The Girl from Paderborn Germany

We started off our first full day at Taylor Park with a visit from a very cute Jr. Ranger type from Paderborn Germany. She was doing a survey on the national forest and recreation activites. We were more than happy to spend time talking to her and answering her questions. She was going to some university in Germany and was in the USA on a summer intern program. Her command of the English language was very good.



















Our campsite was just opposite the river and there were some commanding views. The water pump, obviously a casting made by some foundry long ago, was in use and provided cool clean water that was potable. I'm not sure what foundry made the pump, perhaps it was a Synchro32 customer. You never know.










































Although the campground did not have any showers, there was an outhouse that the campground host kept well stocked with TP and clean. Not sure where the campground host was from, he had been doing gigs such as this for many years - being a campground host all across the USA and even Alaska. It's actually a job, if you an call it that, keeping the campground clean, the firepits dugout, selling firewood, etc. He receives a nominal amount of money each month to cover his living expenses. I don't recall the name of the website that he used to secure the job. Perhaps if I was a college professor I would spend my summers being a campground host somewhere.


















Of course we had breakfast and of course I took a few pics of it. Some good pan sausage and biskets. I'm constantly amazed by how well the Coleman oven works - it really does a bang up job on cooking things over the camp stove. We even managed to use it w/o burning the bottoms of the biskets - which is normally what happens.






















































After breakfast we headed out to go do some fishing. That is after someone untangles the fly fishing line...























Down by the river, walking on water, we encountered these strang looking beasts. We were down fishing at the point where the river runs into the lake. The water was very cold and very clear. I'd actually brought my swimsuit in hopes of taking a plunge, err - too cold even for me.



































Tred caught and cleaned the first fish of the trip.



















After the fishing, we decided to do some sight seeing. I'll pick up the story there later on. See you on down the road at the end of the road...

Welcome to Taylor Park Colorado

As we were driving into our destination, we stopped at the "scenic view" spot overlooking Taylor Lake. There were some women there from Crested Butte and we all took turns taking pictures. One of the ladies was visiting from the windy city, Chicago, and the other one lived in Crested Butte and had unfortunately lost her job at some resort through corporate downsizing. They went on their way and we went on ours.



















We have arrived at our ultimate destination. I personally had no idea of what to or not to expect. I was more than pleasantly surprised - this was awesome. Typically I'm a Big Bend kinda guy - www.nps.gov/bibe or www.bigbendchat.com (where I currently have 9392 posts). I like the desert and the solitude of the West Texas Trans Pecos Big Bend Region - the cactus, the dry air, the Rio Grande river, and the Chisos mountains. I'd been to Colorado many times to go skiing, before blowing my knee out on the Vagabond run, first run of the day, at Steamboat Springs www.steamboat.com - I'd also done some day hikes up with my friend Emily up at Rocky Mountain National Park http://www.nps.gov/romo/index.htm but had never been camping in Colorado.



















As you can tell, we arrived late in the day at Taylor Park which is part of the vast US Forest Service Gunnison National Forest http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/gmug/ We had been taking our sweet time getting here and had done some sightseeing on the way in, had to stop for groceries and a late afternoon lunch in Gunnison, and finally make our way on in.

There were Brazillions of ATV's, (all terrain vehicles), 4 wheelers, and motorbikes here. Obviously no sign of recession in these parts as people were partaking in vacation in record numbers. There were also Brazillions of recreational vehicles too - toy haulers, campers, pop-up campers, and extravagant motor homes. http://coloradoadventurerentals.com/atv_rentals/index.html

We secured our fishing license, I've never understood why one has to have a fishing license - other than it's a revenue generator for the state, but never the less I purchased one at the Taylor Park Trading Post http://www.taylorparktradingpost.com/
Many will be shocked by Shane having a fishing license - I'm not much of a fisherman and not a hunter at all. I probably hadn't dunked a hook in the water since my days in undergraduate college way back in the early-mid 1980's
























We quickly went in search of our campsite. Lucky for us, there was one site still open where Tred had been intending on us to camp at. He's been camping here for a long time so he obviously knew the area. Nice campground. The campsites were not "on top of each other" as is often the case at TPWD campsites in Texas, Texas Parks and Wildlife www.tpwd.state.tx.us. The campsites are closer together than Big Bend National Park or Big Bend Ranch State Park, but it was no problem.

I was tent camping for the first time in more than five years, sans backpacking tent camping. Ever since I had purchased a Starcraft 11RT off-road pop-up camper, I had forsaken tent camping for all the comforts of a home on wheels. In the UK they call these caravans. Fortunately, I still had a cabin tent to use.



















As I tend to snore like a runaway freight train, Tred had wisely brought his own tent.



















We were truly roughing it as each of us had either a cot or an air matress.



















I was truly roughing it as I even had a tent heater - which unfortunately didn't work for some reason. It would light, stay lit for a while, then go out. Fortunately, I had my zero degree sleeping bags and never really needed the heater.



















After quickly establishing the campsite, we sat down for more important things.



















I got on this gin and tonic craze the last time I was in the UK at the home office of Synchro32 in November 2009. In the UK, the proper way to drink a gin and tonic is with a lemon twist - as opposed to a lime twist in the USA.




















Didn't have to worry about Tred absconding with the gin as he is a Shiner Bock kinda guy - brewed in Texas in the metropolis of Shiner. I used to drink Shiner Bock, then I found out that I'm kinda allergic to beer, brewers yeast, so I haven't had a beer in over 3 years! Manged to lose a lot of weight by giving up Budweiser and Shiner Bock in exchange for gin and tonic too!



















Of course, we had to have a campfire. Fortunately, the camp ground host was selling wood as we did not have any room in the Avalanche to haul any. That Avalanche was stuffed to the gills. So stuffed it was I had to use the "hitch extender" platform at the rear to haul the ice chest and water canteen along.




































Tred took over the cooking duties, I cooked the beans :) and we had an outstanding feast of BBQ chicken. Yum. Chicken legs are the best part of the chicken - they are easy to cook and even easier to eat! We had a mess of chicken!
























































































In addition to taking pictures of food, I have this annoying habit of often take pictures of people devouring the food as well. It was an outstanding meal.

Funny thing about camping in the great outdoors, after a few Shiner Bocks or one, two, or maybe even three gin and tonics, - it's generally time for bed. There are no "clocks" in the wilderness. One goes to bed and rises when ever they feel like it. I do know after two days of hard driving we were both tired and called it an early night. It was a pleasant night too - chilly, but not cold. Nothing like a warm campfire.

See you down the road tomorrow on day three of this mission extraordinaire.

Boys and Their Toys...

I'm a boy and I like my toys. As I've grown older, I seem to like the more expensive electronic toys like my Garmin GPS 60CS On the Colorado trip I took along two new toys - a SPOT GPS satellite PLB, Personal Locator Becon, and an Iridium 9505A satellite phone rented from www.roadpost.com

The SPOT GPS PLB is really neat. The prices of PLB's have really come down in recent years and the people at FINDMESPOT have made it very affordable.


















Below is my Garmin GPS unit - I've had it for a number of years and it works great. It's not the latest generation and doesn't have many of the new bells and whistles like FM/Sirrus radio and weather satellite images - but it does the job and works nicely with the computer in uploading and downloading the information. The two biggest drawbacks to this unit is that it chews up batteries driving the color screen, even lithium batteries, and it does not have a user accessible memory card. The latest generation units do have standard memory card slots. My dad got me my first GPS device many years ago - a Garmin GPS12. It was the first generation of civilian GPS units and it got me hooked. Whatever you do, stayaway from the Garmin ETREX Vista as it was a piece of junk - very hard to acquire and maintain signals.
























By the way, our max speed is incorrect, when the unit sometimes slides on the dash, it interprets that as a very high speed. I've seen speeds in the hundreds of miles from it sliding around. The top left was our altitude at the time, our overall moving average, moving average, distance to the next destination, what the next destination was. and the final time we would arrive at the final destination. I'd setup a huge GPS track using the Garmin Mapquest software so we could follow our journey and locate nearest towns, etc. It's something to keep you occupied during a long trip such as this.

One thing I do dislike about Garmin is that all of their accessories and cables are horridly expensive and they seem to change between unit releases.
























The FINDMESPOT is the orange device on the dashboard. The other device is the Garmin GPS. They are not interconnected or anything.

What the FINDMESPOT does is you can use it in multiple modes:
1. 911 - in the 911 or emergency mode, it will send out a distress signal to the central dispatch center and they will contact the local authorities of where you are at to come to your rescue.
2. OK - All is well. This just sends out a signal with a predefined message saying that everything is OK or - All is well. This can be sent to up to ten email, mobile phone, or SMS accounts.
3. TRACKING - in the tracking mode, the device sends out a TRACK update of your current location every 20 minutes. This appears on a webpage using GOOGLE EARTH so that contacts you have provided the URL to can see where you are at and how you are progessing on your trip.

www.findmespot.com

The unit works relatively well, although I have sent it back for warranty repair as the OK button tends to stick. This is obviously an early device and a precursor of better things to come. I tend to be an early adopter of new toys so I'm used to things not working just quite right.

The unit works as advertised - although we had no need to try the 911 mode. The biggest issue is that you never really are sure if you are in the tracking mode or not. In order to be in the tracking mode, you have to press two buttons at once and look at the flashing lights. You also can not be in the tracking mode and send an OK message. I'm sure future revisions will add one more button for tracking and OK. Also, there is no way of knowing if your messages are being received by the satellite or not. In the OK mode, you have no idea if the OK message was received or not - so I had the OK message going as a text message to my mobile phone - which was great when we were in cell tower range. The inability to determine if your message got out or not could be really important if you were in an emergency situation. Another issue is that the TRACKING mode only attempts to transmit a signal every twenty minutes - it would be nice if you could change it to as little as one minute or even five minutes. One can cover a lot of ground in twenty minutes at 80mph. The device worked well sitting on the dash and sometimes when obscured by trees, etc. The lithium battery life was outstanding.

I actually got my FINDMESPOT free as there was a promotion if you purchased two years of TRACKING and standard service upfront, they would reimburse you for the unit price upto $150. The two year account I setup was about $300. You can only purchase in full year increments.

Here is some screen shots of our track log. I'd gone to a friends house in Dallas to pick him up and begin our journey (first two pictures).








































The second and third pictures are a zoomed in view of our track in Colorado.









































Even with the early limitations of the device, I will still give it five out of five stars ***** as it is cool and it does work and most importantly, it is relatively inexpensive.

Just think of the fun you could have violating peoples privacy with this! Put one in the back seat of your girlfriends or wifes car and find out where they are really going to! Want to know where your teenage kids are at - make them carry a spot. Do you own a business with delivery trucks, then mount a spot on it to find out in real time where they are.
























The second "toy" I brought along was a satellite phone. I rented the phone as they are very expensive to purchase and the airtime minutes start at $1.79 per minute. This is not something that you'd want to use every-day-all-day in place of your mobile phone. I have always wanted to try one of these as I often times do very remote trips where the nearest phone could be as long as two-three hours away. In the Blackgap Wildlife Management Area of far West Texas, adjacent to Big Bend, if you have setup camp down by the river, then it is a very very long ride back to the main road over gravel roads. Then, once you even reach the main road you are another 10-15 miles from the nearest payphone - if it is working - at the Stillwell store. Thus, even in a minor situation such as multiple flat tires, something like this could really be useful. I've always wanted to go canoeing down the lower Rio Grande from La Linda to Lake Amistad - a journey on the river of about seven days. During this time, you are totally cut off from civilization and there will be nary a cell phone signal.

The rental costs on the phone are incredibly reasonable of less than $10 per day. They ship the phone to you via Federal Express and you ship it back to them by two day Federal Express. That is really the largest expense of the entire setup - the postage. I did use the phone to check in with the folks at home and kept the calls very short - less than a minute. My entire bill, for the entire eight day trip was just $104.00. $89.90 in rental and shipping and $14.32 for usage fees.

Motorolla, sometime ago, got into the satellite business and launched enough satellites to cover the earth and provide satellite phone coverage. The idea was to replace mobile phones with this and make it affordable. Unfortunately, the cost of launching satellites is very expensive and Motorlla ended up getting out of the satellite phone business. I'm not sure who owns the Iridium satellites now, I believe it is owned by the US DOD, Department of Defense, and they allow usage for civilian satellite phones.

The package arrived on time just as promised a day before I was to leave for Colorado. It arrived fully charged and ready to go. It is somewhat bulky and heavy, the newer generation Iridium satellite phones are much smaller and lighter and would be perfect for remote backpacking. I never really got the hang of setting up or checking the voice mail and it did take me a few times to place a call - as the way you place a call is an international call with a dialing prefix of a country code of "outer space". I was able to receive calls with no problem. One of the neat things about the setup is that it arrived with a magnetic antenna for the roof of the truck. The satellite phone must have a very clear view of the sky to work. The call quality was outstanding and there was no noticeable delay that sometimes makes conversations difficult - especially seeing how the phone bounced the signal upto a satellite orbiting the earth, then down to some central station, then across the telephone network to it's ultimate destination in Texas. The unit came complete with a carrying case, a 12volt battery charger for the vehicle, electrical charger, and international electrical adapters. It also fortunately came with a "cheat sheet" instruction sheet that made operation reasonably easy.

Overall, I'd rate the Irridium Satellite phone with five out of five starts. ***** I see no downsize to this and the rate is incredibile. If you need to use the phone for conversations that last more than a couple of minutes, then you can purchase additional minutes upfront at a reduced rate. They also offer monthly plans. I even gave the phone number to the support team at Synchro32 - just in case they wanted to call me and tell me we'd landed several new accounts or needed assistance with anything. Lee left me alone to enjoy my holiday. Synchro32 never sleeps.

Almost There...

Ah, at last, we are almost at our destination in Colorado! It sure is nice to have someone who can share the driving too - someone that doesn't scare the be jezers out of you while cruising down the road.

Ah ha - our first view of snow capped mountains in Colorado! This is what it was all about - escaping the blazing heat of Texas. Snow on the mountains in July!



































Then we made it up to Monarch Pass and the Continental Divide. What was really cool about Tred driving was that I got to view all the scenery out the window - especially the long winding road up and down from Monarch Pass.

























































When we arrived in Gunnison Colorado, we had to stop and do the shopping for the trip. I think we spent a little over $100 on food - plus probably another $100 on liquor and beer. Tred learned that there are two types of beer in Colorado - the kind they sell in grocery stores is 3.2 alcohol content and you get the "good stuff" from liquor stores.

Gunnison is a nice little town. Might not be too bad to live there - during the summer. I imagine the winters are frightfully cold and bitterly snowy.



































We're getting really close now... Narrow windy roads.




































Well, we're almost there... See you on down the road...