And I Began Living
The first road trip in the new RV
Edit: spelling error corrected after publishing
The story up to now: A beloved cat died unexpectedly. I realized it was time to start living while I still had life. I bought a motorhome to retire in. Took it through Colorado on the way home. Then they fired me at work. I decided to grab Life by the horns and not wait to do what I wanted to do.
“Coming home to a place he'd never been before” — John Denver, “Rocky Mountain High”
We began our move from Tennessee to Colorado on March 8, 2010 - by way of southern California. My son was stationed there and about to deploy to a war zone; it might be the last time I would see him. He was in Oregon visiting his mother on pre-deployment leave. Instead of flying back to base, he would fly to Las Vegas and join us as we explored the Mojave together on his way back to base. After that, my lady and I would go to Colorado.
We headed west on I-40. We got as far as Memphis that night, and crossed the Mississippi the next morning into Arkansas. Our destination was Petit Jean State Park, a place with some interesting history.
Back when the French owned the place, then known as Louisiana, a Frenchman named Chavet mounted an expedition up the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers. His fiancée begged him to take her with him, but he refused. So she disguised herself as a man and took employment as a crew member on the ship under a pseudonym. She was shorter than the men, and became known as Petit Jean (“Little John”).
Her ruse was discovered when she fell ill in America, and died there on that mountain.
The weather was scuddy, the light was awful, there were no leaves on the trees yet, and though we spent two nights there I didn’t get any good shots. Here’s one of the motorhome in our camp spot. We had the place to ourselves.
A couple of nights later we were in Red Rock Canyon State Park in Oklahoma. Again, no good shots but here’s what camp looked like.
I decided to let the cats out for some air, because there wasn’t much room in that canyon and I figured even if they did run off, I’d be able to catch them. The big Norwegian Forest Cat immediately crossed the creek and began to meow for me to follow him. I had some difficulty doing that without getting my feet wet, but got across, and was surprised to see our tortoiseshell over there too! “What the…” I silently exclaimed. “I thought she was still in camp.”
Then I saw a white hind foot. My Pookie didn’t have any white on her at all. It was a stray that looked just like her!
On the road, they remained calm: Pookie lay on the dash watching the scenery, while the big Norwegian hid under the covers of the bed.
That is, until we got to the Texas panhandle. Then she started yowling: she seemed to be commenting on the scenery. I guess she just didn’t like Texas, because in all the years she lived and traveled with me, she never did it again.
It was in Texas that I started seeing something I’d never seen before, and it fascinated me: Cholla (pronounced “choy-ya”) cactus. From the driver’s seat, they looked like chain links with fur on them as we whizzed by. But when you look at them up close, that ain’t fuzz! It’ll hurt you:
When we crossed into New Mexico, I started seeing mountains. AAAAHHH… Real mountains, not those little hills they have back east. Home at last. This is Tsoodził, one of the four sacred mountains of the Dineh (Navajo) people. The white men call it Mt. Taylor.
We had time to burn. We weren’t due in Las Vegas for another five days. We checked into an RV park in Grants, New Mexico for a coupla nights. There was scenery to go see and photograph. Life was good.
To be continued