Is this great, or what?

I left off on yesterday's post just before going to bed.  If you read that post you know that we drove uphill all day and changed elevation by about three thousand feet.  I did not think much about it except that I knew to be careful opening sealed containers because they would be likely to "burp" since they had in effect become pressurized on the inside because the pressure on the outside had decreased.  But the one thing I did not count on was my bed.  We have a sleep number bed and Cyndee and I both keep it at 50% or less.  We fall into that cushy little cloud every night and fall off to sleep without waking up with sore hips or backs.

Last night when I did my flop into bed instead of a foomph it went THUNK!  That thing was like landing on a sheet of plywood.  I grabbed the controller and got a reading on each side, both were maxed out at 100%.  I don't know how much over the max they were since the readout only goes to 100, but it drained off quite a bit of pressure before the indicator started showing lower numbers.

We have a new check list item: deflate bed if going to higher elevation.  And that is what I did this morning, I dropped the pressure to 25% on both sides.  I thought that would be more than sufficient to cover another three thousand feet in elevation today.  So this time I check the bed before plopping down in it and wow, it was hard as a rock again.  This time one side was at 100% and the other 90%. So, mental note to self, deflate bed all the way when changing elevation.

Okay, enough about the mechanics of how today worked, I gotta talk about this awesome place we landed in, Cheyenne Mountain State Park, Colorado.  Wow!  It is a 1,680 acre park carved out of the side of a mountain with about 50 RV sites and 20 miles of walking/biking trails. We snagged a great back-in site on the cul-de-sac of Swift Puma Campground, one of four campgrounds in the park.  We are so taken with this place that we went back to the ranger station and negotiated another three days added onto our reservation.  We'll be here all week and not head for Santa Fe, NM until the weekend.

This is the view out our rear picture window on site 26.

Cyndee likes her new back yard.

The front yard is not bad either.

The day has been pretty overcast ever since we got into the foothills of the rockies.  It was not the best light for taking pictures but we shot a few anyway and then headed into town for some groceries.  After a week in the Texas panhandle and then a week at the factory without doing any shopping of significance, our pantry and fridge were empty.  Colorado Springs is big enough that it has a little bit of everything and we located a Sam's Club and loaded up on the things we buy in big boxes.  Tomorrow will be a grocery store for the specialty items we get for our diet.

Another first today was that we got our camp chairs out and sat outside for a good while.  Everywhere we have been has either been too hot, too windy or an asphalt parking lot.  Today is none of those things.  We sat on the back edge of our campsite and looked out over the valley below with Fort Carson, an army post, in the distance.

It looks little against the backdrop of this majestic view, but that is our rig in the center of the picture.

Looking north from the campground Colorado Springs is laid out before you.

We could see a large rain storm gathering far to the east and Cyndee asked how far away I thought it was.  She was surprised when I told her at least 20 miles.  Is this great or what?  We watched the clouds swell until they could no longer hold moisture and started drenching the plains.  But in about an hour the clouds had built and drifted our way enough that we thought it best to put our chairs away and move inside.  Our timing was right on, no more had we got in and set down, it started pouring.  And from the looks of the vegetation around here, it needed it.  Colorado has had its share of wild fires this year but this area south of Colorado Springs seems to have been spared so far.  And with the rain that is falling now it should stave off the potential for one for days to come.