) This got interesting as there were many T-storms forming all over the place. Got many, many photos of the buttes and spires during this 17 mile dirt road drive with awesome storms as the backdrop. These are two - and not the best but can't decide what to put here so will pick a couple at random. Too bad.

On the 24 miles back to Bluff, came upon a modest rockslide. Bet that made a thump.

Got back by 6, ate out at a steakhouse - steak was OK, prices were a little high but they did have Polygamy Porter (Why have just one?)

Got back to the coach, and turned on the 'puter to document today and much to my amazement, found there was an unsecured internet connection. Well, we can't pass up this surprising opportunity, now can we? Of course, the first web site is to check the weather and got this.....here we go again! (This was the storm in the photos, and yes, Bluff is in San Juan county.)

10:30 PM. I may regret saying this but I suspect this was much ado about nothing. The storms have moved off and we have not been washed into the San Juan River (yet.) Again, a day that was started with low expectations turned out to be marvelous, simply marvelous! Tomorrow will be Monument Valley (really) and Goulding's trading post. Will pay homage to John Ford and John Wayne.

It had been preordained that we were to stop at Goulding's Campground (a private enclave within the Navajo Nation's land) where there is cable TV and electricity rather than the Navajo Tribal park which has only primitive camping. The lady at Goulding's Campground registration desk was appalled that I had no reservations since this is their "busy" time. I guess I could have quipped something about reservations on the Reservation but I was rather reserved and registered my reservations about having reservations while on a relaxing retreat. She was not impressed. Neither was I when I found out the frickin' campsite was almost $40 a night. "Why don't you stick a gun in my face and ask for my wallet?" I quipped. She was not impressed. I sadly gave her my credit card and decided to get over it. Then she started her spiel about all the crap there is to do here. When she got to the tours ($50 per person for a 3 hour guided tour of Monument Valley) I told her we had a Jeep and didn't need to hear about them. She wouldn't shut up. I was not impressed. After the fourth request, I told her I didn't give a shit about their damn tours and she finally shut the hell up. Now, the coup de grâce. "Do you have wifi here?" "Yes we do, and it's only $3 per day." I threw up my hands, grabbed the paper work and headed for the door. But she got the last word as I was walking away, "Shall I sign you up?"

It's now 8:30 PM, oh, I'm sorry, we're 100 feet in Arizona, it's 7:30 PM and the campground is less than half full. So much for the damned reservations that were allegedly needed!

Back to today - the views were great. The lunch, at Goulding's Dining room sucked, I STILL have gas from that! An obligatory trip to a number of gift shops and Indian jewelry shops followed. It's amazing the shit people try to sell and it's even more incredible the shit people buy.

So finally got to go tour "Monument Valley." The entire Valley is within the Navajo reservation and they have designated a drive through a scenic part of the Valley. Paid the $10 and completed the advertised 17 mile drive in 8 miles. Oh well, maybe it was kilometers. Scenery: spectacular! Ah, but did I mention the tens of busloads of people that were there? This place is tourist city. Great scenery, but too many damn tourists! Crowds are not my cup 'o tea.

Up early for a sunrise drive - well, almost sunrise. With all the rain, the humidity is still high and there was quite a haze in the air so bagged the rest of the drive, hopped in the RV, left the delightful Goulding campground, the tourist busses, and drove the 120 miles to Chinle and Canyon de Chelly. The scenery was pretty until we came near towns, like Many Farms and Chinle. More about that later. After lunch, took a drive on the upper South rim of Canyon de Chelly. This 17 mile road is a BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) public highway. The Canyon floor, however, is not open to the public for free. However, for a mere $75 they would allow us to drive the FN JP on the Canyon floor for 3 hours. Or, for a mere $150, we could sit in a Unimog with 30 other people and tour the canyon. It looked just fine from the top!

However, on the rim drive, at each of the designated view points, Navajo were there selling their wares. Granted, they need to make a living but it did get a but old and annoying after a while - for many reasons! Not to discriminate against Canyon de Chelly, but after all the magnificent scenery, the lack of people, and the lack of tour buses on most of this trip, we were not totally impressed. I guess if you've seen one Canyon de Chelly, you've seen 'em all.

So, with 10 (plus or minus) days left, where next? The vote seems to be go to Holbrook, AZ, look for more JAFRs at nearby Joseph City and then take some back roads through Arizona and New Mexico on a slow trip home. Requests have been made for Roswell so that will dictate some of the route. On the other hand, that's not all bad as it looks like there are some pretty cool 4WD trails on the road to Roswell. I need my off-road fix :)

So why Holbrook? We need propane - almost out. We need diesel fuel. Almost out. I need beer. Almost out. We need more JAFRs. So why not Holbrook? So Holbrook it is! Took a delightful drive on a peaceful, albeit rough BIA road from Chinle to Holbrook (look it up on a map.) Found a nice commercial campground on the west end of town. Wide spaces and all the amenities of life except wireless, which is available up at the registration office. It's now 8 PM, ooops, sorry, this is Arizona, 7 PM and trying to finish today's twaddle so I can attempt to walk all the way up there and upload after more more than a couple beers. It's tough enough just to type this - I can only imagine the horrors of trying to upload this later after a few more beers. And don't even think about email!

So Holbrook, thus far, has been marvelously enjoyable. This is more my speed. No tourists, to speak of. In the 1800s Holbrook was described as "a town to tough for women and children." It was one of the wildest western towns with "cowboys galloping through town on payday with guns blazing." Such exotically named saloons such as Bucket of Blood were scattered all over town. I like it! And besides that, it's Route 66 heaven! Schlocky, but cool - very, very cool!

Got propane. Got fuel. Got beer. Toured Holbrook.

Next was a delightful trip through the Petrified Forest 20 miles out of town and then the Painted Desert. These are National Park Service sites hence no JAFR collecting is allowed. However, there are ample places to purchase kitschy gifts and petrified wood all over the place. For example, a 3' round, 4' high polished chunk of petrified wood was marked at $14,000 at one of the "museum" gift shops. Needless to say, one was not purchased.

So the day ended with burgers on the grill and beer in my tummy. Graham called to inform me what a wonderful time he was having back home in the snow. His advice, "Don't come back." Sounds good to me.

So tomorrow will be the hunt for JAFRs near Joseph City. From there, head into the White Mountains (which from the current weather forecast, may indeed be white!) Time will tell. This is a nice vacation thus far except for a few issues. I don't give a shit (or two shits) if I ever come back.

PS. Was it mentioned I "maintained" the overcharged batteries? Over a gallon of distilled water was needed to top them off! At least the water level wasn't below any of the plates. Even so, this is still better than the woman while at the Chinle campground whose generator took a crap - but that's yet another drinkin' story. Jeez, I have a lot of drinkin' stories. This is going to be a good winter!

While updating today's activities, the Hewlett-Packard laptop took a crap right in the middle of my usual drivel. It reboots continually. Being Friday the 13th, the first thought was that there might be a virus in there so tried to reload the OS from scratch via a CD ROM and that failed also. Without access to the internet, I can’t decode the Blue Screen of Death’s error, but after a while another diagnostic worked and it pointed to a bad interrupt from the Ethernet interface. Hardware failure. Damn. That’s enough to piss off Dave.

Being lazy sometimes is a good thing. When the HP laptop replaced the desktop in the RV, I never removed the tower. Well, maybe this one will work. Let’s see – need a keyboard, no problem. Need a hardwire mouse, found one in the laptop bag. The power cord was even here. Plug in the monitor, power up and …… amazing – the damn thing boots. (Of course it shuts down randomly so jiggling the CPU, boards, power supply, lubing the fans, etc., seems to have fixed that "minor" annoyance.)

So here I is. Hopefully the laptop’s hard disk is OK. The last backup was about a week ago. A lot of great photos will be lost if the disk is also gone. Sigh! One more thing to fix on returning home :( This has been a tough trip for electronics: the RV charger/inverter (or maybe the microprocessor controller) and now the laptop. Maybe it’s the altitude and the gamma rays are more intense…………

Thank goodness I updated the web yesterday so if either Sprint or wireless will work on this tower, the page can be downloaded and it can be updated again – sans today’s 7 photos.

Enough whining. Time to recover a little what was written today: The weather, despite the dire forecast for today, was perfect. In the morning went out to hunt more JAFRs. The trip to Joseph City on the back roads was great. Highlights were: (1) A cool bridge. (2) Some great Route 66 art. (3) The lonesome wail of the Santa Fe trains about 3 miles away. (4) The delightful repose while on a hill away from the hustle and bustle while admiring the JAFRs.

After returning to the RV, packed up and drove to Show Low. What a bummer. From Show Low east on Hwy 260 for about 20 miles, there was nothing but traffic, construction, condos, traffic, realtor offices, traffic…..well you get the idea. Much too commercialized. I suspect this is where Phoenicians go to play in the winter and get away from the heat of the city in the summer. Keep on truckin’.

We finally got to the border of the Apache Indian Reservation and that solved the problem – well, except for the traffic jam at the Casino. But once past that, it was clear sailing driving through pristine forests at 9000 feet. What a difference 4000 feet makes.

I wanted to stop up here for the night and enjoy the forest, since it was still early, about 3 PM. We turned on to a road toward Sunrise Lake at the edge of the Reservation. The DeLorme assured us there would be a campground there. Signs were in place proclaiming that the road was closed 6 miles ahead but we/I were/was determined to find this campground at 9200’. With 2 miles to go, there was a little gas station/grocery store (that closes at 5 PM) and the terse lady there indicated there was a campground a mile down the road. One mile. No campground. Two miles, end of the road. But wait! There’s an incredibly large asphalt parking lot at the end that’s big enough to hold dozens of motor homes. Why not park there? The previous resident was packing up his 5th wheel and leaving. He indicated this was a good place. So set up camp, 6 miles in, at the end of a dead end road, surrounded by gently rolling hills at 9200 feet. This will be great – no traffic. Peaceful, quiet, secluded.

Took a couple hour drive in the forest. Very nice. Got back in time for a little rain shower and a beautiful rainbow. Never did find the alleged campground.

Holy crap, Batman! Since returning, there must have been 20 – 30 cars coming in, turning around, and leaving. Either they can’t read or they just liked the scenery. Also later this evening, there was a herd of elk that came out and that attracted a number of cars also. All in all, this place is very strange - but it’s good though!

At any rate, once the elk gawkers left, we’re now the only ones here for probably 5 miles. This is nice. Went outside and the breeze is gently blowing, the sky cleared, millions of stars are out, and counted 3 shooting stars while listening to the coyotes serenade in the background. Other than the laptop pissing me off, this is a very nice place. VERY NICE!!!

Until the photos are retrieved off the laptop (hopefully in a couple weeks), there'll be no photos for today, just these crappy placeholders so I won't forget what was to go there. Sorry about that (but not as sorry as I am!)

What a difference a day makes. Wind picked up to about 30 mph about 4 AM. By coffee and sweet roll time at 8, the sky was dark and it was raining. It’s now 9, ahead of us it’s blue sky; to the south it’s very, very dark. And yes, I do have a photo of the dark clouds - but not here! T-storms are predicted for today with snow tonight. We'll be moving to Socorro anyhow today and perhaps I can upload some of this.

Or not. Motored 150 miles on down the highway and came to the little town of Magdalena, about 30 miles outside Socorro. There are some old roads here and a couple of places where the books indicate an abundance of JAFRs so pulled in to this little run down, out of the way, dilapidated campground with 3 other patrons – all permanent it seems. The campsite is out in the open with a view of the mountains in one direction and the plains in another. Quite nice. In fact, very nice.

Back to town. This time head 5 miles south to the Kelly Mine. This place charges people $10 a head to enter and one can then abscond with 10 lbs of JAFRs. Sadly no one was there to take our money so we had to leave. But once again, the journey was great.

5 PM. Too early to retire to the RV so hustle 10 miles east to Water Canyon. There’s supposed to be a great mine here where one can collect JAFRs to one’s content. The good news is that one must travel 2 miles up the creek. This would have been an awesome trail. It even required 4WD! Wow! I almost forgot where the T-case lever was! But unfortunately, a series of events occurred that forced us to turn around. (none of which were a mechanical failure.)

Got back to town about 7PM. Not only does this town roll up the sidewalks, they also roll up the streetlights (at noon, none the less!) Pretty sad. At one time this was a booming town. Now there are a few, very few businesses and many more derelict buildings. It’s yet another decaying town. Makes me sad.

Trudged the one mile out of town to the also derelict campground (but it’s good, though), had supper, a few beers, watched some lightning in the distance, planned the morro's trips and called it a night. Well, almost.

Tried the laptop again. Still kaput. This is major bullshit. So much for Hewlett Packard and their alleged good hardware! ARG!

With any luck, we'll be camping near I-25 tomorrow and perhaps Sprint might work and I might be able to get some of this uploaded. Time will tell. If not, the next day will be El Malpais (Valley of Fires) near Carrizozo (again no Sprint nor wifi but they have pistachios.) Tuesday may be Roswell. The UFO museum has an open wifi network, I suppose for any intergalactic travelers who cannot find a wifi connection between here and Mars.

8 PM. After a visit to the Socorro Springs Brewing Company and having a few (or more) Heynekamp Dutch Lagers and a pizza, I have been stereotyped as drunk. So what? I don't frickin' care! (By the way, this whole episode tonight will be a great topic for discussion this winter.........sometime.) This has been a strange day in more ways than one, but damn, this campground has unsecured wifi. For the geek in you, trying to recover from the laptop failure and convert everything to the "backup computer" (which is 9 months out of date), I was able to download the web site for Week4 from millenicom. Then added the Word writings of the last few days and upload - as a result have only lost the photos for Friday the 13th. To make matters more confusing, WS FTP doesn't work for my millenicom login. I've been fighting that for a week or so. Tonight, in a moment of inspiration, used the CMD version of FTP and it worked. Well hell! WSFTP must be screwed. Surprise. Downloaded CuteFTP and it works like a damn champ. Screw Ipswitch (along with Hewlett-Packard!)

Geek off. Now to the good stuff.

Today was to be a day of wandering the back roads around Socorro and looking for more JAFRs. Pulled into a nice RV park on the south end of town about 9:30 AM. The Sunday morning sun is shining brightly and it looks like a marvelous day - except for the dark, I mean really dark, cloud to the south. Since this is near an interstate, figured Sprint might work and I could use that to upload all this shit. To my amazement, there's an unsecured wifi network here. Go to Wunderground, look at the radar and there's this little, tiny, bright red cell to the south. Gee, it's coming right up I-25 toward Socorro. Big deal. It's a small blip. Well, based on my years of vast experience with such storms and my reluctance to not "live on the edge" (ha ha), wisely elected to NOT go into the arroyos and look for JAFRs but to cruise the main drag for a little while.

Jeezus H! Got to the north end of town and it didn't look good at all to the south - like is wasn't there! Elected to go to back to the south end of town and the RV park, about 3 miles. First the baseball size raindrops hit. Then the hail. Then the cloudburst - really! I have never in my life, ever, ever, seen it rain so hard. Visibility was less than a car's length. By the time we got half way to the RV park, the water in the streets was over a foot or more high. It was running down from the hills west of town, over the highway, and depositing boulders in the middle of the highway. This was frickin' awesome! Wow!

After avoiding all the stopped/stalled cars and plowing through the now 18 - 24" of water on the main drag, got back to the RV where the cloudburst has created a new wash through the middle of the gravel based campground. Very cool (of course than can be said since we parked on one of the high spots!) The RV is OK so after waiting a couple minutes, the cloudburst passed, the sun came out and we drove back down to see the carnage. There was, of course, massive amounts of water (shades of Hanksville!) In an effort to see where the runoff went down the side of the town, built on a hill, wound up on a 4WD road east of town and there was close to 6" of hail there. That just missed us. Drove around, admiring Mother Nature's fury for a couple hours. Now if this would happen back home, there would be panic in the streets. Public safety officials would be out in force "protecting" us. Here? NADA. Yeah, it's a heavy rain and quite unusual, but so???? Love it! Love this country and love the relaxed attitude of the people who live here! But, must admit, have never seen anything like this before in my life!

"Clouds"

Camp David

A River Runs Through It - the campground, that is.

Where else can we go? The west was clear so drove up to the top of a mountain where there had been some significant mining. This was pleasant. JAFRs were abundant so all were happy - that is - until another cloud started to form in the southwest. Time to leave. Got some good photos but have already exceeded the "photo limit" for today.

Where else can we go? The south was clear so headed that direction to another excellent 4WD road that led to some old mines. The road was great, with water still flowing down the trail. Even needed 4WD for 15 seconds. Again, JAFRS were all over the place so all was was well. But....it was sure dark up north - back towards Socorro.

Drive the 14 miles north back to town to find yet another heavy rain had pounded Socorro, not as much as the first, but impressive none the less. By this time the sun was out, there was a fantastic view of the brilliant red-orange hills to the east. It was warm, sunny and an unbelievably gorgeous Sunday evening. Again - wow!

How do you top a day like this? You drink beer and eat pizza. While this is my norm on many trips, it has not been a common occurrence on this one - except for tonight :) :) This place will be on the "must go" list perhaps for next spring.

So it's time to upload this crap, have a nightcap and see what tomorrow will bring as we head towards the Valley of the Fires (and no wifi for a while.....)

On the way back, found this fine specimen of a daily driver. Now there must be a good reason to have tire chains on the front wheels but that reason eludes me. At any rate, this was a first for me! You see it all out here! Maybe that would help me negotiate some of the mud holes with the FN JP!

Stopped in town at the BLM office to inquire about the "roads" and met up with a BLM guy who was very knowledgeable about the area and spent the next hour going over maps and explaining how the BLM will be turning that area into a 7,000 acre OHV area. It was a pleasure to talk to someone from the BLM that supports multiple use and equal access.

There have been many awesome churches/missions like this one on the trip. Needed to include a photo of one since this is so typical of the west.

Had lunch and then took the RV through a manual car wash to remove a major portion of Arizona. $9.00 in quarters later, it was mostly successful.

Next was the 2 hour drive to Valley of the Fires BLM campsite and the town of Carrizozo.

Morning has broken....but it can be fixed. What a great morning at Valley of the Fires. Too bad we have to leave. Motored west through the mountains to Capitan, home of Smoky the Bear. Great scenery, nice forest with lots of interesting looking roads. Need to come back here again.

Wound up in Roswell for lunch at the "Cover Up Cafe", complete with real bullet holes in the windows. They should have kept it covered. Nice waitress but crap food. Then of course were the shit shops. Not my cup 'o tea. So here I sit, hammering out more drivel while the local economy is being bolstered.

It looks like Lubbock, TX, may be only 90 miles out of the way. Lubbock, of course being the hometown of Buddy Holly. So after some deliberation and much research, elected to head the 180 miles through eastern New Mexico and some of the western panhandle of Texas to Lubbock and pay homage to Buddy Holly tomorrow.

There are those who might say that those 180 miles would be boring, boring, boring. But, as usual, it often is the journey that's as entertaining as the destination.

After crossing the Pecos River, the land changed dramatically. Gone were the hills and the bluffs along the river that seemed to last for miles and miles. This quickly became cowboy country for long way. Some of the ranches extended for 5 - 10 miles along the highway. The guy who did the steel art, described later, said it takes a square mile for each 15 head of cattle in a typical year!

The land changed from grazing to sand, and even an OHV area. Towns were 50 miles apart. YES! The writing on the side of one bar proclaimed "Last Chance! Last cold beer for 100 miles."

Soon the land changed again and there were cotton fields, hundreds of them, and bales of cotton at the collection points. And of course, there were the ubiquitous oil wells - sometimes as far as the eye could see!

Today started with a bang. We were downtown looking for the Holly Center when there was this humongous BOOM and a dust cloud about 3 miles away. The windows in downtown Lubbock rattled. Well, we had to go that way anyhow to the Windmill Museum so let's see what all the commotion was. Turns out, an LP gas facility blew up. There was debris, rocks, bricks, fiberglass and what not 1/4 mile away. Will try to log on to see if there is an online Lubbock newspaper with the details but I'd be amazed if there wasn't a fatality or two. This sure brought the TV news trucks with their upload dishes out of the woodwork.

It's the journey, not the destination, don'tcha know!

After the excitement, we did tour the windmill museum. Fascinating, as they say, but too limited a space here for photos.

This vacant building once held a record studio where he recorded his first few songs. They never charted and are collector's items today.

Then on to the Holly museum. It was small and hard to find but done up very well. It did have some strange items, tough, like his coloring book, Cub Scout uniform and his glasses. Yeah, it was a worthwhile detour. There was much more they had to see on the printed tour of Holly's Lubbock: his church, his home, his grade school, KDAV radio (yes, KDAV!), various places where he played. You get the idea. One place that we did go and get a photo was a car dealership where he and the Crickets would play music on the roof of the building to attract customers.

And this wrapped up the mini-tour. Note the last name. This is his family name but when he started recording, someone misspelled his last name and by the time they figured it out, it was too late to change so he used the name Holly.

This is the last of the major Buddy Holly places I've toured. A couple years ago, had the rare opportunity to tour the Norman Petty Studios in Clovis. Have also been to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and also the the crash site in Iowa. It would be great, absolutely great, to get to the Surf Ballroom in 2009 for the 50th anniversary of the Winter Dance Party. It's only 30 miles from my hometown.

And as a footnote, yes, the day the music died I indeed was delivering papers (in the snowstorm.) Wow. 50 years. Wow. Wow.

Gloves that were worn by one of the astronauts that walked tn the moon.

The damn coach batteries are frickin' fried. Left to their own devices, they drop to < 10.5 volts in about 3 hours. If I run the charger, it pumps 100 amps into them. Hmm. Since the furnace and lights run off 12 volts, this presents a problem. So periodically last night, got up every 3 hours or so, ran the generator for 1/2 hour and then went to bed. Left lovely Columbia, MO, at 7 AM and got into Pittsfield, via way of Mexico and Louisiana, about 9:30. Didn't stop to eat on the way.

Pulled into Lake Pittsfield, a city run campground that's one of the my favorites. It's just a very nice place!

'Twas a beautiful morning at Lake Pittsfield. Got a good camp site and throughout the day the weather was fantastic. The claims to fame for stopping here are (1) a Jeep Club meeting Saturday night and (2) the Pike County Fall Color Drive, a weekend where there are hundreds of vendors hawking their wares and hundreds of garage sales. Oh boy! In all fairness, the folks here really go all out for this event. Too bad the weather is scheduled to turn to crap tonight and rain most of tomorrow. On the other hand, it's a good thing we came the southern route back, given the dire predictions of rain, snow, sleet and hail in the Rockies tonight.

Found a way to fake the charger into not running 100 amps into the batteries. Set the temperature correction parameter on the charger to indicate the batteries are at 140 degrees. This seems to only pump 4 amps into the batteries instead of the 100. This will be a good fix for the next few days. BTW, I'm convinced the batteries were going bad and wouldn't accept a charge and that's the reason for the 100 amp charging current, not a failure in the charger. It's a theory.

No, this isn't a new design cell tower. This is a birdhouse ghetto in a neighboring town. Most folks wear hats here.

After driving around the day and supporting the local economy (again!), came back, took a nap and will now enter town and get a haircut. After being gone this long and not having a haircut before leaving (and sadly not getting a haircut at Pete & Co.), I make Grizzly Adams look good.

Back at 7PM. Donohoo, the barber of Pittsfield, was busy so grabbed a steak at the Red Dome restaurant, got a bottle of local cherry wine, came back and will try to catch up on email.

Saturday dawned sunny but cold. The weather forecast is for a cold rain later today. Too bad, people here have really spent a lot of time and effort to set up stands for food, crafts, and what-not. Got going at 8 and returned to the RV about 2, once the clouds came in. Around 4, the rains came and that pretty much put a kibosh on the festivities. Seems a shame. For example, across from us, under a shelter, is a group of people from the local hospital that are trying to have a party/picnic. They're having a hell of a time trying to get their fire going in the cold rain (although they seem to be having a great time playing football in the rain!) I suspect a lot of this kind of thing was planned for this weekend and has gone down the drain. Will cook a couple burgers and then head into town for the Club meeting tonight. Tomorrow is home and who-knows-what awaits :(

This has been a relatively good trip. The weather could have been better as the top was off the Jeep for only the first week, although for most of the rest of the trip the sun roof was opened while sightseeing. In retrospect, this was about 3 weeks too late for this kind of vacation. Won't do that again. On the plus side, found many new places to explore and have added them to the list. There were a few issues with the RV but nothing to really complain about. The FN JP performed flawlessly and significantly better than expected. My suspicion is that a 4" lift, 35" tires and 4.56 gears will be the order of business for this winter and maybe, just maybe, might even take it to Moab this spring.

End of the line. if you've made it this far in the drivel, you've either got a lot of stamina or are bored (or are reading this at work!)

Thanks for riding along.