A Second Day in Arvada

First, a coach update for all of you who can't wait to see when something else breaks or falls off the Alpine!
 

-Dudley at Camping World Repair Center told us the cooling unit is shot on our refrigerator and that it would take them a week or more to get in the new reefer so we have ordered it through Pikes Peak Travelworld in Colorado Springs. They expect to have it waiting for us when we arrive for our long scheduled regular maintenance visit next Tuesday.

Don't worry Chase & Cayden Choudhry, your card WILL be on the door of the new refrigerator too.  And since it's an identical copy, it will look the same as well.

-Pat and Dave at Camping World Collision Center in Arvada told us the attachments for the new front AC cover (the one that flew off yesterday, not the one lost in the tornado near miss a month ago) must be made much more secure when its replacement arrives, is painted, and shipped to Camping World in Colorado Springs for its no charge re-installation. It may take 2-3 weeks to complete this task, but there is much for us to do within a 100 mile radius of Col Spgs so we should be quite fine there.

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Today was a sedate, home-body kind of day.

We dropped the coach at the shop for them to evaluate the lost AC cover. Then Mona did the laundry 3 minutes away from there while I washed the car, prepared a place for us to hopefully stay for the next several days in Colorado Springs, and completed our communication with both Camping World shops. Then we had a delicious pizza at Beau-Gos in Arvada. That's  a cool Denver family owned chain of about 5 large specialty pizza, etc. restaurants.

We had been to the Arvada Library over a month ago but it was time for Mona to check it out again so back we went.  She finished that exploration and read for awhile as I traipsed over the old downtown to areas I'd missed the last time. 

Colorado Trivia: the people who stayed in Colorado the most, long after the silver and gold played out, were the farmers and ranchers. But know one thinks of Denver as a farm town. Well, it, and its now-suburbs were, and many still are. In fact, Arva-Pride Flour was a well known local brand for over 100 years in this area.

I had thought of visiting the Clive Cussler Auto Museum, about 10 minutes from Arvada's Old Town but we were lazy and headed back to the coach at the shop, picked it up, and moseyed over for a third night at our favorite local shopping plaza (sorry Jen C!) Walmart, Wheat Ridge.

How could I visit Denver for over a month and NOT see his collection of classic cars!  Lazy. Just plain lazy.

But, Lisa, I only learned today that we've never seen the Shelby COBRA museum and shops in Boulder and our son lives 45 minutes from there so we've been there many times!

Tomorrow we'll rise a bit early for us (8 am.  Alarm time!!) to have breakfast and arrive early enough on Washington Street in Golden for the annual Buffalo Bill Day Parade and Wild West Show.

Then back to the coach to hitch the car for the 2 hour ride south.

New places to go, new people to meet. We can't wait!

-Ken

Weirdos at Walmart

After a hard day of wheeling and dealing with the Golden Colorado Camping World guys, Dudley and Guy, getting a new refrigerator and another new AC cowling ordered, AND walking for almost 2 hours over the grounds of the Golden, Colorado Railroad Museum's grand collection of rolling stock (see my earlier Face Book Post) there's nothing like arriving in the early evening to a well appointed home and a relaxing hour with a good book and Mona.

As the rest of our neighbors gather in their homes for the evening out along the far corner of the Walmart Wheat Ridge parking lot we all share a comradely silence, not knowing who the people are in the next RV, truck or car.  Yes, car.  More than you might ever think, unless you've spent multiple nights yourself sleeping regularly in your reclining  front seat. At this Walmart there have been at least 10-20 vehicles beside our own RV each evening we have been here and only a couple are truckers catching a snooze or RV'ers boon docking by choice.  Many are men, or women, just saving cash for whatever they feel is a necessity elsewhere by sleeping rent free in any kind of vehicle in a willing Walmart lot now.

Then we get this Face Book post. Brian O'Rourke is working this week with clients in Pennsylvania but he sees our earlier post that we are staying here for the third time as our coach repairs get done, and re-done, and he says, "Hi guys.  Be careful out there.  I hear there are weirdos around that place."  Mona is not amused as visions of things far from sugar plums dance in her head.

When SUDDENLY, after full darkness has fallen, we are both shaken from our concentrations, Mona in her book and I in my computer, to feel the entire coach rock ever so gently.

Did Mona do something to make it rock?  Have I done something?  Oh dear, what did Brian just tell us about this place?  We're in Golden Colorado tonight, right?  No, its Wheat Ridge. Do they use 911 for emergencies? What if they don't and I call and get an intimate chat line???

I head for the door to open it, looking out the windows all around as I walk the length of the living area for who might have unsettled our settling in.  I open the door carefully and at that moment glance back along the curb side of the vehicle to see a form, a shape, moving in the shadow, at the rear ladder, which allows access, for anyone, to the roof!

And at that perilous moment I see Peggy O'Rourke, and friends Titus and Julie, come running toward me down the length of the RV yelling, "Watch out for weird people out here!!"

How cool!  Our first actual visitors to our home since we left Hope Church way back on Sunday June 8th!

After Mona showed them around our home (3 minutes- turn right, turn left. Look. Leave) we all sit down for a chat, which evolves quickly into a decision to head for a local Cold Stone Creamery for some much needed calories (I'm down a few for the day myself) before they close. Finally, an hour later or so, Mona is back to reading, this time in bed, and I'm back at the computer finishing this blog.

Its been quite an eventful day today.  Begun by waking in the peaceful lot at Parker UMC, realizing the reefer won't reef, heading back to Camping World in Golden to find out later that we need a new reefer altogether. Losing the AC cover on the way. Deciding what to do the rest of the day in the CRV (read, yes, but WHERE!)

Then to learn that weirdo's lurk in our choice of home site for this evening!

But we, the intrepid and brave explorers, adventurer's both; we who carry the DeWalt name into places no DeWalt has ever gone before; we love ice cream so... all's well that ends with ice cream, we always say!

-Ken

Dinosaur's ROCK

Today our coach received its new heat protector switch (the old one jammed and was the cause of the fridge malfunction) and we decided to have two new 130 watt solar panels attached to the roof and added in series to the factory installed 100 watt unit. This meant we replaced the former controller with a bigger one.

The batteries only received a couple of sunlit hours this evening but are already loving the extra juice and our coach is much easier to keep comfortable and well lit when boon-docking.  The fridge is cooling down
                                                      now.  We'll know if all is well when we open it tomorrow morning, but
                                                      all seems fine.


We're parked at Parker United Methodist Church tonight, just south of Denver.  Quiet, comfortable. TY Rebecca and the Parker UMC Trustees!!!




This afternoon, just a couple of miles from Camping World and our repairs, was a 100.000.000 year old time machine.  Dinosaur Ridge State Park.  On a north-south ridge first bisected by east-west Interstate 70 in 1970 geologists and paleontologists have found a wonderful way to show the modern world what happened over the span of several aeons of ancient earth. From the time when a great seaway covered what we now know as the Great Plains and lower Rockies forward.



Kayla was our guide in her own wonderful machine, an electric group-size golf cart.  She is a student at the Golden, CO, School of Mines and hopes to be a research geo-engineer at graduation.  She loves her subject, and was able to answer most every question my fertile little mind could toss at her.

We rode the cart up the incline road reserved for hikers, bikers and us from stop to stop where we could see, touch, and learn about each
                                                      epoch and what animals lived at this
                                                      place in it.

Did you know Alligators once lived in Colorado?  Though a bit hard to see in the small photo to the left, scientists have decided the parallel vertical scratch marks left in the center of this now rock slope were placed there by the scraping of two front feet of a giant alligator when this was a mud flat that got covered quickly with some kind of debris which preserved the marks.

The other short 'line' depressions are marks left by fallen plant life, sticks and branches of the alligators habitat.

 Here Kayla is showing us the 'bone yard'.  A collection of Jurassic period bones of all types collected at a place where possibly a river or flood deposited them.

The bones are the darker masses within the lighter rock.

 At another location Kayla pointed out something I had never seen or heard of before. Some dino footprints are saved from the bottom up.  In this case, imagine yourself walking across a muddy flat.  Your feet sink in, depressing the layers of mud.  It dries and several million years later some nosy scientist digs across your path and discovers the depressed mud, now filled in with sediment, showing how deep your feet sank, which, along with the length of your tread, helps determine your weight.

There is NO peace for a weight watcher, is there?

Finally Kayla took us to the foot print beach.  Here, for all time, are the preserved, and charcoal hi-lighted, footprints of bird like creatures and larger dinosaurs that exist now only in the DNA memories of some birds and other creatures.


Where will we have trod that others may find our steps preserved and know that we were here?

Perhaps in the directions our children take, and the actions of those who follow us.

We call that 'legacy'. These ancient creatures could not leave us much, but they have left us proof of their existence.

What proof of our existence will outlive us?

And will it be a 'proof' our grandkids will be proud to claim?

-Ken