After the amazingness of South Dakota, it is hard to top it. I don’t think our next locations topped it, but they did come in pretty close–especially the Harvest Host locations. We had signed up for Harvest Host and I have been looking for an opportunity to use them. I found it in two locations–a buffalo ranch in Nebraska and a woodturner in Colorado. For my birthday, I wanted to go stay at these locations. So we headed to Nebraska.
We ended up staying in Nebraska for a week or so prior to heading further south. We stayed at a great little campground called Red Cloud and attended church there. It was beautiful with the Fall colors. I loved that we were following Fall south and had Fall for about two months straight. It was awesome. I love Fall.
Then we headed to a place I have always wanted to visit Chimney Rock. On the way there, we made a fun stop at a place called Carhenge. It is a replica of Stonehenge built all out of old scraped cars. It was hilarious that someone had taken the time to build such a thing.
Then we visited Chimney Rock. The visitors center was closed for the season except on weekends and we were at the middle of the week. But, we were able to visit the cemetery which is where I wanted to go. My ancestor, Mary Murray Murdoch, affectionately known as “Wee Granny” because she was 4′ 9″ tall and Scottish, died at Chimney Rock. She was in a handcart company and is famously quoted as saying, “Tell John [her son who had gone to Utah before her] that I died with my face towards Zion.” There was a gravestone memorial for her in the cemetery and along the highway a wagon wheel memorial about it as well. I have always wanted to see the place to imagine what that must have been like. I have great respect for Wee Granny and can’t wait to meet her one day on the other side.
We are members of Harvest Hosts. They arrange for people to be able to park overnight at vineyards, breweries, farms, and other attractions. We had been wanting to try them out and I found two rather fascinating ones on our route back to Utah. So, we headed to Rocky Hollow Buffalo Company ranch south of Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
We got to park our rig on the ranch and we decided to go for the tour of the buffalo herd. That was awesome. We learned a lot about how buffalo ranching differs from cattle ranching. Buffalo are much more dangerous and they tend to roam so you really have to have strong fencing. The rancher had just put in electric fencing to keep the bulls from roaming. I learned that they can have their calves at any time of the year, not just spring. There were quite a few calves in the herd. He has improved the quality of his herd over the years so his buffalo are sought after for others trying to improve their herd. He had names for all of his buffalo and knew a little bit about their personality. Mike got to hand feed the buffalo. I could have, but I was busy taking pictures and videoing Mike. That was a really fun visit and we bought some ground bison to take with us. It was excellent. We both loved this visit and would highly recommend it to anyone. You don’t have to be with Harvest Host to stay here. Just contact them.
Next we headed to Colorado to the town of Pueblo West. Here we spent the night at the Trolley Turner residence. This was a really fun visit. Boris is a woodturner and makes all sorts of beautiful things. He did a demonstration for all of us (about 6 or so RVs were staying there). It was cool to watch him practice his craft. He let us try it as well under his watchful eye. That was awesome. I forgot to get pictures of Mike doing it, but he took some of me. Boris was funny and entertaining. There was a family with three children and he really played up to them. It was great.
Then they invited us into the house for drinks and visiting. Because they knew we were from Utah, they invited their friend, who happened to be a member of our Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also loved genealogy and was a bagpiper because his heritage is Scottish. He played the bagpipes for us and then he let Mike and myself try the bag pipes. They are crazy hard to play. I always wanted to learn, but I will have to have much better lung capacity to play them.
As our “souvenir” of this visit, we bought and ice cream scoop. He let us pick out the wood we wanted and then he made it over night for us. It is beautiful and the most amazing ice cream scoop ever.
They we headed to near Durango, Colorado and found some BLM land to boondock on called Durfield. It was a great location with good signal so Mike could work, and places for me to do my morning walks, so we ended up staying here for one full week. It was a great place.
One cool thing about it was that it was tarantula mating season so you would see the male tarantulas just crawling across the road all over the place. It was pretty cool. They were gigantic tarantulas–they were about the size of the palm of my hand lengthwise and about the width of three of my fingers. I never saw a female, but I understand they are bigger. That was really intriguing. We loved it here.
Our last stop in Colorado before heading back to Utah was to go and see Mesa Verde National Park. We stayed in an RV park just outside the national park. I had been to Mesa Verde years ago with Marie, but for some reason I did not remember that visit. I was absolutely fascinated by the history of the native peoples who lived in this region. I have in awe of their ability to survive and thrive in that environment. It was fascinating to learn how they made their pueblo houses in their cliff dwellings and pit houses as well.
They were farmers, hunters and gatherers. They grew the “three sisters”–squash, corn and beans. That is the traditional diet of a lot of native peoples in the Americas because I found that same set of three in Chiapas, Mexico, when I visited the Tzeltal people there about six months later. Apparently, with those three foods, you have a complete set of nutrition–everything the human body needs. That is pretty cool. We were only at Mesa Verde for one day, so we did a quick tour of several parts of the park.
It was time to return to Utah so we could get some more projects done on the RV. We had, had trouble with our RV fridge the whole summer because it was such a hot summer. That is one of the things that drove us north and drove us to leave Mike’s parents’ house earlier than our projects being done. It was time to replace it with a residential fridge. More about that later, but it was a game changer. Utah here we come–you will always be home sweet home.