Our first stop, once back on the road again, was to visit Rich and Cheryl Winter in Peoria.  While there we planned a trip to Florida in January.  We are going to listen to the GyPSy Guide, the travel guide app for the phone that we so much enjoy, from Miami to Key West.   The four of us are going to be staying on a boat in Key Largo in between travels to and from Key West.  This, of course, assumes the boat survived Irma...mother nature can be so very, very angry and cruel!

MISSOURI

We left Peoria on Friday and headed to Smithville MO.  We went there to meet up with Cody, Tracy’s son, and his girlfriend Esther, they only live about 20 minutes from the campground.  Second reason, Smithville was in the path of “Totality” for the eclipse on Monday the 8/21/17. Cody and Esther set up a tent on Friday night only to have a major storm roll in around 4:30 a.m. We had left our awing out and we awoke to this horrible noise of it slamming up and down.  I went running outside and there Cody was running with stuff from the tent to their car, but of course, he had a very cheerful, “Well, good morning” for me!!  We got the awning down with no damage and they got their tent down.  We sat in the camper and just looked at each other while the deluge went through, which took about an hour.  They then headed home and we headed back to sleep.  We met up later that afternoon at the local American Legion for a bite to eat.  They decided to call it a day, and since we were only minutes from the campground, we went outside to listen to some very good music by a local group of kids, one had just graduated high school!  Fun way to spend a hot afternoon/early evening.

Sunday was so flipping hot we decided to go into C & E’s apartment and enjoy a Game of Thrones marathon.  We watched the first five episodes of the fifth season.  Funny thing was, we had spent the summer down at “The Big House” (Kelly & Fred’s) watching seasons 1 - 4. When I told Kelly about it she laughed and said they had just turned down an offer of season 5 because they “couldn’t cheat on their friends”, cripes...what losers we are ...we cheated!!!  I have a feeling it won’t be a problem as I won’t remember all that much of it by the time next summer rolls around!!

Monday was the big day.  Both Cody and Esther had the day off as did many, many businesses.  Love the fact that many places realized how scientifically significant this event was or...just realized everyone was going to call in sick, either way it was very cool to hear the Ford automotive plant even closed for the day!

The bad news first.... the actual eclipse was totally clouded over.  The good news.... we saw the sun disappear until it was just a sliver and saw a sliver of it as it reappeared.  Also, the total darkness was awesome!!  There were some people standing maybe 50 yards down below us and they were absolutely gone from view during the two minutes that the sun was gone, very, very cool!!  Lastly, it was fun to be with a big group of people at the campground because when the eclipse started there was a big cheer throughout the place!  All in all, it was great!

 COLORADO

From Missouri, we headed to Colorado. We stopped for the night at a small county park in Ellis Lake, CO. Upon plugging in we had no electricity.... what now????  Luckily, we could run an extension cord from the campsite electricity into the camper so we had a coffee pot, my Cpap, etc... The next day we made it to our Colorado campground and Tracy spent the day trying to diagnose the problem, no luck.  There was power in the cord but once plugged in no power in the camper, BIG head scratcher. So, we called a mobile RV repair guy but he couldn’t get there until Monday as it was Thursday, we lived with extensions cords for a few days.  We ran to the “store that shall not be named” and picked up a cheap torche light so we pole danced all weekend around lamp, floor lamps and campers do not work well together!  As it turned out, only ½ of the cord was working, that’s why Trace did get a reading of power but there wasn’t enough coming through to juice the camper.  Easy fix, a new cord, YIPPEE!!!!

Even without electricity we had a great time in Colorado.  We were in Woodland Park which is just north of Colorado Springs. 

 One day we toured the Garden of the Gods.  An amazing display of rock formations!

We stayed in a hotel that night and the next day we met Lorri and Gordon for lunch.  Who???  These are folks we met in Custer SD last spring.  They were nice enough to travel 45 minutes to come and meet up with us.  We had a very nice lunch and “catch up” session. Not exactly sure when we will get together again but I am sure that we will!!

Our first night in Woodland Park we stopped at one of the two brew pubs in town.  As per our usual modes operandi, we started talking with the couple next to us. They told us about this fabulous blues band that was playing Saturday afternoon, 4:00 - 7: 00 (love those hours) at a honky tonk about 10 minutes north.  We went!!  Elsa and Howard were right, it was a honkytonk (red neck bar) and a GREAT band!! They played on the outdoor stage and there were maybe a dozen people there.  Tracy told the band they deserved a bigger crowd and they said the small crowd was just fine with them, a wonderful change of pace.  After the performance, we met up with Elsa and Howard at a brew pub in Divide, CO (yep, it’s on the continental divide) for a bite to eat.  Nice folks, good beer and fabulous afternoon of music!!

Another day we took the train up to Pikes Peak!!  What a great way to get there.  When one drives up, there are 160 turns with 50 or so of them being switch backs...no thank you says our three-quarter ton pick-up truck.  It was about a 3-hour round trip and was just beautiful!

I am going to stop this entry.  The next one will be from Utah...National Parks here we come!   Thanks for coming along!!