Utah - Day 26 - in Green River campground

Green River State Park, Green River

Tuesday, 26 October 2021

This was a comfortable place, though not as large as the dogs would have liked - fewer places for us to walk.  A big chunk of the park was a golf course, and it seemed like every time I'd find an area we'd like to walk in, we'd see a sign saying "Golf Course Boundary - No Pets."  I'm thinking it's the fault of owners who don't clean up after their dogs - dog poop might spoil someone's lie-up for the hole.

But what it did have in abundance were cottonwoods turned to a beautiful gold.

I kept remembering that poem that begins, "October is the treasurer of the year."  It's one of my favorite poems and I'll put it all in at the end of this post.

The day we spent here didn't seem nearly long enough for me.  I wanted very much to be catching up on my posts, but I knew the next campground would have connectivity challenges.  The last 4 days of this month I'll be down in Monument Valley, and the campground's website states clearly that phone signals are spotty at best and the campground's wifi signal isn't too strong.  So I spent my day here, where I had both phone and internet, trying to clarify my early New Mexico travel plans.  

The problem is potential bad weather.  For instance, one of the closest campgrounds to the Capulin Volcano I want to visit in northeastern NM is the Raton KOA.  And New Mexico's state road status website says I-25 is temporarily closed between Raton and the Colorado border due to heavy snow.  Well, I'm coming into New Mexico from the northwest near Farmington, which is where the closest CVS is, which is where I told the Moab doctor to send my blood pressure meds.  

Farmington looks doable, but when I tried to find routes across northern New Mexico for (a) seeing the scenery and (b) getting to the volcano, I kept finding the only routes either went across high mountains that host ski resorts or went many many miles out of the way.  I finally ended up plotting 2 routes - Plan A and Plan B - depending on the weather.  And I may find the only option is Plan C - forgetting the whole thing and going straight south from Farmington to Albuquerque and hope better weather arrives.

I'm willing to be flexible, of course, but sometimes things are a little more fluid than I'm comfortable with.  Well, I'll just have to wait and see.  But all that planning took much of today.

I saw a motorhome with Texas plates in the campground and stopped to talk to the woman.  She said they weren't really from Texas, but that's where their new official address is.  She said they'd gotten their RV about 15 months ago (apparently one of the COVID RV converts) and they'd found a group called Escapees Club.  This group provides mail service and helps RV owners establish residency in states that make things easy for RVers.  Besides Texas, the others are South Dakota and Florida.  I knew there was a reason I was seeing so many South Dakota license plates everywhere, and this must be it.

This woman said they'd chosen Texas because the Escapee Club HQ is there, which seemed to make it easier for them to handle the paperwork.  In case you're curious, I found an article online that explains how a couple from California decided to full-time it and how they became Texans through this club.   https://www.escapees.com/becoming-texans  Weird to think of.  Some of us became Texans the hard way - through growing up there.

So the only real event of the day was the beautiful fall color in the cottonwoods.


October

by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

October is the treasurer of the year,
And all the months pay bounty to her store;
The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,
And fill her brimming coffers more and more.
But she, with youthful lavishness,
Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,
And decks herself in garments bold
Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.
She heedeth not how swift the hours fly,
But smiles and sings her happy life along;
She only sees above a shining sky;
She only hears the breezes’ voice in song.
Her garments trail the woodlands through,
And gather pearls of early dew
That sparkle, till the roguish Sun
Creeps up and steals them every one.
But what cares she that jewels should be lost,
When all of Nature’s bounteous wealth is hers?
Though princely fortunes may have been their cost,
Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs.
Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free,
She lives her life out joyously,
Nor cares when Frost stalks o’er her way
And turns her auburn locks to gray.