Elephant Butte Reservoir 2016

What a difference in the water level from our first winter here in Elephant Butte.  When we were here in 2008 the water level on the butte was all the way up to the top white line.  Now you can see three layers of water lines.  This one marina had two long docks to get out to it.  Now you can see one of the docks is totally out of the water.  They keep letting water out of the dam here to feed it to the farmers down river who have chili pepper fields and pecan tree farms that need water. 

Friends that live here year round said that on the major holidays this summer 90,000 people converged on this little town to enjoy the lake.  With so little water left its hard to imagine thousands of boats, houseboats, sailboats and jet skis out there.  We've been here for almost two weeks and the weather has been perfect.  Sunny and low 80's with no wind is hard to beat.  Yuma is still in the mid 90's and we should be "enjoying" the heat there by the end of the week. 

Fall colors in Southern Colorado

We left Fort Collins, Co and headed south past Denver and Colorado Springs.  We stopped in Colorado City just south of Pueblo.  We stayed at the nicest KOA campground we have stayed at in a long time.  We spent two days there so we could take a drive up into the mountains.  We also stayed because the wind kicked up and there were gusts up to 50 miles an hour.  You don't want to be on the road with an RV in those kind of winds. 

The road we took was a scenic byway through a national forest and it turned out to be a very beautiful drive with good fall color.  It was mostly aspen trees and pines so lots of yellow but some orange and some of the grasses were colorful.   We got to wondering how many state and national forests we driven in with all the traveling we've done.  Someday I'll have to try and figure it out. 

We are now in Elephant Butte, NM and the water level in the reservoir is the lowest we've seen it.  We'll be getting some new shocks put on the 5th wheel and then be heading into Arizona. 

Rocky Mountain National Park

From the Black Hills we went down into Colorado and stayed in Fort Collins.  We found a nice KOA there and drove about an hour up to Rocky Mountain National Park outside of Estes Park.  We hit it just right to enjoy fall colors and the elk in full rut.  This bull elk was bellering/bugling trying to maintain his turf and harem.  There was another male elk that this guy chased off after taking him on in a fight.  The other elk lost one of his big long antlers in the tussle. 

We drove up to the Alpine Visitor center which sits at almost 13,000 feet.  There is a hiking path there that you can follow up to the very top of the mountain at almost 14,000 feet.  We didn't try it having not had much chance to adjust to the altitude we didn't want to get the headache and blue lips from altitude sickness.  We got to see and touch some snow and enjoy some beautiful fall colors in the mountains. 

Now we are in Colorado City -- a tiny town on I-25 in the southern part of the state.  We are heading into New Mexico next. 

Big Horns and Big Waterfalls

We drove over to Spearfish Canyon on the west side of the Black Hills.   The canyon was beautiful with lots of fall color.  At the end of the drive is Roughlock Falls.  It was so beautiful and it had plenty of water spilling down because it had just rained two nights ago.  It was so worth the drive to see.  Then on the way back to camp we went through the towns of Lead and Deadwood and there just outside of Deadwood was this group of Bighorn Sheep.  Half of them had crossed the road and gone up the bluff but there were still a half a dozen that wanted to cross the road.  There was a sign about a half mile farther down the road stating watch for Bighorns crossing the road.  The sign was just a little too late.  

We had to have a front hub and assembly replaced on the truck.  Something to do with the 4wheel drive that we almost never use.  It was making a terrible squeaking noise and the guy said eventually the wheel would have locked up if we didn't have it replaced  Don't need that kind of excitement on the road.  We are for sure headed to Wyoming now and then down through Colorado. 

Black Hills Elk

We traveled from Bemidji, MN down the east side of North and South Dakota.  It was so nice to travel good roads with little traffic and almost no road construction.  We would have had to fight bumpy roads, lots of traffic and loads of road construction if we had gone south through Minnesota.  We then cut across South Dakota and are spending time in the Black Hills.  We've been driving through Custer State Park early in the mornings and have been seeing all kinds of wildlife.  We were even lucky enough to see this herd of Elk as we drove the Wildlife Loop road through the park.  The big guy in the center of the photos was obviously the top bull.  He chased all the other males out of his way.

We also saw lots of pronghorn antelope, deer and mule deer, mountain bluebirds, western meadowlarks, a badger, lots of cute little black tailed prairie dogs, wild burros and buffalo.  I really don't like the wild burros.  They hang out on the road hoping you will feed them.  They don't want to move out of the way so I just collapsed the mirrors on the truck and crept through the throng.  They will move when forced.    We aren't sure how long we will hang around here but when we decide to move we will probably head over to Wyoming and then down through Colorado.  If the weather hold out.

Paul Bunyan & Friends

 

 

 

Our first stop on our slow journey south is Bemidji.  We didn't go very far but we've never really explored the area west of Lake Winnibigosh.   The resort we are staying at is on Cass Lake and is very nice.  Its right off of Highway 2 -- the highway that goes all the way across the top of the U.S.  Bemidji is a nice small town that is growing quickly.   We had to go see Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.  The statues are in a little park right along the shoreline of Lake Bemidji.  There is a cute visitor center with more of "Paul's stuff" -- a huge ax, a huge fishing pole, a big long rifle that took up most of a wall.  It was fun to see what they came up with to show off his big size."

We walked around the "downtown area".  They have statues on the corners of all kinds of crazy things.  I took a picture of Humpty-Dumpty.  The statues were for sale at crazy expensive prices.  I doubt many will sell.  We will be heading out to the Dakotas next. 

Rainy Lake Walleyes

We went fishing up on Rainy Lake.  Its about a 40 mile drive from Kabetogama to the Rainy Lake visitor center where the boat launch is for the part of Rainy Lake that we like to fish.  We both caught very nice walleyes in the 22 to 24 inch size.  They are such a pretty color coming out of Rainy.  This size walleye has to go back in the water but we didn't mind -- they were so pretty.  We did catch a smaller walleye that we kept and ate -- one last walleye sandwich -YUM.

We are heading out of the area on Wednesday if the weather cooperates.  We will be spending a few days in Bemidji on Cass Lake and then we will be heading over to North Dakota.  We've decided that its not worth driving through the Twin Cities and going through all the road construction.   So we will be going through the Dakotas.  We will eventually end up in Yuma, Arizona for the winter.