On the road again....now in Eagle Nest, NM

After a couple of weeks of sweltering Arklahoma weather we finally got back on the road this week. Daughter Tracey and grandsons Matthew and Timothy were “in tow” with Tracey and either Timothy and me or Matthew in her Suburban following the motorhome. They'll be spending about 10 days with us before having to return to Fort Smith.

We left Sunday morning and drove about 350 miles to Fort Supply Lake, Oklahoma, and spent the night at a great Corp of Engineers park there.

We didn't do much on Tuesday since everyone was tired from our 2-day trip. We did, however, take a short drive to Angel Fire just to see a bit of the immediate area. And since Timothy's birthday is July 24 and we're always gone at that time, we had an early party for his sixth birthday. Timothy (on the left) had already made friends with Bradley (on the right), a 7-year-old grandson of another couple in the park, so we had cupcakes and presents.
The Fridgits that Timothy had been so enthralled with when we took him to Mid-America Science Museum in Hot Springs a few weeks ago were a bit hit!
Weather has been perfect since we arrived—it gets down to the mid-40's by morning, but it quickly warms up when the sun pops over the mountain and by afternoon it gets into the mid-70's.

The first two days when we got up, there was a herd of about 40 elk between us and the lake, a wonderful sight to see with that morning coffee! The second morning we watched as they wandered down the lake from directly in front of the motorhome and up the hill toward the highway. They waited for traffic to clear then crossed the highway, jumped the fence on the other side and headed up the mountain.
However, there was one calf that didn't make it over or through the fence with the others and kept pacing back and forth between the fence and the highway. Momma elk and two other calves stayed just on the other side of the fence and she kept encouraging baby to come on. A second momma came back from the herd which had by this time proceeded on to the top of the mountain and she took the other two calves with her to join the rest. By this time we were getting concerned about the safety of the calf with there getting to be more and more traffic. So Roger walked up to the highway and started toward the calf which startled it enough that it finally went THROUGH the barbed-wire fence! I'm sure momma gave it a good lecture and they headed on up the mountain to re-join their herd.

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a long day. We left at 7 a..m. and drove to Antonito, Colorado, to ride the Cumbres-Toltec Scenic Railroad from there to Chama, New Mexico. Tracey, the boys and I boarded the train and Roger proceeded to Chama in the Explorer to pick us up at the other end. He stopped at several look-out spots where the tracks and the highway met and we took pics of each other along the way.

We arrived in Chama at about 4 p.m. and had a 3-hour drive back to Eagle Nest. With several stops along the way we arrived back at the park at about 8:00. Like I said earlier, it was a long day—but it was fun and since the boys are such “train nuts”, it will likely be one of the highlights of their vacation.

Today we didn't have anything planned except for me to get pictures downloaded, blog updated and for Roger to get both the internet and TV satellite dishes to work. We did manage to accomplish everything except the TV--we'd upgraded our old Dish receiver to a dual receiver with DVR just before we left home and it was working fine with there, but it's not working with our KingDome dish. For some reason we only get a few channels in the living room and NONE in the bedroom. Tracey and the boys went for a hike at Cimarron Canyon State Park, Roger ended up going for a motorcycle ride, and we all drove over to Red River and to check out some activities for later.

Hopefully, since I'm back online so I can use the internet from the RV I won't be so long getting the blog updated....check back in a couple of days to see what we've found to do.