Messin' on the Mesa

We have spent most of August in the lee of the Grand Mesa, in Colorado.  Our RV park was located in Cedaredge, which hails itself as the gateway to the Mesa, where the cedars thin out and the pine forest and the aspens begin.  At over 10,000 feet above sea level, the Grand Mesa is the highest plateau in the USA, a basalt outcrop that retains water in over 300 trout filled lakes. It is a fishing canoeing and kayaking haven for some, for others somewhere to run wild with ATVs in summer, snowmobiles in winter.  For Richard and I, it was a place to hike, admire the views, the wildflowers, and the wildlife, and cool off from the near 100 degree summer heat of the cities of Delta and Grand Junction located some 6000 feet in the valley below, 

which we only visited when stocking up on food and other essentials (you know, things like wine, and beer, and more wine).

Temperatures at The Shady Creek RV camp we were in, situated 4000 feet below the Mesa rim, were normally around the mid 80’s (25 C) but our 5^th wheel trailer, aka the Jet, remained reasonably cool, shaded by tall poplar trees.  It’s a quirky little park, only 17 sites, much smaller than any other we have visited so far.  The owners are similarly quirky – they like to take in campers that will become part of their extended family, and enjoy “wine o’clock time” after dinner (hence the requirement for more wine!) and get to know their RVing neighbours. Quirky (and wine friendly) as we are, we fit right in, and we had the added benefit of meeting some lovely people.  My Facebook friends list grows exponentially, every campsite we stay at for longer than a few days.  It really is the only way to make long-term friends with whom to hope to meet up agan whilst we are on this amazing journey of ours.

Once our hosts Mike and Cathy learned of my background, they asked me to give a talk about my book and my mother’s history to all the wine o’clockers one evening.  I always get a mixed reaction to my talk – people look at me strangely, some don’t know what to say, some are in awe, some cry.  At this event I was actually quite emotional myself.  I think it had something to do the fact that I was in the middle of reading Jubilee, by Margaret Walker, a marvellous novel based on the true story of the author’s great-grandmother, a slave liberated by the civil war only to suffer again during the Reconstruction and the birth of the Klu Klux Klan.  There really is no end to the culpability of mankind when it comes to mistreating others.

Richard’s cousin Lee, and his lovely wife Carolyn joined us for a week and we thoroughly enjoyed their company, playing pegs and jokers, and sightseeing together. It was nice to be able to share the wonder, as we drove through Escalante Canyon, and walked through the original pioneer homes built in lush green valleys, surrounded by scrub and red rocks, 

then another day drive to view more forested red rocks and eat ice cream in Redstone.  How we marvelled at the white remains of the marble processing plant in the town of, yes, Marble, 

Here's looking at you!

admired the views from the Mesa,

and were humbled at the beauty of the wildflowers that we tried hard to remember the names of, whilst taking an informative stroll led by a Grand Mesa National Park ranger.  What wonderful names, like Sneezewood, and Parrot’s Beak, Paintbrush, Monkeyflower, Pussytoes, Elephant Heads, Kinnikinnick, Vetch, though there were also variations of  common UK flowers like Yarrow, Lupin, Phlox, Asters, Geraniums, Bluebells, Gentians…

Called Scottish Bluebell but nothing like ours at all!

On a later walk through the flowers, I think I managed to identify about 5 of the local ones!!! Memory like a sieve!

And despite taking loads of photos, and cricking my knees in an effort to get up close and personal, the majority of pictures weren’t that good. However, I do have a few websites I can go to, to remind myself.  www.wildflowersofcolorado.com, www.swcoloradowildflowers.com.

On our down days, Richard was able to spend time fixing the continued slow leak on one of the Jet’s tyres, changing the oil on Benny the truck, investing in new tyres to replace Benny’s well worn ones (we managed to add over 30,000 miles onto the treads of the old ones), replacing an air vent in the bathroom, and fixing a leaky valve in the toilet, and, at last, the poop tank issue that has plagued us for several months, only to discover that the grey (dishwater/bath water) tank seal also has a leak.  However, we are less worried about that, for obvious reasons.  But it is another maintenance job that will have to be attended to somewhere else later on in our travels. One thing we have learned since beginning RVing nearly a year and half ago, is that there is always something needing attention.

With only a week left, we ramped up our sightseeing, taking in several and increasingly longer hikes on the mesa, trying to get ourselves fitter for our visit to the next state on our travels – Utah.  We have planned 10 weeks in three towns, Moab, Panguitch and Hurricane, to enable us to see as much as we can of the amazing rock formations in the many famous National Parks of southern Utah.

Sometimes we have wondered if we will ever get jaded, seeing so many wonderful things everywhere we go.  You know, the first time you do something always seems the best and you can never recapture that initial feeling… We are worried we will get blasé.  And how can we compare one marvel with another? 

We decided we would do a test – and go back to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison which I had so admired during our previous trip a year earlier.  We wanted to see if we would still be as amazed by the incredulous rock colours and formations, and the depth of the canyon.  And, of course, we were.