This is at the north end of the lake. There is a theoretical path around the lake, but at the north end, it become more theory than reality. The picture doesn't do it justice; it was very lovely and peaceful.

This is one of the multitude of little ground-dwelling chipmunks that Jacob longs to catch. One of them had a hole in our campsite; Jacob spent hours patiently waiting for a chipmunk to emerge. Of course, the chipmunk was very cautious -- it would stick its head out, Jacob would lunge at it, and it would pop back into its hole.

This is Haviland Lake, looking up the lake on the side opposite the campground. The picture was taken in the afternoon.

Moving on

I left Haviland Lake campground yesterday noon, with some sadness. It has been lovely staying there long enough to watch the wildflowers come out -- daisies, a lovely blue/purple penstemon that grows along one side of a 2 - 3 foot stem, the sweet-smelling lupine and wild roses. The older family of goslings that were little when I came have just gotten their adult plumage. I've learned the call of the osprey, and the trill sound that the wings of the broad-tailed hummingbird make, and I've watched the light change on the lake as the sun and clouds shift through the day, and the moon at night.

I spent last night in the Durango Friends Meeting parking lot, and went to Meeting for Worship this morning. When we got up this morning, Jacob and I went for a walk in a field nearby, where Jacob caught a prairie dog which objected strenously to being caught and bit a chunk out of Jacob's lower lip. I'm just as glad it did so, and hope that Jake will be a little more cautious about grabbing little creatures.

Tonight we will "camp" in the parking lot of Fender Menders Autobody shop where we have an appointment tomorrow morning to get a set of plates bolted to the back door where the spare tire bracket attachment is breaking down the place that it's attached to the door. Once that's done, we're heading north, at least as far as Silverton.

Name for the van

Monday, June 21, 6:00 pm
Ever since I bought my Sportsmobile in June of 2002, I've been trying to discover what to name her, but haven't been able to come up with anything that felt right until the other day. Some time ago, one of you asked me what had inspired me to go fulltime, and I've been thinking about the answer to that question, also, and remembering my summers at YW camp on Lake Erie, in the northeast corner of Ohio. I spent a month there each of the summers from age 10 through age 14, and especially the last three of those years the time I spent by myself, just sitting and looking at the lake, or on the bridge across the small stream that surrounded the knoll where we had Sunday services, was very important to me. The name of the camp was Yawaca, and I think that's what I'll name my camper. I'll probably shorten it to Waca for most uses.

Right now, I'm sitting under the van's awning, watching the rain on the lake. It's not raining hard, even though there is thunder. The osprey is hunting for fish. I'd think that the ripples made by the rain drops would make it hard to spot the fish, but I'm not an osprey. I've spent some time in the last week watching the ospreys hunt (there are at least two of them here), and have seen them catch several fish. They're very striking birds seen from the underside -- a brown and white geometric pattern.

Tuesday, June 22
I've taken the van in to get its 30,000 mile checkup and am now at Fort Lewis College where there's an exhibit comparing Tibetan Buddism and the Navajo Beauty Way. There are some striking parallels between the two, although I suppose that that's at least partly due to what the exhibitors chose to look at. There are Tibetan monks here creating sand mandalas, which is interesting, but I think I'd prefer to watch the creation of a Navajo sand painting. I don't know how much it's due to the translations, but I found myself much more drawn to the Navajo art and quotations than to the Tibetan.

More from Haviland Lake

I'm still here at Haviland Lake, and will stay at least until this Thursday, June 23. This is a lovely, peaceful place, although it gets a bit crowded on nice weekends.

There are now two Canada Goose families on the lake. The seven older goslings are about half grown, and the new family has five new goslings. The two families stick together. Jacob tried swimming after them one day when they were near shore -- one of the parent geese chased him off.

The wildflowers are really coming into bloom now. On the trail up above the south end of the lake, the sweet-smelling lupine are thick, and at the far end of the lake there's an area carpeted with little white daisies.

I took Jacob to the vet this morning to get his rabies shot so we'll be legal going into and returning from Canada. The vet's office and home are outside of Durango, on the bank of the Animas River, in the pines. He used to practice in Chatsworth, CA, and likes his life and practice here a lot better. I can see why.

Friends (Quaker) Meeting for Worship

I went to Meeting for Worship this morning with the Durango Friends Meeting. There were about 20 of us present.

Since I left home April 20th, I've manage to attend Meeting for Worship 5 times -- once at Strawberry Creek in Berkely, three times with Moab Monthly Meeting, and today with the Durango Meeting. This is way more frequently than I was making it to my home Meeting, Orange Grove Monthly Meeting in Pasadena, CA, the last two and a half years I was there. When it came time to say goodbye to my Meeting, I realized that I probably could not have left them without that period of being much less involved than I had been for several years. I would have guessed that I'd miss my home of 23 years more than I do, and I'm finding that I miss my connection to Orange Grove more than I expected to.

This was the way Haviland Lake looked this morning at about 6:20 a.m., after a rainy night. A littel later, when it cleared a bit, there was a Great Blue Heron circling over the lake.

This is an early morning shot of the main street (Colorado St) of Telluride, looking east.

The balloons have landed/are landing at the west end of Telluride, after taking off from the city park at the east end, and floating across town. Unfortunately, I arrived late, and only caught the last few landing.

This is a picture of Edie, the 87 year-old fulltimer, in her camper van with her miniature fox terrier, Tally Ho. I took it while she was talking, and it doesn't really show her at her best, but it's the only picture I have. Notice the baskets behind her, in which she stores her things. Her camper is quite charming, as is she.

Latest from Haviland Lake

Monday, June 06
Sunshine campground and Telluride were COLD! It went down below freezing all three nights that I was there. Thursday afternoon and all day Friday were overcast all day; on Friday afternoon there was snow and thunder and lightening.

I got up early Saturday morning to see the balloons; when I got to the park, only two balloons were being filled, and neither of them took off, so I went to find some breakfast. As nearly as I could discover, only three places in Telluride serve breakfast; two of them are bakeries with limited menus where you go to the counter and order; the other is a Mexican restaurant playing energetic Mexican music, which is not what I want at breakfast time. So we went back to the campground and I made my own breakfast.

I hadn’t slept all that well either Thursday or Friday night, mostly because of the Soras. (Sora? Sori?) Soras are the only ones of the Rails (marsh-dwelling birds) that you’re likely to see; there were two of them on the small pond at Sunshine campground, walking on top of the water plants. What I didn’t know about Soras is that the have a very loud, insistent call which they make repetitively – and they do it late into the night and they start up again very early in the morning -- and my campsite was right next to the pond. So I spent a good part of Saturday afternoon napping.

In the evening I went into Telluride to see if what they call The Glow was happening. It was. There were five or six of the balloons, inflated, lined up in the middle of Main St, and at a signal, they would all light up by turning on their hot-air burners. The flames would shoot into the mouths of the balloons and light them from inside, and make the translucent balloons glow. It was rather dramatic, especially the first time they did it. What was also interesting is that quite a few of the people there (I assume they lived in Telluride) were really dressed up – a few of them were even wearing evening gowns – and were not wearing coats or other wraps, and by this time of the evening the temperature was at least in the mid to low fifties.

I didn’t take my camera, so I have no pictures of the glow. I was feeling sad and lonely – the most so since I’ve left home – and not in the mood for photography. I’m finding that I’m more subject to mood swings since I left home. I’m not surprised by this, and the “down” times don’t last more than a day or so. Most of the time (like right now) I feel deeply content with this life.

Sunday morning I went back to see if the balloons were flying, but I didn’t get there early enough (I’ll tell you why in the next paragraph) so by the time I got there all but three of the ten or so balloons had landed. I got to watch the last three float in.

The reason I was late was that when Jacob and I went for our early walk, he discovered an elk calf, which he found very interesting. (So did I, for that matter.) I had a hard time getting him to leave it alone. I hadn’t taken my camera with me, so when we got back to the campsite I grabbed it and went back (about 1/3 mile) in hopes that it would still be there, but it wasn’t. There was a man boondocked nearby who said he thought the calf may have been born the night before; he had heard the elk moving around during the night. He may have been right; it didn’t seem very well coordinated, which is just as well since it tried (quite understandably) to kick Jacob.

After watching the balloons we drove to Durango and did some errands; we got back to Haviland Lake campground yesterday afternoon; it’s lovely and peaceful here. Today has been very lazy; a little tidying and re-organizing and a couple of short walks and that’s about it.

Thursday, June 09
I’ve been having a very lazy and relaxed time here, and have nothing very startling to report. I’ve seen the Canada Goose couple with their seven goslings out on the lake; one of the parents leads, the goslings follow pretty much in a row, and then the other parent brings up the rear. I’ve also seen a mother mallard with ten ducklings swimming along near the shore. When she led them to a fallen log, she hopped up on it, and one by one the ducklings did likewise, except for one that couldn’t find any room left.

Today I spent the afternoon in Durango doing laundry and grocery shopping. I’m going to have to come back either tomorrow or Monday as the mail I expected hasn’t gotten here.

I still haven’t gotten my cell phone internet to work properly. I’ve got one more thing to try myself and if that doesn’t work I’ll see if I can find an expert to fix it for me. I must say I’m very pleased with the wireless access I’ve been able to find, Right now I’m parked outside the Durango Library and connected via their wireless; I don’t even have to go into the library.

I’m tentatively planning on leaving Haviland Lake on either Sunday, Monday or Tuesday and making my way slowly north to the Teton/Yellowstone area. If any of you have suggestions for campgrounds outside the National Parks, let me know. (Click on Comments, below, if you want your answer to be readable by others, or click on the envelope if you want to send a message to me only.)

Haviland Lake campground

Tuesday, May 31
After my last post on Sunday, I went and got Jacob from beside the library and started out to find a trail near town. On my way there I tripped crossing the street and banged up my left knee. It’s doing fine now, a bit multi-colored and tender, but it really swelled up right after I did it, so we took the gondola back up the hill and went to the campground where I put ice on the knee.

Yesterday we left Sunshine campground and head for Molas Lake campground, outside of Silverton. I wanted to go there because I’d been so taken with the picture from the 2003 Sportsmobile rally there. The drive from Telluride to Silverton goes down the San Miguel river to Placerville, then up over the Dalles pass to Ridgeway, then to Ouray (pronounced YOUray), and then to Silverton. It’s a beautiful drive, but it was cold and raining much of the way, and I wasn’t in the mood for sightseeing. The drive from Ouray to Silverton is white knuckle – no shoulders, no guardrails, steep and winding most of the way. When I got to Silverton I discovered that Moulas Lake campground hadn’t opened yet (although it was supposed to) due to melting snow. I stopped to look at it anyway; it is beautiful, but it was very cold. I decided to keep heading south toward Durango, and am camped at Haviland Lake campground in the San Juan NF. At 9700 ft, it’s about 1000 ft lower than Sunshine campground, and there are no visible snow-capped mountains. There’s the lake (a reservoir) with cliffs on the side opposite the campground, and at least as many broadtailed hummingbirds as there were at Sunshine. The hosts here have feeders out, and at times there are as many as a dozen hummers there at once.
I saw an osprey soaring over the lake this morning when we took our early walk.

There are also trout in the lake. I know this because just a little while ago Jacob and I were walking along the shore when a boy came along with a string of four. I said something like, “It looks like you’ve had good luck,” and he said, “Do you want them?” and I said, “Sure, thanks!” He and his dad were leaving to go home and would have released them if they hadn’t swallowed the hook, so I got lucky.

Wednesday, June 01
A delightful day. I watched three Canada Geese with five goslings for quite awhile while Jacob swam. I got to see the parents take the goslings into the lake for a swim. The two geese that I assume were the parents stayed close to the gosling; the third goose was a ways away and seemed to be acting a sentinel. If anyone out there knows if this is common behavior among Canada Geese, I’d be interested to hear from you. You can click on “Comments” below if you want others to be able to read what you have to say, or you can click on the little envelope if you want to send me a private message.

There were also a couple of osprey that came and went. I didn’t see them catch any fish, but I got a good look at them.

Later in the day we walked to the other side of the lake and both on the way there and on the way back saw a Western Tanager, a beautiful bird with a bright yellow body, black wings with cream spots, and a flaming read head. And then we saw a beaver, first while it was swimming in the lake, and then a little later while it was at the edge of the lake eating a leafy branch.

On my way back from the john before going to bed I stopped and had a nice chat with a couple who have spent a lot of time in Montana; they gave me some suggestions for good campgrounds.

Thursday, June 02
I’m posting this via the Durango, CO, Public Library wireless internet. I’m now completely unable to connect via my cell phone, and the guru I consult at Yahoo!’s Internet by Cell Phone group says he doesn’t recognize my problem. He suspects that I’ve picked up some sort of “infection” and suggests I take my computer to an expert. Arrrgghhh!

I’m on my way back to Telluride and Sunshine campground; I’m going for the hot air balloon festival this weekend. I think it should be quite something to see the balloons in that dramatic valley.

On Sunday, I’ve decided to go back to Haviland Lake campground for a week or so. I like it a lot, and feel the need to be in one place for several days before heading north into Wyoming.

This is the view as you turn into the valley where Telluride, CO, is located, if you're getting there by car. The yellow flowers are dandelions, which grow all over these mountain meadows.

Here's the view if your method of transportation into Telluride is the Gondola from Mountain Village. The gondola, I'm delighted to say, allows pets on every third or fourth car. Jacob was a bit anxious about this strange means of travel, but he was good about getting on and sitting fairly quietly as we rode. It's a fun way of getting in and out of Telluride, and solves the parking problem.

This is one of the views from my Sunshine campground site, taken at sunset.