Thursday we woke early to a variety of sounds. There was a periodic metallic “braap” (the
vent was open all night and was vibrating in the occasional wind gust). The heavy trucks and the birds were up and
active before 5 am; the doves picked up where the “one note bird” and robins
left off. I surrendered and got up
around 7. Tom resisted for another hour
or so.
We decided to skip a cooked breakfast. I’d had some Shredded Wheat miniatures and
coffee and we both munched snack bars to ward off hunger. The road from Naturita south toward Grand
Junction continued to be a narrow 2-lane country road, up and down and
around. A reason for this route, besides
avoiding some big passes, was to see a bit more of the Gateway country.
We’d come to Gateway over Labor Day weekend last year to see
the car museum We got a taste of the red
rock canyons that continued south from there and wanted to see more. Hwy 141 runs for miles between the red rock
cliffs and formations. One idea that was
put to rest, with finality, is that this is NOT a place to retire to. There are no towns of any size between Grand
Junction and Cortez. Any property out
there is either a ranch or a resort. We
agreed today on the terminology – we want to be out of town, but not out of
touch. The red rock country south of
Gateway is out of touch. A great place
to visit, but we wouldn’t want to live there, even aside from summer heat.
We stopped at Clark’s Family Orchard, thinking they might be
open to sell their preserved items. But,
like the other fruit stands, they were closed.
We had our cheese and cracker lunch, then headed to James M. Robb State
Park, Island Acres Section (isn’t that a mouthful?). Most of the sites are reserved starting
tomorrow, but we found one with no reserved tags on the post, so if we had to
stay another night … There is a winter
storm advisory for tomorrow afternoon through Sunday night. (Sound familiar?)
While sitting here thinking about the story I want to tell
when I start editing the video footage I took this week I looked up to see a
bright orange bird. A Bullock’s
Oriole. While the bird guide at hand
shows the orange being the same all over the bird, the rest of the colors fit. His head is a bit darker than the rest of his
body. It’s hard to miss this guy. Then a flash or red caught my eye on the
House Finch not too far from where I’d seen the Oriole. I haven’t seen the Mourning Dove, but we’ve
heard it. I guess we can expect to hear
it some time around 4:30 am tomorrow, too.
Update
Friday morning we
woke up not to doves or robins, but to ferocious wind rocking the
motorhome. With a winter storm warning
for Vail Pass that’s been moved up from this afternoon to 9 am today, we’re
going to see if we can just stay here another night or two. Wind is bad for driving a motorhome. Snow is bad for driving a motorhome. The two together … well, that goes beyond
polite words. As we pulled in to the
campground we were told to look on the posts for the reservations (they stick a
card in a window with the incoming reservation dates. The site we selected had no reservation card
at all, so we might be able to just stay here the whole weekend and let the
storm pass on through. Once we’re both
up and have had our coffee, we’ll unhook the car and go over to the office We got there before they started assigning sites to the folks coming in, so we're good for tonight. We'll see what tomorrow's weather forecast brings.
No comments:
Post a Comment