Trying out recommended activities around Gunnison

We met a nice local couple at the balloon ascension on Saturday morning -- they suggested a couple of local things to us... 

The Saturday Farmer's Market

Not anywhere near as large as Fruita, but a nice selection of items (still not very many veggies for sale).

They also recommended Sundays at Six, a concert in the park on Sunday at 6pm (duh!) -- 

The group on the Sunday evening we went was The Ditchwalkers 

From the concert info (https://www.gunnisonartscenter.org/sundays---6-concert-series):

Rooted in American old-time and bluegrass traditions, Matt & Madeline Shugert with Lizzy Plotkin deliver spirited instrumentals and rich three-part harmonies that celebrate the beauty and intimacy of acoustic string-band music.

We enjoyed the music, and we enjoyed people watching! It seemed that most folks came to the concert like going to a coffeehouse -- the music was playing, but they were conversing with friends, kids were running around having a grand old time, and it was generally just a place for socializing. A *lot* of people (especially families) rode their bicycles to the park.

One thing that we have noticed is that there are very few heavy people here around Gunnison. It seems to be a very active community and people are very fit. 

The couple that we met at the balloon ascension have lived here about 7 years, having moved here from Connecticut to be near family. She shared that a lot of people end up needing to move to lower elevation as they reach their 80s due to the elevation; she asked if we had noticed people with oxygen bottles (we had) and noted that is due to the thin air.

We have noticed that our walks are significantly more challenging here than when we are at lower elevations, not just because we are usually walking uphill, but also because of the thinner air. Sometimes it just seems nearly impossible to get a full breath. I guess if we lived here we would get accustomed to it!

Balloon Rally in Gunnison

When we were at the hamburger event in the campground on the Fourth, some folks we talked with told us about the balloon rally in Gunnison. We had seen some information about it, so decided to go on Saturday, July 5. The balloon ascension starts at about sunrise, so we headed into Gunnison before 7am.

When we got there, some balloons were already aloft, but others were still filling on the ground... if you'd like to see more about what we saw, please check out our video:  https://youtu.be/UArup-kADvs

 

Fourth of July in Gunnison, CO

The town of Gunnison was having a number of activities on the Fourth of July (and also days preceding and following). We decided to go into town for some of the afternoon/evening events in Jorgensen Park.

There were food vendors, and we got chicken empanadas and, what we think may have been Papas Rellenas (fried stuffed potatoes). Most of the vendors appeared to be Mexican or South American families who were serving up items that they might cook at home.

There was to be a concert later in the evening, so we headed over to set up our chairs... 

There was a steel drum band performing in the gazebo -- they may have been students from the local Western Colorado University.

They were having a good time and the audience enjoyed them too; here's a video of a part of one song: https://youtu.be/55eM9q8YqDY 

There was a nice crowd enjoying the entertainment.

There was also a "Pup 'n' SUP" race -- Stand-Up Paddleboards (though no one was standing up) with dogs (pups) along for the ride on the small pond in the park.

A little later, Bombargo took the stage -- a band from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (does it seem a little odd to have a Canadian band play for US Independence day?).

There was a good crowd enjoying their music too!

We were in the shade, and I had gotten cool and covered up with a jacket!

There were a number of people dancing up near the stage for some of the songs.

We decided that staying until fireworks (9:30pm) was not in the cards for us, but we enjoyed these activities in Gunnison!

Fourth of July at Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch

We decided to enjoy some activities here at the campground on the Fourth...

The campground workers cooked hot dogs and burgers...

... there was seating outside on the patio.

A good number of folks came out for the meal...

...you could get a hot dog or hamburger or cheeseburger (with all the fixin's), chips, watermelon, and drink for $5.

On our way back to Gracie, Carl took a picture of the hill/mountain that is near us... he keeps on saying that he thinks we could walk up it pretty easily...

We walked on the campground road over to the area closest to it -- there was a fence...

... undeterred, Carl headed up to the fence...

... turns out that the fence is knocked down right there, "Go ahead Carl, I'll just wait right here!" He decided that it might be better to wait for another day!

Looking down the campground road toward the reservoir

In the area where we are parked, there are cabins too. We are wondering if it could possibly be a location for a family reunion at some point!

We are enjoying this "latest acquisition" campground into the Thousand Trails system.

Thousand Trails Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch

We had booked our stay at Blue Mesa many months ago so we'd know that we had a place to stay for the Fourth of July holiday. Holidays can be tough to book in campgrounds, as many people make their plans way in advance (and we usually do *not*). Adding to that complexity is that our membership in Thousand Trails (TT) only allows us to hold one holiday reservation at a time, which is challenging since the summer has three holidays. If we were going to be in TT for Memorial Day, we would not be allowed to attempt to book a stay for the 4th until our Memorial Day stay started, which would be less than 60 days out, making it questionable on whether we could get a reservation. This year, we had planned to be in the Kodachrome State Park for Memorial Day (though we ended up at the Harvest Host farm in Spanish Fork), the 4th in Thousand Trails Blue Mesa, and Labor Day at Paul Wolff campground in Elgin, Illinois. 

Thousand Trails is now assigning campsites which many members are not happy about, but we have found it working for us so far, better than the "first come, first served" gamble that we used to experience. We never knew at the end of a driving day what we would find available at the campground. Many times we'd see small rigs parked in huge sites, and what was left for us was a tiny site that we would need to shoe-horn ourselves into. We would try to get to the campground as soon as possible after the allowed check-in time started so we'd have the best options. Sometimes we would move to a better site the next morning after folks checked out, but most of the time it wasn't worth the hassle after we'd gotten parked. Many people are indicating that they are not getting sites that they want with the assigned sites, but we aren't really particular, other than that we fit into the site, and that it preferably has 50A. I indicate that when we make our booking, and so far, we've gotten sites we like with the campground doing the assignment.

For this Thousand Trails campground, we had spoken with another TT member and they indicated that it is good to contact the campground and make sure that they know the size of your rig before arrival. Although it is in our profile, I did call, and the person with whom I spoke indicated that we had a "really good site!" That sounded promising!

Sure enough, Gracie is in a very nice pull-through site.

We took a walk through the campground...

In the family center, there are games -- pool, ping pong, foosball, as well as old style video games.

Sign at the highway for the campground

Another view of Gracie (on the right side of the picture) -- you can see the big hill right near us. The small building in the foreground is a cabana -- our site is indicated as a "cabana site" -- we have one of those next to Gracie too. It has a picnic table located inside it.

We walked up to the top of the campground -- it was more of an uphill than we were anticipating...

... but we got views down through the campground toward the Blue Mesa Reservoir.

Another view of the reservoir

A view toward the west from the "top" of the campground. There are cottages that can be rented along the top of the campground and I'm sure that they have nice views from their front porches.

Blue Mesa was only recently acquired by Thousand Trails (in 2020 or 2019?). This poster was used to announce the new acquisition in other campgrounds in the Thousand Trails system. Now they have a copy of it in the Welcome Center here at Blue Mesa.

A view of a small fishing pond (left) and Blue Mesa Reservoir (beyond, center) from the parking area in front of the Welcome Center.

We are enjoying the cooler weather and a longer stay (15 days total) here at Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch!

Amusement in the motorhome

One afternoon, when I went to use the "facilities" in Gracie, I found that Carl had left a "present" for me...

The things you can do with a tube from a paper towel roll and two rolls of toilet paper!

He said that the example that he had seen had it like this, but that you had to get down lower to get the full effect, so he preferred his alternative (the picture above) with the toilet paper rolls being upright.

I haven't asked what the source is of his creativity!

Travel from Fruita to Gunnison

On Sunday, we moved campgrounds from Fruita (James M Robb Colorado River State Park) to Gunnison (Thousand Trails Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch).

We stopped for fuel before leaving Grand Junction -- I got this picture as we were leaving the Love's fuel stop -- the cliffs of the Colorado National Monument to the west.

Another view of the Colorado National Monument

We were driving east on US 50 and the part of Colorado just east out of Grand Junction was very desolate - little housing, very dry, very barren. We drove through a few small towns -- one of them was Delta, Colorado. I didn't take pictures, but there was an interesting business in town -- it had what-looked-like big white concrete blocks in their yard and a huge crane -- I looked it up and found pictures online...

Big white blocks in the yard -- what are they???

Another view of the blocks in the yard with a view of the big crane on the right side

We couldn't imagine what those blocks might be -- I found the name of the company and found out that they are a marble processing company: https://www.coloradostonequarries.com/plant/

In 2021, Colorado Stone Quarries opened their own Marble Slabbing facility, approximately one hundred years after the original mill in Marble started processing the columns for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Our state-of-the-art factory extends over 40 acres. A warehouse of approximately 140,000 square feet hosts the best Italian technology and machinery to cut and finish our blocks. Here they will be processed into slabs, tiles and cut-to-size blocks. 

 It turns out that this is Yule Marble (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_Marble) -- 

Yule Marble is a marble of metamorphosed Leadville Limestone found only in the Yule Creek Valley, in the West Elk Mountains of Colorado, 2.8 miles (4.5 km) southeast of the town of Marble, Colorado. First discovered in 1873, it is quarried underground at an elevation of 9,300 feet (2,800 m) above sea level—in contrast to most marble, which is quarried from an open pit and at much lower elevations.

The localized geology created a marble that is 99.5% pure calcite, with a grain structure that gives a smooth texture, a homogeneous look, and a luminous surface. It is these qualities for which it was selected to clad the exterior of the Lincoln Memorial and a variety of other buildings throughout the United States, in spite of being more expensive than other marbles. The size of the deposits enables large blocks to be quarried, which is why the marble for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, with its 56-long-ton (57 t) die block, was quarried from Yule Marble.

The interesting things we see as we are driving!

Pictures that I took while we were driving --  

As we got further east, we saw more green.

We ended up in a canyon with steep cliffs on both sides.

We eventually got to a spot where we could start to see Blue Mesa Reservoir.

We had to cross a bridge over the reservoir -- "Smile, Carl!"

Looking east up the reservoir

We arrived at the Thousand Trails campground by about noon, and got checked in. Much cooler temperatures!

ARRL Field Day

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) has a field day the fourth full weekend in June, which, this year, was June 28-29. 

ARRL Field Day is the most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June, more than 31,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.  (https://www.arrl.org/field-day)

We had looked up information and found that there was a Ham Radio club in Grand Junction that would be participating in the field day on Saturday. During the days before, Carl had listened in on some of the club's "nets", and participated in one of them. 

Their field day setup was being done in two places -- we visited the one in Grand Junction set up outside the church where they have their monthly meetings. The other one was located up in the Uncompahgre National Forest -- we contemplated driving there as they promised that it would be a lot cooler, but it would have been about a 3 hour drive round trip.

One of these two folks was the net control (moderator) for the net on which Carl participated on Friday. The net that he joined ran from 7:30-8am M-F and was called the "Oatmeal Net". They had ~30 participants joining each morning to share what they planned to do that day!

The setup outside the church

We enjoyed talking with folks. A couple of them have gone to Arizona in the winter, some to Quartzfest out in Quartzsite in January.

I found an article about another club in Vermont who was participating in Field Day. (https://vtdigger.org/2025/06/30/radio-amateurs-practice-for-emergencies-and-hope-for-high-scores-on-field-day/) They seem to work on the competitions more than this club in Colorado was doing. There are many contests within the ham radio community that gets the operators on the air and using their equipment, so they can be ready to help in case of an emergency.

Fruita Farmers and Makers Market

On Saturday morning, there was a Farmers and Makers Market in downtown Fruita, so we decided to head over there to see what there was to see!

We must be in the right spot!

There were quite a large number of vendors -- 

... probably about 30 -- lots of different things being sold.

We purchased some sweet pickles from this booth. Carl chatted with the lady in the booth (who made all the things she was selling) about fermentation -- she does fermenting, but cannot sell that at the market because she doesn't have a way to keep it at a constant safe temperature while at the market.

Carl took a picture of this downtown business to share with his daughter, Kim.

We enjoy farmers markets -- we were hoping for some fresh vegetables, but guess it is too early for those yet in this area of the country. It is interesting to see what kinds of things are particularly popular -- one lady was sold out of her sourdough bread (her sign indicated she had had many different varieties and each had been crossed off with just one non-sourdough option remaining to be sold). There were at least two other booths that also had sourdough bread, and neither of them appeared to be sold out. There were two beef vendors, a pork vendor, and a fellow selling frozen chickens. 

The chicken guy actually has a peach orchard that he has recently purchased -- he is trying to get the orchard back into production mode, and, if I understood him correctly, is using chickens (by moving their coop every day) to rejuvenate the land. He said that he needed to plant the new peach trees in the same places where the old ones were planted because of the location of the irrigation -- but he needed to clean up the soil from the old trees (I think to get rid of nematodes?). He mentioned that he was following techniques espoused by a farmer in Virginia -- Joel Salatin, near Staunton. The peach farmer also mentioned that he had grown up in Richmond. Small world!

In case you're interested in more about Joel Salatin: https://polyfacefarms.com/about-us 

A laptop project

Carl's daughter, Kim, had given him a laptop that was no longer working well. He decided to dig into it while we were in Fruita. It had several symptoms -- 

• Windows was running really slow - diagnosis:  slow hard drive, 8G memory, old technology
• it would not remember basic settings when booted up (date and time, boot order) - diagnosis: battery for NVRAM was not working
• it would not work without being plugged in and it was difficult to keep the power supply plugged in - diagnosis: laptop battery shot and wire in power supply was broken

He got a new power supply, and now it stays plugged in okay.

After taking the back/bottom off, he could see components...

Zoomed in: The NVRAM battery was a 3V button cell, but not the same any that we had, however, he could replace it with a 2032 button battery. It now remembers the boot order; it still doesn't keep date and time, but he is thinking that a new laptop battery might resolve that.

A task still in progress...  I think he likes tinkering...