Author: Matt (Page 4 of 23)

Education comes in many forms. I’ve been through the halls of academia and earned a Masters degree which has served me very little other than looking good on the resume. Most of the really useful stuff I’ve learned has been through the hands-on, just get in there and figure it out approach. This is one of those things that I was fortunate to have been gifted in and have, as a result, accumulated a lot knowledge of how and why things work the way they do. I suppose it was a natural thing that I was drawn to the Engineering field and in particular Systems Engineering which tends to focus on how a multitude of smaller bits are put together to accomplish the successful operation of a complete “system”. All of this is a prelude to discussing a learning situation I encountered the other night.

Problem: If you have a 50 gallon fresh water tank in your rig, and you fill it up before heading out to the forest, how much water will be left after three days of use? Well, obviously that depends on your daily usage which will be determined by how frugal you are with the water. Because we are veteran campers we know how to conserve water and make it last. Therefore, I was quite pleased when I checked the tank indicators several times and was rewarded with a “still full” status. By the third day however, I was beginning to get a little suspicious of this report. While we are frugal, we still have been using enough water that it should be reflected in the tank status. Perhaps, I thought, the float is stuck. Although, I couldn’t think of any reason why it should be as it had been reporting Empty all of the time before (which it was).

Now consider this is our first “dry camping” event, e.g, not hooked up to city water and electricity like we have been previously in public campgrounds. These events are where you get “learning experiences” which must be faced and conquered otherwise you might as well just live in an apartment and call the landlord every time something stops working. So, around 10pm or so, as we were getting ready to retire for the night, I noticed the water pump started running and did not shut off after a few moments per its normal behavior. This is bad because you can burn out the water pump if it runs too long with no water to pump. A quick look outside in the plumbing compartment confirmed that there was insufficient water in the line for it to operate. So, I shut off the pump too prevent damage.

How could this be? The tank indicator still registers as Full. There is simply no way we could have used up 50 gallons of water in a few days and I’ve not seen any sign of leakage. It’s really a very basic “system”; it has a fill spout with a stopper to prevent water from sloshing out when traveling down the road, a 50 gallon holding tank, a monitoring gauge, a water pump, and water lines to the faucet.

I decided to tackle the problem in the morning but as I was laying in bed a probable solution occurred to me. Do you know what it was? Continue reading

Friday, June 21 (Summer Solstice and Full Moon)
We left Buena Vista around 10am and drove up Hwy 24 to Leadville where we took a break and walked around town a bit. Leadville is the highest incorporated town in the US at roughly 10,000 ft and has a rich mining history. We saw some interesting old houses that have been restored as well as a Jewish temple.

We then followed Hwy 24 on north and picked up I-70 which took us west a bit to Hwy 131 where we headed north again. We drove through some interesting country and even found a bit of road construction here and there. There was one very long ascent that caused the truck to start overheating as we were getting close to the top so we pulled over and let it cool down a bit just to be safe.

Arrived in Yampa and found the Ranger Station. Visited with Amy for a bit about possible campsites that would be suitable for a 31ft trailer and then proceeded on County 7 which turned into Forest Road 900 (a gravel washboard hell) and into the Routt National Forest a little SE of Yampa vicinity of Bear Lake. We drove out as far as Amy recommended scouting out a few spots but ended up turning around and got a nice secluded spot a little below the dam. It is a nice site and although it took a little maneuvering to get the rig in here we are nestled in amongst a grove of aspen trees. It has a fire ring and a picnic table but no other facilities so we are making our first dry camp (boondocking).

I dusted off my old hiking GPS device which has been sitting in the closet for years , changed the batteries, fired it up and it is reporting our coordinates as: 40 deg 03′ 16″ N, 107 deg 02′ 01″ W and elevation: 9457ft

Gets a little cool at night but the days are fabulous and the forecast is for sunny skies and no rain. We figure we will stay here for a week on ‘vacation’ before we get serious about figuring our direction for the next chapter of life.

Turns out I messed up my back some while playing monkey-mechanic on the truck. I had purchased some SummoSpring helpers to give the rear suspension of the truck some extra capacity when towing the trailer but had not had the facilities to work on it. One (bad) thing about this constant downsizing is fewer and fewer tools! I was counting on using the Auto Hobby Shop at the Air Force Academy and it worked out that Wednesday morning was free. I was up there when they opened and got one of the Lube bays first so I could change the oil. That went fine and I then moved the truck over to bay #12 which had a lift.

By all respects this is supposed to be a simple thing. One nut to be loosened and removed which allows the rubber “spring” to drop out and then simply install the new one. Ha Ha Ha…right. It would not come off and I ran out of time and had to stop so Rhonda could use the truck that afternoon. So…back up there Saturday morning and several hours of working under the lift in varying degrees of monkey-like contortions and it was finally done. But so was I as it turned out…by noon of the next day I was hurtin fer certain.

We were scheduled to pull out on Monday morning and head for Buena Vista and with Rhonda doing the bulk of the work we managed to make it happen. the “staging” is over and “The Adventure” truly begins now! By mid day we were headed west, up Ute Valley Pass on Hwy 24, towards the Mountains. This also happened to coincide with an afternoon thunderstorm which hampered our travels and got the truck and trailer filthy. But we made it! The truck pulled the rig up the hills without any hesitation and we arrived at the Arkansas River Rim campground in a few hours. It didn’t take too long to set up and we spent the evening relaxing.

Tuesday was a day we had been waiting for. A long time actually. This sounds a bit silly but neither of us has had a bath in nearly 9 months! One of the side-effects of our move to Brighton was a bathroom that only had a shower. I prefer showers, if the truth be known, but on occasion there is nothing like a good hot soak. So this little luxury had been missing for awhile. Now, there is a place just outside of Buena Vista called the Cottonwood Hot Springs. We’ve been there several times before usually after a hiking or snowshoeing adventure and it is just awesome! We went over in the morning and bought a day pass. Spent an hour or so soaking in the different pools (some cooler, some hotter) and then went back that evening for a second round!

The original plan was to pull out on Wednesday morning but we decided my back would benefit from one more day of rest so we held off another day.

Silence is descending on the campground. It is dusk, the lamp post a few spots down has just come on, illuminating the trunk of a tall pine tree. Quiet time is still over an hour away but aside from the occasional laughter of children up by the volleyball net the stillness is welcome and relaxing. The contrast with the windswept prairie that we left last Friday is startling.

We departed the windswept prairie the morning after my last day at Raytheon. It was a welcome event in many respects. Finishing up the J.O.B. and leaving the campground at Buckley AFB…which had become a bit tedious after three weeks. It is a newer facility (year old) as far as campgrounds go but the constant wind and the repetitive drone of the Blackhawk helicopter got to be wearisome. For some odd reason the pilots would fly around in circles from early evening till 10pm and their orbit brought them right over the campground each time. Some sort of training mission I suppose but not sure of the purpose.

We didn’t really mind the F-16s even though they made a heck of a lot more noise because they generally left the area after taking off. Then there was the occasional transport aircraft heading out.

A transport plane lifts off from the adjacent runway

Arrival at the Air Force Academy campground was a refreshing moment. It felt really good to be back in our old stomping grounds, in the foothills with Pikes Peak in the background. We got checked in (super friendly staff) and found our campsite nestled in the pine forest. We got the trailer unhitched and leveled out and proceeded to “make camp” which has taken on a new twist.

We’ve had plenty of tasks to keep us busy here in the Springs as we finish up our purging and last minute acquisitions before we hit the road. We stopped into New Life Church on Sunday evening for the service and had an epiphany. Continue reading

Gee…who would have thought that hitches could be such a challenge. You never saw John Wayne have a bunch of trouble hitching up a wagon and moseying off into the sunset with the beautiful girl. I’ve learned way more about hitches recently than I really wanted. Getting the right combination pulled together into a smoothly operating rig can be a bit of a challenge but I think I have all the right stuff now. Horsepower…yep, wagon, hitch…yep, beautiful girl…yep, just need the right sunset on the right day 😉

Horsepower: comes from a Ford PowerStroke Turbo Diesel motor in a F250 SuperDuty Crew Cab 4×4 Truck. We wanted a diesel so there would be no question about towing capability in and through the mountains. The other important checkbox was towing capacity. The trailer (wagon) is pretty stout and weighs in around 9K lbs so we had to eliminate a number of trucks that were in the price range we wanted to stay in. We eventually found this truck which we bought from a dairy farmer up a little east of Greeley, CO. Being a work truck it is showing a little wear and tear but it had only seen two owners, has been well maintained and we even have the receipts to prove it. The only real downside was that coming from a dairy farm there was an embedded cow manure smell to the interior included at no extra charge After a couple of serious cleanings including Rug Doctor units rented from the local Home Depot and an Ozone device I bought we are finally getting it tamed. Which is a good thing as it has a pretty spiffy leather interior (Lariat Package). “Crew Cab” means it has four doors with a full-size back seat. Abby is pleased but still hasn’t mastered getting in an out yet.

The bed of the truck looked like a typical farm truck that got used to haul “whatever” and was pretty rough looking so I invested in a bed liner kit for it which made a huge difference. I also found a used toolbox to go behind the cab so we will still be equipped for repairs when the need arises (notice I said when, not if, no delusional thinking here). Most farm trucks are equipped with what they call a gooseneck hitch for hauling horse and cattle trailers and this one was no exception. But our wagon is a little more upscale than that and we need a fifth wheel hitch to tow it. So, I located a used Reese 16K slider hitch and had a shop in Denver remove the old hitch and install mine. The only thing I have left to do is install some spring helpers to give the suspension a little extra help when towing.

It also has 4-wheel drive which will come in handy given my propensity for wanting to find the “perfect camping site” unvisited by humans for the past hundred years. I suppose I’ll have to adjust my expectations a bit now that I have a 31ft wagon (containing dishes and other breakable things in it) bumping along behind me.

Seasons come and seasons go. We are currently in transition from a season of Success to a season of Exploration. The season of success was defined mostly by societal norms of making lots of money and reaching the top of your career field. While I achieved this it did not end up being particularly fulfilling to the soul and the income seems to get spent nearly as fast as it comes in no matter how big the stream. I found myself becoming increasingly depressed with the prospect of punching my ticket for another ten years or so in the daily grind. It is amazing how we can fool ourselves into thinking we are actually making a living when in reality we have become nothing but drones on a treadmill with our vision being shaped by the media. Not being a conformer at heart I found my view of retirement as the goal was becoming a vacuous perspective. On the one hand it seemed to be slipping away given the hits we took in the housing market and recessions and yet, the way forward as defined by the tunnel vision of success was to see only a distant and dim light (future promises) at the end of the tunnel. One thing seemed readily apparent; plugging through another ten years of the routine was obviously not going to make THAT big of a difference and I wasn’t too sure just how much “life” there was going to be left in me by then.

If… IF… you wait ’till you’re 50… to start living? To start injecting passion, risk and adventure… the “stuff of life” … I got a lil’ bit of news for you… less than 2% of 2% are gonna do it. By the time you’ve ticked off 50 summers, you’re so set in your ways, and so locked down by the ingrained fears and “what ifs”, the likelihood of you changing the things you’ve been doin’ wrong for half a damn century, exists somewhere ‘tween not likely and ain’t gonna happen. The emotional inertia created by the fear and stagnation drilled into you by the system has become so much a part of you that it’s insurmountable by most. — B.K. Gore

So, if you find yourself following a path that is leading nowhere you really want to go there is an obvious solution. STOP, conduct a little situational analysis, and head out in a different direction. This is where the risk and adventure part come in…the “stuff of life” that makes it worth living. Sometimes you come to a fork in the trail and can make a choice. At other times there is no fork and you simply have to go “off-trail”. This is one of those off-trail times. Fortunately, I have experience in this sort of thing…Rhonda can provide a variety of stories about some of our off-trail experiences and we are still here to relate them 😉 The really cool thing about going off-trail is that although you have a basic sense of direction you really don’t know what is around the next bend or over the next hill. Occasionally, you find yourself in a box canyon and have to backtrack but usually there is a way through although it may not be obvious and may require some extra effort.

This is called exploration and people who did that in years past, e.g. Lewis and Clark, were called explorers. You won’t find that listed in the career books these days but one of my life long aspirations was to be one. My vision was modeled more after Star Trek; To boldly go where no man has gone before, but although I reached the rank of Captain it was only a desk I piloted, not a starship. Nevertheless, life is what you make out of it and sometimes you have to grab at the opportunities you have in front of you before it becomes to late. Many quotes have been penned about opportunity lost.

Halting forward progress on the path of life and redirecting is not a simplistic thing the further down the path you find yourself. We are fortunate that we have made some significant reductions along the way which have made the redirection easier; sold the house a few years ago so no mortgage tying us down, moved into a one-bedroom apartment last fall so already have a small footprint in terms of possessions, and still more or less debt-free. This allowed us to re-purpose some assets, submit the Letter of Resignation, and in the spirit of “Go West, young man” purchase a team of horses and a Conestoga wagon. Next week we “hitch up” and head out. 😉

Okay, so I was kinda mean the other day. It’s been known to happen occasionally. We have used our trusty Jeep Grand Cherokee to haul a variety of things for us over the years. After all it has a factory towing package and a V8 motor, so might as well get some use out of the ‘U’ tility part of SUV. The easiest thing it was ever tasked with was pulling a light 5×8 utility trailer that time we moved a few houses down and across the street. It made quite a few trips that time but probably never exceeded 10mph and it was flat terrain. Little did it know what was ahead though.

It got more of a workout that time I found a 1971 SAAB out in western Colorado. That time we rented an auto-dolly from U-Haul and drove out to Grand Junction to pick it up. The drive back took us up over Vail Pass on I-70 and then through Breckenridge and over Hoosier Pass. We had to take it slow and easy going up the passes but the Jeep did well and we got the cartoon car as we came to call it home to Colorado Springs.

When we moved from Colorado Springs to Aurora we rented a 12 ft open trailer to assist with the move and it made a couple of trips up the I-25 speedway hooked to the back of the Jeep.

Shortly after moving to Aurora we found a 16ft enclosed cargo trailer that we bought to replace the monthly costs of a storage unit we had rented when we realized we had more stuff than square footage in our new rental house. We transferred the stuff from the storage unit to the trailer, brought it home, and parked it out back. This trailer also helped facilitate some of our move to Brighton last summer and about the same time we used it to help move a friends stuff into storage down in Colorado Springs. But, alas,the trailer/storage-unit then became surplus as our new landlord did not want it parked at the house. We sold it to a fellow who was moving to Texas.

Most recently the Jeep hauled a 6x12ft enclosed U-Haul trailer full of some of our stuff back to a storage unit in Colorado Springs. Say what? Back to Colorado Springs you say? Well yes, but that is another story…back to the point of this story…so what did I do to scare the Jeep? I backed it up to our most recent trailer acquisition. I thought the Jeep tires were beginning to go flat when it showed up in the rear view mirror.