Not much commentary here, just a few photos made before I got my 4WH fixed (vacuum hose), new brakes (rivets cutting into rotors), and new rear tires (cracked from 12 years of desert). All the above is very important when climbing mountainsides! These fixes will give more and better views, to be posted later.

The green is overwhelming for a desert rat. You just gotta see this sometime:

There is a great contrast between green and rocks. The Rocky Mountains are appropriately named:

There are lots of springs, streams, and water falls high in the mountains (I kept looking for a Coors or Evian delivery truck):

I did not want to overload your bandwidth, so more pictures are posted in other topics.

Where in the World is South Mineral Campground?

Finally hit the road and traveled to Silverton, CO. The campground I am parked at is absolutely beautiful, and I am parked at 9876 foot altitude, according to GPS. Last night the low was 35 degrees outside, 50 inside until I got some heat going.

There are ghost towns, four-wheel-drive trails, fishing lakes and creeks, and of course Silverton itself, the end point of the well known Durango-Silverton Steam Train Trip. Silverton is a tourist trap two-street town where property goes for about $150,000 for a tiny lot just large enough to support a house of 1600 square foot or so. So if you did not buy it 15 years ago, and do not live in CA, then forget it.

Town is somewhat trying. One poorly stocked ad expensive grocery store, a small lumber yard with a few hardware items, a gazillion fudge and ice cream joints. There is a noticeable lack of traffic, compared to, say, Creede or Pagosa Springs. Perhaps they have over-priced themselves.

My campground is a few miles out of town. Here are a few shots, but like many views on my AK trip, a camera cannot do justice to the valley that I am camped in.

My campsite looks like this (rear view):

This front view gives a perspective not noticeable in the above shot:

And, finally, this is what lulls me to sleep every night, just a few hundred feet away. Annie has already been wading:

We will be leaving Wolf Creek Campground tomorrow AM, destination as yet unknown. I will probably not know until I get there. I ran out of onboard water this AM, and I have forwarded mail waiting in Durango, so I guess it is time. I have an idea about how I can use water from a 5-gallon container, other than just pouring it out as needed, but not having a water container, I cannot try it.

We had a real rain last night, lots of thunder boomers and water. That was the first real rain, other than light showers, that I have seen for the three weeks I have been here.

Two nights ago the campground hosts invited me and “Mr. X” to hamburger supper. Was a good diversion. Jay has been wanting to wax my old jeep ever since I arrived. So yesterday we struck a deal. I had my carpet cleaning supplies out to clean my carpet. So I cleaned his motorhome carpet, and an unbelievable number of throw rugs, and we then washed Jeep in creek water and gave it a quick wax job. Made Jay happy, so it was worth it.

Mr. X did not want his photo taken. He is a colorful character from “near Austin.” He travels these parts every summer picking up odd carpentry jobs, tieing fishing flies, etc. Tent camps alone with his dog. (the spell checker refuses to accept ‘tieing’, but I know no other way to spell it!

Finally got a thunder boomer about sundown yesterday. About time! The heat wave is affecting the weather here as everywhere. We have been expecting a campfire restriction but none has been imposed yet. New Mexico has placed a fire restriction, or so I heard. I drove to Durango for some chores yesterday, and it was 96 F there, warmer than here.

I will leave in a few days and go through Durango, pausing to retrieve forwarded mail, then North to somewhere cooler. As it turns out, the area I am in, just west of Wolf Creek Pass, is beautiful, but East of South Park and west of Pagosa Springs becomes not as nice. The San Juan River and Wolf Creek valleys are absolutely beautiful.

It is hard to leave when the front yard, back yard, left yard and right yard look like this:

My two year old printer that has printed probably 20 pages at most started balking, so I needed a new printer/scanner. The printer would not share, and probably never did. For that I needed a store that sells printers. After searching the web, it appeared that Walmart in Durango was the best bet. So off we went on about a 150 mile round trip. Found a nice printer (HP PSC 1610v) with lots of features I will never use, but the manual said that it will printer share, and it will fit in the designated place in the MH, so HP it was. Notwithstanding that HP is not my favorite brand.

And yes, it works as advertised (a stretch for any computer equipment manufacturer these days). At least it shared. But… I dug thru the box about a half dozen times, looking for the elusive USB cable. Now, everything I have purchased in the last 5 years has always included a USB cable. But the HP manual had an asterisk beside USB cable in the manual, not a mention on the outside of the box. “Not included” it said. So I found a 150-mile round trip between me and a functioning printer!

Alas, I had to become an ‘Indian Giver’ (that is probably politically incorrect). I gave my old printer, which would probably work fine on another machine, to the camp host at this campground, along with the USB cable. So I had walk back to his site and retrieve the cable.

Project No. 2 was also completed. I managed to buy parts to rig a feeder hose from a 5 gallon gasoline Jerry Can to my small generator. The small gen has less than a gallon capacity, and constant refilling from the 5 gallon can was becoming a trying issue.

I was reminded by a reader that I had not posted for a while. Well, that is true, I guess. Mainly because I haven’t moved. I am still at Wolf Creek Campground, CO.

This area is so nice, I have begun to feel like I live here permanently. But the water tank is on the lower half, and the holding tanks are on the upper half, so I will have to move for that reason, if no other! Of course, I could always return here.

But, the weather is getting a little warm here (90 daytime). So in a few days I will be traveling toward Durango and northward. Today I was just trying to determine where the best place to intercept my mail would be, probably Durango. Nest I need a NFS campground that has trees far enough apart that I can ‘see’ the satellite. Only way is to go look.

I did buy a spinning rod and reel, and some lures, and a fishing license. But I haven’t used it yet. That some-$125.00 would have bought a lot of fish!