Skip to main content

Day 3 - Stephanie - All That Glitters Is Not Diamonds

Day 3 started off with a whoop, whirl, and bang!  Approximately 1 am a wicked storm gave it's warning and then came in with vengeance!  The wind first woke me up and I remembered the awning was out - oh no!!!  All I could think of was what a disaster it would be to the the awning ripped off the body of the camper - so like the father in The Night Before Christmas, I leapt out of bed (well, struggled out was more like it because this mattress sucks you in and it's a struggle to get out of it's grasp), ran to the door, and started rolling the awning in - saved it!  Kevin is waking up at this point and tries to get any TV channel to see what was going on.  I went back to bed, put the pillow over my head, and with every crack of thunder, and monstrous gusts of wind, kept envisioning them finding us smashed under a tree that had broken off.  I wasn't that far off.  The morning of the aftermath revealed a cracked pine tree with it's tree top feet from the hood of my truck.  No harm became to us though.

That was our luck for the day as we had no luck with our diamond expedition.  I was 9 years old again at the diamond mine!  The rain had left the diamond fields muddy and with huge ruts and puddles.  I staked out my spot, fell to digging and filling my 5 gallon bucket, sat down next to a huge muddy puddle and started seining the mud and rocks through my strainers.  I was covered from head to toe in mud and I was happy!  Kevin was spotlessly clean compared to me as he had  been standing up at the straining station sifting through his buckets of mud.  He convinced me to stay there with him, so side-by-side we sifted and hoped.  Many times we were thought we'd found something, only to be told that it was not a diamond, but crystal.  Oh well, after 5 hours of this fun, we went back to our camp.

We met some people from Ft. Worth, TX and made new friends.  After a long day, we finally went to bed and dreamed of sparkly things not found.  It was a grand day!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 15 - Miles of Adventures

Today started out with an outing on back dirt roads to see the Mexican Hat up close and personal.   We were hoping to be able to ride down to the San Juan River, but the descent was very steep with loose sand.   We did get to the back side of the Mexican Hat though. After that on to the Valley of the Gods!   WONDERFUL RIDE!!!   The road through the valley was as perfect as we could ask for for a dirt/sand road.   There was one time when my back wheel got a little squirrely on me in deep sand.   I was to blame because I was riding in Ray Charles mode (swinging head left and right to catch all the sights) and didn’t pay attention to my immediate surroundings.    It was very deep sand!   But I made it and Kevin following made it through with no problems.   Valley of the Gods is beyond words to describe!   I’m so disappointed that my “go pro” camera was not rolling as we drove through the valley.   I thought I’d turned it...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 16: Starry Starry Night - Kevin

Day started off at 5am on a trip back to Cortez to have a bed cover installed on the truck. Got back at noon and goofed off for a while and took a nap, Got up before sunset for a photo shoot in the Valley of the Gods. Amazing Milkyway, shot until around midnight until someone came down the road with a flashlight and cut through the desert scrub to get to faster. We loaded up and left before they reached us. I never saw them but it scared Stephanie pretty good. I had a 9mm on my hip and a 380 in my pocket and Steph had a death grip on her 38 for miles down the road. Aside from the spooky person it was a blast. I did randomly scan the area with my flashlight looking for eyeballs, there is a photograph on the office wall of this campground of a big mountain lion in the Valley of the Gods.
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 11 - Moving to Silverton

We packed up and moved to Silverton, CO this morning.  The air system Kevin put on the truck seems to have done the trick!  We did get into some heavy winds but we were not blown around this time.  We actually have internet service at this place!  We took a little motorcycle ride up into the mountains - 20 miles on gravel, dirt, and some large rough rocks.  The large rocks were just a bit too tough for us to tackle so we turned around and came back to camp, ate a quick bite, got Nikki and our cameras in the truck and returned to the same mountain area in search of an old mine, bears, moose, and whatever wildlife we could see.  Saying it was a rough ride does not give the ride up the mountain road justice.  It was tooth jarring!  But we made it to the mine.  Nikki enjoyed the adventure. Here are views from our campsite: Here is the road ending in multiple lakes and beautiful scenery!  Along with photos of a...
Post a Comment
Read more