Don't want to, but we must....

We have really enjoyed Cheyenne mountain, and Colorado Springs, and Manitou Springs, and Denver.  There is still way too much left to do before going, but we have to get to Albuquerque.

We are thinking that Cheyenne Mountain is a place we will have to put our resume in for a camp host volunteer position.  We just might get to do all the things we want to in a whole summer.

But we are off, heading south on I-25 for about 300 miles and then west on I-40 to a commercial campground a few miles out of Albuquerque.  To cross from Colorado to New Mexico on I-25 one has to go over Raton Pass.  The last time I remember going over this pass was in 1974 with a grain truck pulling a huge combine.  It was not much of a road back then, completely different than today's multi-lane, divided highway.  There were still some pretty long, steep climbs.  My transmission temperatures got as high as 225 deg, about 15 degrees higher than I would have been happy with.  Looks like I'll be hunting a place to do a power flush of the transmission fluid in Albuquerque.  But it is time anyway, I have nearly a 100,000 miles on this fluid.

The day was pretty pleasant but the temperature was getting to be higher than anything we had seen in a week.  It didn't last long as a huge storm started building in the mountains to the east of I-25.  In a matter of minutes the temperature dropped from 86 to 58.  You could see that huge amounts of rain and hail were falling in the mountains just a couple miles away.  There is bound to be some impressive flash flooding coming out of those hills.

We managed to get past the worst part of the storm by squeezing through a gap in the clouds.  It put us in front of the storm as we descended into Albuquerque.  We were moving faster than the storm but it was moving in the same direction as we were.  It was a race to see if we could get to the campground and get set up before the skies opened up on our campsite.

Check-in went smoothly but I was fidgety for the lady to get me checked in instead of answering the phone.  With site number in hand I half-sprinted out to the truck and snaked my way through the campground to spot A-6 of Enchanted Trails RV Park.  Cyndee expertly directed me in by weaving me between low hanging branches and power poles.  I dumped the air out of the suspension of the truck and was grabbing boards to put under the jacks as the truck fully knelt down.  A few seconds later the jacks were holding the camper and I pulled the truck out from under it.  Having done it many times in the past several weeks, it did not take me long to engage the auto-leveling system.  And rather than stand and watch it level, I grabbed the power cable and started hooking up power while the leveling system took care of itself.  The second the leveling system completed its task, Cyndee got the steps down and the door open.  As I was hooking up water she was getting the slides out.  We were ready to move inside in record time, and good thing because the rain swept over us just as I pulled the door closed.

The satellite dish is up and so is the batwing antenna.  We are watching local Albuquerque news while the DVR is recording shows off the satellite I programmed it for days ago.  Once we see what the weather is going to do, we'll switch to our recordings.  Since the satellite is on "east coast feed" it is getting shows 2 hours earlier than they come on here in mountain time.  We can get prime time shows in well before the customary 11pm news.  It used to be all I could do to hold my eyes open through Jay Leno's monologue at 11:30.  Now I'm watching it at 9:30.  I like technology when it works.

I have no clue what we are going to do tomorrow.  Maybe find someplace that will do a transmission flush on a Saturday.