Back to the Future - Headed to Colorado Springs

Alabama Stuff

Playing poker - John

Uncle Tim took us on a hay ride, it was really fun jumping on and off it. John fell at one time but we kept moving so he had to hurry up and catch up. Though his knee was all banged up. -Michael

I had just fallen off when this picture was taken - John

Christmas in the RV. See the tree on the table?

This was just after I got my bow - John

Playing guitar and piano - John

We went to the De Soto Caverns in Alabama. It was really neat inside and they had a Christmas presentation in it. -Michael

In the caverns - John

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This was on New Years eve and a firework scrap hit me in the eye. -Michael

Lighting off fireworks - John

After completing our RV repairs and replacing the front left rim on our van which was cracked, we were ready to leave Alabama and head towards Colorado Springs. While it seems crazy to head to the higher elevation and cold in an RV in January, we thought it would really make it clear if the cold would be a problem for us in Colorado. If we would be okay int he RV, we would definitely be okay once we settled into a house. 

Our route took us through Memphis where we planned to stop for the night. We planned on having ribs for supper, but got into town a little late. We called a round to some of the higher rated places in Memphis and found that most were going to be closed before we could get there. Luckily Central BBQ was still open and we manged to pull in just before they locked up.  When we called to check on their hours, we told them we were coming and they were very friendly. The manager liked our story of traveling the country in the RV and he hooked us up with souvenir cups, a bottle of hot and sweet sauce, and their in house potato chips. We got enough ribs and pulled pork to fill us for supper and have plenty of leftovers. Of course it was very good. Memphis knows BBQ.

Central BBQ was a great place to eat in Memphis, Tennessee. The service was really good. -Michael

I learned if you eat BBQ ribs and and it's a little spicy, your nose may run. If you used a paper towel to clean your hands while eating the ribs, but don't have a tissue to wipe your runny nose, you can use the paper towel and it will smell nice and smokey. I'm thinking about marketing BBQ tissues right now. Bacon ones would be good too. Maybe boiled cabbage.... um...maybe not.

It was pretty late when we pulled into the Graceland Campground which is right behind the Heartbreak Hotel and across the street from Graceland. The next morning we noticed they had Elvis music playing on loudspeakers that could be heard along the walking path in the campground. We walked over to take a picture by the gate to Graceland and the souvenir shops along the way also had Elvis music playing outside. It was pretty neat in a very cheesy sort of way. 

This was the entrance for the mansion of Elvis. -Michael

We pressed on down into Arkansas and had a lot of bumpy travel along the roads in Arkansas. There was a fair a mount of construction going on. Unlike many places we had seen on our trip where it looked the road construction was just a pork project in an area that didn't need it, this place needed the work. In between bumps we could see an amazing amount of migrating geese, ducks, and blackbirds. It was almost like a swarm of locust with big skeins (flocks) of geese in formations that were changing rapidly in the strong wind. I noticed a whole lot of very big well fed local hawks along the roadside. I'm guessing the passing blackbirds provide a source of winter fattening for the predatory birds.

My friend Mike, who's family we had visited in Florida about a month ago, had told me years ago about how good the BBQ was from a small place in Arkansas near Little Rock AFB where he was stationed as a C-130 instructor. He had talked about ordering it for delivery some time and having us over to try it in Virginia where we lived, but we never got around to it before he went to Florida and I went to California. When I planned the route to go through Arkansas and look for diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds State Park, I saw it took us through Little Rock and I knew I had to plan a stop at the Mean Pig.

We pulled into the parking lot and took up the length of the whole building when we parked in the back of the Mean Pig. When we went in, I noticed a "challenge" listed on the menu, and a lot of celebrity photos on the wall near the restrooms. I saw one of them was Adam Richman from the Travel Channel TV show Man V. Food. From that, I could guess the challenge was eating some big serving of food, but I went to the counter and asked what it was. The owner (Buddy) told me it was a timed event to eat a whole medium chopped pork sandwich with Shut Up Juice on it.

Suddenly my mind wandered to a happy place and I thought if the shut up juice worked I would buy a few oil tankers full of it. Seriously, I have a whole scroll of names I would like to send Shut Up Juice to. His son in law handed me a toothpick dipped in the Shut Up Juice and I thought if it was really concentrated and a toothpick drop was enough, maybe I could get by with just one tanker. Unfortunately, it wasn't what I was thinking. It's a super powerful hot sauce that is 2,000 times hotter than a jalapeno, and just a tiny taste set my tongue and the roof of my mouth on fire. Buddy told me they pour the WHOLE bottle of sauce on the sandwich, and I didn't want to try the challenge if I planned to keep driving in the RV for the next couple days. He said I would feel miserable, so I decided to pass on the challenge and go for sandwiches with sweet sauce instead. If you want to see one of the less than 200 winners out of thousands who have taken the challenge, click here for a clip from Man V. Food. We got a family deal of chopped pork, great big buns, and BBQ beans to take to eat in the RV.

Buddy walked outside to take a picture of us in front of his sign, and he told us about how he started the Mean Pig after he retired from the Air Force. I asked him if he had just retired now and was thinking about starting it, would he do it. He told me he wouldn't start it in this economy, and he told me he had seen 20 food businesses come and go in his town in just the past year. In spite of the cult-like following and celebrity traffic to his store, he said he was nowhere where he should be with his business. I was torn between disappointment and reassurance because I had previously been planning to open a food business when I retired, but I had decided not to because the risk vs. reward ratio is so highly tilted to the risk side now. 

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A few hours later we arrived at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas. They had very nice campsites and there were very few people in the park. We set up just before sunset and got an early start the next morning to go looking for diamonds. This is the only diamond mine in the world where people can hunt for an keep their own diamonds. Over 19,000 diamonds have been found at this one location, but finding them isn't easy. We spent the morning looking, including scooping up buckets of dirt and filtering it in the cold water and scanning the surface. We had no luck and decided we didn't want to spend the rest of the day trying. It was a check in the box to get and something I had wanted to do for years, but we had enough to say "been there, done that".

This was a area in Arkansas were we looked for diamonds. -Michael

All rough, no diamond here.

We drove on into Oklahoma and stopped for the night in an a tiny campground in Ada. The next morning we decided to make a long day of driving and made it through Okalahoma City, through the top of Texas, and in to Capulin, NM where we stopped for the night. Capulin is by a dormant Volcano and is at an elevation of 6844 feet so there was plenty of snow on the ground and freezing temperatures when we arrived. This was our first night of camping in our RV in well below freezing temperatures. We thought we were ready as long as the tank heaters in the RV worked.

We had two electric heaters to use so we wouldn't burn through our propane too fast using the furnace. I thought is would be better to use them than burn so much propane and have to move the RV to fill the tank so often once we got settled in the spot in Colorado Springs. The next morning the water pump didn't work and I learned a lesson. The furnace heat is ducted into the compartment with the water pump. Using the electric heaters kept the furnace from coming on and therefore, the compartment got too cold. I thawed out the pump with heater tape and a hair drier and was pleased to see there was no damage. The tank heaters had worked, so the dump tanks had not frozen. While I worked on thawing the pump, Maui had a great time in the snow and playing with a bright blue eyed husky that was at the campground.

Crazy dog.

See Maui's eyes?.......... CREEPY - John

Shortly after leaving the campground, we crested a hill and got our first good glimpse of the beginning of the Rocky Mountains.  It was a really inspiring sight. Off to the side of the road we saw herd after herd of antelope and counted well over a hundred of them as we neared the interstate to turn and head up into Colorado. I was having a really good feeling about the decision to live near the mountains and western scenery.

There were a lot more of these antelope as we drove along.

As we neared the Colorado border we planned to stop and take a picture by the sign, but the sign snuck up on me and there wasn't a good place to pull over in the RV, so we just blew right past it and kept pressing on to Colorado Springs.

The first signs of something not flat, only 1127 miles from Alabama!

The view driving into Colorado Springs. -Michael

 We enjoyed the scenery all the way up but didn't like the really strong and gusty winds that were pushing us from the side. There was a winter storm coming in and snow and low teens temperatures were forecast for the afternoon. We wanted to top off the propane tank and get settled in at the campground before it hit. I had the heater tape to wrap the water hose, but still needed some other winterizing supplies and wanted to have plenty of time to prepare. We stopped at a Home Depot near a Wal Mart and a sporting goods store so I could get what I needed and Shelli and the boys could look for some snow boots. Unfortunately I didn't find a place to fill the propane tank and was running out of time as the sky was turning dark.

We pulled into Colorado Springs Saturday afternoon and made it to the campground just as the first snow flakes started falling. I expected it to get very interesting, but the snow quit before there was a good dusting and I was able to get us set up without a problem just one spot over from where we had parked in September. The sun went down and the temperature dropped like a rock, so I didn't hook up the water and decided to just use what we had in the tanks for the first night. We went to dinner that first night at the house of someone Shelli had talked to on the phone about the school Michael and John were about to start going to. She had a son that would be in Michael's class and we thought it would be good to know someone before the first day. They were a very nice family with one of them a local from Manitou Springs and the other from Kentucky. We all got along well and it was nice to have some new friends right away.

At a indoor rock climbing place - John

We ran a mix of the furnace and the electric heaters to stay warm the first night and it worked well. I ran the front electric heater more than the front furnace and the rear furnace more than the rear electric heater so the water pump would have heat. We expected a long cold night with lots of snow, but we just got the cold. The kids were disappointed the next morning when we didn't have any snow, but I was pretty happy about it. The sun came out and it didn't even feel that cold. When we left for church, we didn't even take jackets even though it was about 20 degrees. All along as we considered moving to Colorado Springs, we were really concerned about how we would feel about the cold. Well it was pretty dang cold but it didn't seem like a problem.... yet.

We put the heat tape on the water hose and insulated it with pipe insulation all the way from the spigot to the hookup on the RV. I didn't buy tape for the dump hose and figured I could just dump it during the day when the sun comes out and warms everything up. I spent the next several days finding cold spots or drafts in the RV and insulating them. I put the foil covered bubble wrap insulation on every window because that was a big source of cold even though the windows are double paned. Even with the insulation, the aluminum window frames are like heat sinks straight to the outside and we found that condensation forms and then freezes on them when it gets below around 10 degrees. Luckily, the air is dry and there isn't much condensation to worry about.  Pretty much each morning the sun comes out and everything feels really comfortable. When it is sunny, we take down the bubble wrap and let the sun warm up the RV. It does a great job and we normally don't run the heater during the day until the sun heads off to the west behind Pike's Peak.

We have had a few spells of really strong winds where the whole RV shakes as the gusts up to 70 mph rush down the mountain. You can certainly feel the cold when the wind is blowing, and anything left laying around outside ends up somewhere else outside when the wind blows like that. We have had a few times when the forecast was for a lot of snow, but right where we are has not had any accumulation that lasted more than a couple of hours once the sun came out. Just a few miles north of us they have had enough to cover the roads and have drifts a couple of feet high. Right up the hill from us to the West they have had well over a foot a few times. This has been just right for me. There hasn't been any accumulation to climb up and brush off the RV, but we have been able to drive around and look at it. One morning on the way to church everything just a couple of miles away from us was covered in snow. The entire view was white with every tree limb covered and it was really beautiful. As the wind blew, the dry powder blew around and the sky looked like it was shimmering as the sun lit the crystals. The snow isn't a heavy wet mess and is really pretty nice.

Maui nose all about snow now

There aren't a lot of people in the campground through the winter.

We have had temperatures down to 1 degree and we haven't had any problems with water freezing. However, Maui ran into a little freezing trouble when he ran into the creek one day when the temperature was about 17 degrees. There was plenty of ice along the edge of the creek, but the center was still running and Maui splashed around while playing with some other dogs.  The water froze on him right away. He was almost instantly covered from whiskers to tail with ice.  He even had rocks that froze to his fur as they were splashed up.  We had to bring him into the RV to thaw and then dry him with the hair dryer and place him in front of the heater. He shivered for about 15 minutes, and I bet he was happy it wasn't a long walk back from the creek. Hopefully he learned his lesson because that could be very dangerous. Unfortunately there was a puppy that ran out onto a lake nearby here and fell through the ice recently, and his owner died in front of his children after going in to get the puppy out.

Maui ran into a river and got frozen, he even had rocks sticking to him. -Michael

This was when Maui started getting cold. Being frozen didn't bother him until he got in the RV. -Michael

We have been fortunate to meet several very nice families here. For the first several weeks in a row we were invited to the same friends house for Saturday football games.

More stuff Johns birthday. 

:( - John

That was good Cookie cake - John
Check out my hair?

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Skiing

Zach Miles taught us how to snowboard. -Michael

Weeeeeeeee - John

Snowboarding was really fun. -Michael

Colorado Springs has a good mix of people and space. It doesn't feel crowded anywhere and the traffic isn't bad. There are a plenty of businesses with at least one of just about everything you can think of. The major chains are very well represented here with two Costco's, I think four Wal-Mart Supercenters, maybe three Super-Targets, four Petco's, three of four Home Depots, he same number of Lowes, a whole lot of movie theaters, malls, mini malls, and restaurants. 

That burger took me 2 days to eat and i still didn't eat it all - John

Maui hanging out on a trail in Garden of the Gods

Picture of the route

We went through 29 states on this trip

We made it through the winter and Colorado Springs is officially our new home. We looked at hundred of houses and didn't find a fit. There was always something we didn't like or a price/updates required combination that just didn't make sense to us. We decided to rent until we could get used to the area and find a house with the right combination of price, location, quality, view, etc. The first house we went into to consider as a rental felt really warm and homey, with a nice location and views of the Air Force Academy, Pikes Peak, and Garden of the Gods from various windows. It was big and had a movie room in the basement with a 120" screen and projector. When we decided to rent it for sure, we brought the boys by to see it. We knew if they saw it and we didn't rent it, they would be crushed after seeing the movie room.

The more we visited the house getting ready to rent it, the more we liked it. The owners were moving to Korea for an Army change of duty station. They really wanted to sell the house, but didn't think they could in time for the move, so they listed it for rental. Shelli became good friends with the owner and the next thing we knew we had agreed on a purchase price and move in date.


We moved in April 1st and jumped right into a few projects to personalize the house. Things didn't really need repair, but we wanted some things changed since we are planning to actually live in one place for a long time now. We front loaded everything we thought we wanted to do. We added stucco and changed the color of the house, replaced the carpet, put in iron balusters in the stairs, changed hardware in the kitchen and doors to rubbed bronze, painted a couple of rooms (Michael's was pink and had to be changed right away), and did some landscaping changes.

We spent the spring moving in and adjusting. Betsy, Popa, Jodi and Nathan came out for a visit in June and stayed for a few weeks. Experienced the fire evacuations, we had a family of four evacuate to our home in the middle of the night while they were here. We did the normal tourist things......
Add pictures and pictures of engagement here
Joey has always wanted a saltwater aquarium so he decided to set his up while Jodi was visiting. Did I mention, we now have four aquariums? Seriously, they are beautiful and Joey has worked extremely hard to get them customized and established.
No vacations for us this summer since we just spent the last year on the road. However, the boys did head south with the Alabama crew in July down to Texas to visit the Jones family and then headed to Alabama along with a trip to the beach. In total, they were gone about three weeks.

Boys started and adjusting well to middle school just 1/4 mile from our home. Playing soccer and both have great coaches and excellent teams. Joey still waiting on official 501-3c document from IRS to get Angels of Americas Fallen started.  I volunteer at the kids school on different occassions and I am getting back into running on a regular basis.  Did the incline (slowly) with a friend (1 mile of stairs that ascends 2,000 ft). View at the top was amazing and reminded me of why we chose to live in Colorado Springs!
Trip is officially over....sold the RV today on Shelli's birthday.

Shelli - Selling the RV was somewhat bitter sweet. We made many memories this past 1 1/2 years... some good, some bad but all made together. I think the biggest lesson in all of this for me has been the realization of having a huge amount of time off together is not what makes our lives enjoyable, it has been finding a bigger purpose of what to do with the time we are given, growing together and strenghtening one another in our faith.  I am so thankful that Joey was diligent and made this opportunity happen for us. It was definitely 'unchartered' territory for me but I am seeing with each passing day just how fleeting our time is with Michael and John. The teenage years are hitting and the timing of our journey could not have happened at a more appropriate time. For this, I am thankful and I am blessed!