Flight of the Monarch, Voyage 3, Day 7

Star Date July 12, 2016

Today was short driving day, Santa Fe NM to Chama NM. Good roads, steady winds, and good climbs. Arrived in Chama shortly before 1300 hrs. We are staying at the Rio Chama  RV Park which is very shady  with level sites. The Internet service works well if you hold your PC with your feet while walking down the highway in the right hand lane on your hands while drinking a smoothie. I don't  like smoothies so the Internet device is nonexistent for me.  And the phone service is not much better and also nonexistent. In fact this note may not go out. If you don't get it please let me know.

We are next to the Chama rail station. We will ride the train over the mountains into Colorado and back 2 days from now.

We walked to a restaurant in town this evening, the first time this trip to purchase a meal. Foster's Hotel, Restaurant, and Saloon great food, great company, fair prices, and shitty service. We were there for 83 hours, well maybe that is stretching it a bit but you catch my drift.
A sign on the wall in the restaurant, Unattended Children will be given espresso and a free puppy.  I pulled Brenda close and held her hand.

Walking at 7807 feet is noticeable to us flatlanders. It will take a couple of days to build up some extra red blood cells.

The Star Ship Monaco climbs well, just as her predecessor. On a climb the V10 3 valve per cylinder sounds like a Ferrari race car traveling at 200 mph except a Ferrari traveling at 200 mph probably burns less fuel than the Star ship traveling at 55 mph!

My goal for tomorrow is to learn to drink smoothies.

Mileage for today 119 miles
Trip total 1048 miles

/s/ Chef Julio

Day 6, Flight of the Monarch, Voyage 3

Star Date 7/11/16

We decided to stay at the Santa Fe N.M. KOA one more day. They told us they were full last evening when we inquired about staying one more night so Brenda asked them to put us one a wait list. I walked to the office this morning at 0830 hours and as luck would have it we got our same camp spot. I know why you're asking yourself why we would want to stay here one more day. It's simple, we have good cable and wifi here, the Bachlorette comes on this evening, driving up here got a little exciting at times yesterday due to the 35 mph cross wind gusts coming through the canyons, and the winds were forecast to be Fresh Gale with wind speeds in excess of 40 mph today. And they are.  The winds are from the west and we would be heading north. The winds come so fast through some of the canyons that the state had put up wind socks.  Many of the wind socks had blown away if that tells you anything.

Things went wrong yesterday. The Ipad locked up and screen would not do anything. Control buttons would not do anything. So what was a First Officer to do? Take an Iphone and ask Google what to do to solve it.  It told me to hold down on the off button and the back button at the same time until your fingers start cramping to the point where it causes the Commander to ask, why are you weeping" and the Ipad should reset.  And it did!  Yea. One problem solved.

Problem number 2 - The Commander had been whining for a day of why there was no hot water.  The water heater would not work on gas or electric. I checked the breakers. All okay. So, again to Google. Some hints but no real solutions given. So i wounded if a wire had come off in the control panel at the hot water heater.  Nope, all okay.  But there was one wire that looked strange. I finally figured out (SWAG) that it must be some sort of small capacitor or thermal relay. So I temporally bypassed it and voilà, the water heater lit. I would rather be lucky than good.  Now if I could figure out why my MAC sometimes has a double space between lines.

I took the suspect wire to the KOA office to see if they had a spare since they seemed to have an extensive election of RV parts.  The owner of the part looked at it and said yep, those things quit all the time. He didn't have any but he said if you find them, buy two.  They don't last. He said he had bypassed his 2 years ago. So I will replace mine but not until tomorrow and I will buy 2.  Milton, have you ever had to replace yours?

I asked the owner while I was in the office how did he decide to buy a KOA. He said he and his wife lived in Dallas he worked for a technology firm.  He was laid off dung the downturn of 2007/2008. His wife had a double mastectomy due to breast cancer (she too now has passed her 5 year point of being cancer free).   But she always felt better in the high desert so they bought this KOA and moved here. Brenda asked her about all of the hummingbirds they have here. She explained all of different species of hummingbirds, colors and which one were the most aggressive toward other hummers. The Rufous is the mean one. I personally think they should have named them "The Brenda".  So I bought Brenda a Rufous cap and she looks lovely in it.

(Shading Opie's eyes from the sun)

Lunch today was prepared by the First Officer. It consisted of jalapeno Spam sandwiches (thank you Joyce for turning us on to this flavor). potato chips, a pickle, iced tea prepared by the Commander, and conversation. Gourmet chef not I.

Tomorrow we will continue our travel on to Chama.  Brenda changed our reservations to get there a day early. 

Oh, for you non-refiners, SWAG means "Scientific Wild Ass Guess"!

Mileage today - o

Total mileage for trip -929 miles

/s/ First Officer Julio

Flight of the Monarch, Voyage 3, Day 5


Star Date 7-10-2016

Again the day started cool except it did not deter the flies, house that is.  There were several trillion of them last night and this morning trying to get into our ears, eyes, landing on our lips, landing on our skin time and time again in the same spots. Brenda was doing moves at the picnic table that scientists would say that it would be impossible for the human body to do in that many directions at once. You see, for each muscle that contacts to move a limb in a certain direction there are muscles to move the limb back to the original position. Both muscles cannot operate at the same time.  Wrong!

Everyone knows of the alien craft that crash landed near Roswell in 1947. They brought the flies, and several politicians.

But I digress, back to traveling. We headed north on US 285 and we stayed on it all the way to Interstate 25 east of Santa Fe New Mexico. We then turned east for 3 miles on the feeder road  to a KOA.  We stayed at this same KOA in 1994 while on a motorcycle trip. People would always come up to look at the motorcycle and our little pop up camper we towed. One gentlemen we talked to was on to his way to an interview for a telephone contractor job in Santa Fe NM. He had just been laid off from AT&T. He had worked for them for many years and felt betrayed. But he did have a good attitude and I'm sure he would find work. So, this was "the out of work tour". We talked to another gentleman a week earlier that had lost his job and was on his last motorcycle tour before he would have sell his motorcycle. He was in his late 50's. Enough of that.

The KOA guy that led us into our camping spot today was also a motorcycle rider.  He was from the east coast and while on a motorcycle trip 20 years ago with friends and they had camped here.. He never left. He fell in love with the high desert and couldn't face the east coast any longer. So he applied for a job at this KOA, bought a camping trailer, moved his family here. His Harley has in excess of 135,000 miles on the clock.

The flies didn't follow us here and hummingbirds replaced them. There have many feeders in campground. The hummers are nesting in the trees and fussing and fighting. I'm sure Brenda will be posting photos soon.

Into the unknown tomorrow. Maybe one day more here or move to campground north of Santa Fe.

 Pretty day, great roads and good company.

183 miles traveled today
929 total for the trip

/s/ First Officer Julio

Flight of the Monarch, Voyage 3, Day 4

Star Date 7-09-16

We awoke this morning at 0715 hrs to cool temperatures. There were thunderstorms in the area which dropped the temps to a pleasant 79 deg F.

We packed up the beast and pulled out from the campground at 0953 hrs. We headed west enjoying good roads, gentle breezes, and occasional sprinkles.

We traveled Interstate 20 from Clyde Texas to Sweetwater, home of the yearly rattlesnake roundup, then turned north on US 84. At Post we turned west on US 380. US 380 had been recently been resurfaced so the road deities were still looking upon us with favor. The Beast, also referred as the Starship Monaco in heroic tales told and retold by hobos around evening campfires along the rail lines, became thirsty so we pulled into a Stripes station in Tohoka TX.  After filling her tank with only 28 gallons of fuel we were on our way west again.

Commander/Navigator Brenda told the First Officer that our arrival time into Roswell New Mexico would be at 1530 hrs. The First Officer told the Navigator she needed to cut back on the consumption of wine.  He explained that while the Monaco had the newer 3 valve per cylinder warp drive, it didn't have double warp drive. The First Officer knowingly said with confidence that the arrival time would be at 1630 hrs.  He also explained to the Navigator that she must have programmed the computer wrong. You know how computers work; crap in, crap out. (I cleaned that up a little instead of saying sh, oh never mind). When she said, "WE WILL ARRIVE AT 1530 HRS"! Well ha ha. Ive got her now. I can see a demotion or retraining session in the future led by me with much degrading/slandering of the Navigator. So after handing her a berating she knowingly turned to me and said, we will enter Mountain time when we get into New Mexico so WE WILL LOSE AN HOUR. So then she had to start the degrading/slandering by stating,  so, when I bought you the shirt that said Fat Ass it should have said Dumb Ass. Ouch

​

Headed to Santa Fe New Mexico tomorrow.

Traveled 318 miles today.

Total for the trip 746

/s/First Officer Julio

Star Ship Monaco, Flight of the Monarch, Voyage 3, Day 3

Star Date 7-8-16

After getting up early (0900 hrs) we were on the road by 1100 hrs. Not fast are we.
Hey, stressed out people die young.
After several fuel stops to fuel the thirsty Starship Monoco, we ate lunch in our favorite location; Gainesville TX Walmart parking lot. Plus to pick up supplies. It is our second year in a row to stop here and they remembered us so they greeted us with only 101 deg. temps. We arrived late in Early...Texas, that is. But the app, RVParky led us astray. As we entered the park in Early we learned it was a campground for antique campers, that had not been restored, that had not been washed in the past 50 years, that people were still living in them, and that they were some sort of hoarder community. They had all of the items that they had ever owned, picked up on the side of the road, or stolen stacked up around the area.


So we traveled on to White's campground in Clyde TX.
We drove 283 miles today. 428 total miles for the trip. No U-turns today!
On to Roswell NM tomorrow.
/s/ First Officer Julio

Star Ship Monaco, Flight of the Monarch,Voyage 3, Day 2

Star Date 7-07-2016

After waking at 9:30 AM this morning and enjoying a large breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon and finishing that after 11:00 AM, a decision was quickly reached to spend another day in the vacation wonderland of Snook Texas.
We walked to the office to pay for another day and learned the history of the one year old park. The owners are a young couple that have put in a lot of work building this place and they did it right. They are also watermelon farmers as their families were before them.
Then we walked to the pond. Out on the pier many fish could be seen in the water along with hungry begging ducks. You get nothing from us ducks, get a job!
This park has excellent wifi so we were able to catch up on personal work. Brenda was able to book parlor car seats on the steam engine Cumbres&Toltec Train from Chama to Osier Colorado. The train climbs to an elevation of 10,015 feet at Cumbres pass, the highest mountain pass reached by rail in the the United States. I can tell that much alcohol will be consumed before this point!  Round trip on the train of course. We will have breakfast on the train and lunch in Osier.
She also booked seats in a parlor car for the Darango train. Even though we rode this train 2 years ago, well, we just can't get enough of the old steam trains.
Did I ever say it was hot here?  IT IS HOT!
So after a light lunch it was nap time due the fact IT IS HOT.
In the morning we will be heading to Hobbs New Mexico then turn to the northwest towards Chama New Mexico.
/s Julio

Star Ship Monaco, Flight of the Monarch, Voyage 3, Day 1

Why the title of Pendie and The Who? My wife's name is Brenda but her Dad's pet name for her was Pendie and my name is Julio but my nieces and nephews call me Uncle Who.  These are the stories of our adventures


Texas, the final frontier: these are the voyages of the Starship Monaco, flights of the Monarch: it's 10 year mission: to explore the far reaches of the United States, to seek out strange life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before, well, maybe that's kind of pushing it!
Star date: 07-06-2016.
This episode: Commander/Navigator Brenda and First Officer Julio launched from Fire  Lake RV Park, Alvin TX at 1205 hrs. Delay was due to adjustments made to service ship MKX towing mechanism. Traveled west to Rosanky and Needville.  Commander/Navigator Brenda plotted a new course using Spur 10 north of Needville on Hwy 36 to Orchard TX which returned to Hwy 36 at that point totally bypassing Richmond/Rosenberg. Letter of superior achieve presented to Navigator Brenda for displaying above average skills navigating through rough territories.
Stopped for lunch in back of a Walmart in Sealy TX. Poopmiester Dog Opie walked in the grass and deposited presents as gifts for any alien life forms living there.
Hot, hot temps.
Docked at 1700 hrs at Paradise Resort RV park in Snook TX.
Excellent meal consisting of turkey burger patties along with Stonewall TX tomatoes obtained by Commander Brenda from a previous voyage with Joyce and Gabby. Cold beer was served.
Tomorrow will travel to Temple and points northwest.
/s First Officer Julio