Wandering Wahls

So here we are, hanging around Colorado — what a great state. A little more than a week ago we pulled into Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado and were able to spend the night in the Springs Resort & Spa. Pagosa Springs has natural hot springs and the resort has built 18 different shaped pools (one with waterfalls) to harness the hot water. The pools have temperatures ranging from 97 degrees to 113 degrees. Once the family got over the smell similar to hot, rotten eggs, we were ready to spend the day and night relaxing in the pools. I have to admit, we have been to the natural baths in Baden Baden, Germany, and in Japan, and these pools are just as nice (though clothes are mandatory in Pagosa Springs). The pool-hopping was made even better because there was a snowstorm (so what else is new in Colorado in May?), so we sat in the pools with snow falling around us.

The stop was topped off when someone recognized us from our news interview in Albuquerque, N.M. Go figure — the woman from Pagosa Springs happened to be in Albuquerque on that one Saturday the piece ran, happened to be watching the news, and happened to not blink her eyes when our piece ran (all 45 seconds or so of it). Then, after all that, she happened to be in the women’s locker room when my wife was there. I think that equates to about three minutes of fame, so we have 12 minutes left.

We just took our youngest, Sam, to the emergency room (ER) — for medical reasons, that is — and it reminded me that I forgot a previous story about my trip to the ER (after all, this is all about me, isn’t it?).

For the past two weeks, Sam has complained his stomach was hurting. Since the pain usually coincided with having to do something he didn’t want to do, we assumed it was a 7-year-old’s master plan to avoid schoolwork or chores. This last week though, we were at the USAF Academy’s Famcamp visiting the Paganellis, and Sam wouldn’t come out and play with his buddy Daniel. At 8 p.m., Mary Claire consulted with a friend, a retired Air Force pediatric nurse practitioner (the benefits of retiring from the medical community), and decided to take Sam to the ER. After a four hour visit, the doctor found that Sam had gas — no appendicitis, no constipation, just gas (and we use diesel). It was an expensive trip, but an acceptable outcome.

The story I forgot in earlier entries was that I was showing off the RV to our friends the Grabowskis, and I lifted the engine door inside our RV. This door weighs about 50 lbs., and I felt a slight scratch when I pulled it up. Ignoring the feel of a slight scratch, I continued with the engine description. However, I felt a puddle of something in my sandal and realized my foot was in a puddle of blood — I had a 4-inch gash in my chin from lifting the engine door. I didn’t think anything of it, but Mary Claire and Bridgette are both nurses and scolded me to get to the ER. A red face and four stitches later, I was back at the Grabowski’s house.

The above is a pretty good track record though — only two ER trips.

Next up, our fun experience with the USA Today reporter who spent a night with us (while Sam was in the ER).

We made it to Albuquerque, Los Alamos, and Sante Fe, all in New Mexico. Los Alamos was interesting. It’s the ultimate gated community — it has guard stations set up at the entry and exit points due to the National Lab located in town. The town was very nice and has made our list of cities to consider settling in.

While in Albuquerque, we were interviewed by KOB TV (NBC). From a 40-minute interview, the news people were able cut our interview down to one minute. Fascinating — and all my good lines on the edit room floor!

It was great fun though because the interviewer, Andy, took us on a tour and the kids were able to see where and how the news actually is broadcast. As you can see in the photo, the kids are naturals as future news anchors.

But our 15 minutes of fame are filling up because we are now in Colorado Springs and the local FOX affiliate is interviewing us tomorrow for their morning show. We’ll let you know how it goes. Hopefully I won’t end up edited again.

As I write this on my 48th birthday (thank you), I am thinking about the types of customer service we have encountered on our trip. With all of the RV parks, restaurants (not too many of these), stores, national parks, etc., that we stop at, we witness varying degrees of service — from free soda refills to no-question returns. So now let me relate the most recent example that has me stumped: two RV parks and two different ideas of service.

The first park in is White’s City, NM, just outside the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns. The town was purchased in September by a man from Carlsbad which is just up the road (yes, the whole town -– did he use VISA?). The town happened to include an RV park, albeit a very rundown RV park. We met the owner of the town as we pulled in (how many people have had the owner of a town help them set up an RV spot?). He apologized for the condition of the park and explained that the whole town was in ruins, but that he was upgrading the RV park and town.

The park ended up being in such bad shape that we left a night early. I asked for a refund, but the receptionist said no, since we had paid for two nights. On the road, I called the town’s owner and explained our plight. He had no problems and said he’d refund the extra night’s charge, as well as the charge for the night we spent -– a forward thinker.

The econd RV park is just outside of Mesa Verde National Park (though it is not “Mesa Verde RV Park”). We made reservations and the owner took our credit card for a one night’s deposit. Circumstances then occurred that changed our plans, so we called to cancel (politely, mind you). The bad news was that the owner told us she was going to charge us half of one night’s rate as a penalty -– even though the policy was not explained to us over the phone, nor had it been emailed to us as she said it had been (from the mystery lights of Marfa to the mystery emails of Mesa Verde). She also admitted there were many empty spaces left; cancellation was not causing the park to lose money from having turned away a reservation.

I’m not the smartest guy, but the dichotomy of the practices amazes me: two RV parks near famous tourist spots, yet two different ideas of customer service. Does the second park think that we’ll use her park when we come back to Mesa Verde National Park, or that we’ll tell others to stay at her RV park? Conversely, the first owner realizes that: (1) we likely could return to the area and he wants us back; and, (2) reputation is spread via word-of-mouth among the RVing community.

It’s time for my birthday beer.

We received notice from the Air Force that our household goods in storage have six months left before the Air Force will want to know where to send the items. This reminded us that we’re six months into the trip, so we’ve taken inventory of what we’ve experienced:

• 15,225 miles driven
• 210 days on the road
• 1 foreign country visited
• 25 states visited or driven through
• 12 military base Famcamps stayed at
• 3 constantly scraped knuckles from opening storage doors
• 5 lumps on my head from walking into the TV
• 1 cracked windshield that had to be replaced
• 1 broken passenger window that had to be replaced (aka 1 Memphis Blues experience)
• 1 GPS stolen and needing to be replaced
• 1 Volvo in storage completely burned
• 4 USAA claims
• 4 $500 deductibles
• 1 black waste pulley inadvertently left open
• 1 surprise dumping of black waste on my hands (“Oh sh**!” was my relevant reply at the time)
• 1 flooding of the bathroom with grey water
• 1 slideout opening while on the Interstate
• 1 Volvo V70 emergency brake left on while towing the vehicle 150 miles (talk to my wife)
• 1 upcoming brake repair appointment at a Volvo dealer
• 3 inches driven before jacks were up
• 29 National Parks, Monuments and/or Historic Trails visited
• 13 old friends reunited with
• 2 RV sleepovers with friends
• countless new friends met
• 1 German neighbor family met up with
• 5 visits from the tooth fairy
• 5 RV repair stops
• 7 trees clipped
• 1 set of mystery lights seen and questioned
• untold NY Times crossword puzzles completed
• 116 bird species spotted
• 1 grizzly bear seen
• 3 wolf packs followed
• 1 Elvis spotting
• 24 credit card denials (due to crossing state lines)
• 1 USAA sponsorship request not replied to (possibly see above)
• 2 magazine article queries not responded to
• infinite good times
• 0 regrets
• 1 job needed to obtain
• 1 book about the trip to be written
• 1 hometown (not on 6 wheels) to be found
• 6 moths left (?)
• 1 honest assessment of adventures and misadventures

We made it into Dallas and San Antonio and gladly welcomed the warm weather. For some reason, the cold had been following us through the south. However, as we pulled out of west Texas and toward the New Mexico border, the weather did a turn on us. At Guadalupe National Park, the winds were gusting up to 70mph at times, creating enough commotion in the RV at night that the kids even woke up. It didn’t help that the park ranger had showed me a photo of an overturned RV from the week before when the winds were also strong. I shouldn’t have told my family about that photo.

Next up, we get to Carlsbad, NM. The weather there was bad enough that our friends were forced from their tent into our RV for both nights. We even woke up to snow one morning.

We eventually made it up to the Manzano Mountains, south of Albuquerque. We think: New Mexico + April = sun and warmth. We had the right equation and wrong answer. The correct answer was snow (as you can see in the picture). The weather turned one us at about 4 in the afternoon, and in a short while we had a nice snow cover – good enough for snowballs!

We’d gotten to the point where we want to do something to initiate some global warming, maybe keep the RV and car running.

Now we’re in Albuquerque for the week getting organized and visiting Santa Fe and Los Alamos as possible places to live. The sun is out, but the wind! This wind is not helping New Mexico’s chances for having us settle here.

On a positive side, we have an interview Saturday with the local NBC affiliate. They want us to bring the RV in front of their studios downtown. This should be interesting.

I judge holidays a lot by how we eat (as some people might notice). If we can leave an area having had good food, my memories of the stay are fonder (particularly if the cuisine is Asian; the best Indian food I’ve had was in Amsterdam). As you might expect, one of the best parts of our cross-country journey has been finding local eateries that offer delicious local foods. I’ve written about some stops, and they’ve included ($1.50) Coney Island dogs in Fort Wayne, Ind. (this place opened in 1914, and one of my favorite trip memories is having asked a woman leaving her table if the hot dogs were good, to which she replied: “They must be, I’ve been coming here since 1940!”); sumptuous Key Lime Pie at Herbie’s on the Florida Keys; the best Chinese takeout while in Little Rock, Ark.; and the best homestyle cooking at a small diner in Nappanee, Ind.

However, the eating place that stands out so far is in Marfa, Texas. This small town (which I think was named by a guy with no teeth) is famous for its Mystery Lights and the hotel where James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson stayed while filming “Giant.” The hotel looked great, and the lights were mysterious, although my oldest thinks someone with a car is in the hills and fooling everyone. However, the best find was Foundation Pizza — for the food and the story.

Foundation Pizza is in a former gas station. We stopped there to eat and kill time waiting for darkness and the start of the Mystery Lights. The place is kind of funky, and the pizza and salad offerings weren’t typical for west Texas — and they were delicious. After the pizza, I was at the counter paying. We were talking with the couple that owned Pizza Foundation about where we were from. That’s always a hard question to answer, but I went into our litany of having no home and of living overseas with the Air Force.

The wife said her husband’s aunt was in Okinawa, Japan, and now lives in Florida. We asked the aunt’s name and she replied Pat Sweeney. My wife’s eyes lit up. Pat is Mary Claire’s oldest friend from the Air Force, having shard three assignments (for Pat’s clarification: oldest in terms of how long they’ve known each other, not age). Mary Claire had even visited with the husband’s mom and stayed with the family. And, we had stayed with Pat twice on our Florida leg of the trip. The husband’s jaw dropped when he realized how close Mary Claire was to Pat and Pat’s family. And here we were in little Marfa, and here was a Sweeney (with the exception of Pat, the Sweeney clan is in the Boston area). What a small world, made even smaller by our military friendships. We like Marfa.