Eddy & Frances 2023 Teardrop Blog

After 650 miles, the 210 miles to make it home was a bit too far.

Home of the national Route 66 museum.

Thank to my friend Jeffa and his wife Sue for putting us up and feeding us.

Peace Corps Lesotho reunion, 40 years after COS. This was an improbable and the indescribable gathering of folks that were and are very dear to me.  Between the endless belly laughs, many tears were shed. Thank you, Lesotho.

This place is a secret treasure.

Felt like Fall

The KarlTHEDral.

We left Aspen Glen and ultimately went over the Cumbres pass and into New Mexico.  When we arrived in Chama, we soon learned that we had stumbled into Chama Days, which the guy at the gas station told me was just a way to extract more money from tourists before summer ended.  We parked the car and hiked along the parade route.  We got to talked with a retired NM State Trooper who told us that back in the day, Chama Days was filled with shootings and knife fights.  No such action was seen during our stay.  The parade was about as cheesy as one would expect, but the kids all walked away with bags of candy thrown from the floats. We decided to book a passage on the Cumbres-Toltec railroad for the next day.  So we returned to the pass and drove about 3 miles down a gravel road to the Meadows campground.  25 years ago, this was a spectacular campground dominated by blue spruce, some 3 feet in diame...

 We were heading south from Buena Vista, CO on 285.  We were going to enter New Mexico and make our way toward Santa Fe.  We stopped at a National Forest Center to get a map of NF campsites.  The attendant asked us to reconsider and take 17 west, ultimately toward Chama.  We stopped an Aspen Glen and grabbed a decent site.  We later learned that there were some primo sites on the lower loop, down near the river.  In any event we had a nice stay here and we had a real surprise awaiting us.  We just didn't know it yet.

We were excited to visit the KarlTHEDral and see the Wrenchifix, although the Cresentifix would be my preference.

 After cycling from Erie to Lyons with Murph and Rose (Coast to Coast staff) years ago, Frances has had a fantasy about living in Lyons.  We had wanted to stop in the Snowy Range of Medicine Bow NF, but the sites were filled and thunderstorms loomed.  After a nice Thai lunch and visit to the geology museum at UW in Laramie, we drove on and grabbed a room in Lyons for the night.  We had a beer at the Oskar Blues brewery and walked around town.   I got a bike ride in from Lyons up toward Estes Park, CO.  It was a great ride down from Pinewood Springs.  I was concerned about automobile traffic stacking up behind me on the way down, but it turned out not to be a problem.  I was booking along at between 35 - 45 the entire way and a crossed 7 miles without a car in site on my backside. Frances met a Space Shuttle astronaut who was staying in the room beside us.  We met a lot of friendly people in Lyons.  It is probably a bit too small to consi...

 This was a beautiful campsite in the Western Block, Sierra Madre, of the Medicine Bow National Forest. This was one of my favorite campgrounds of the trip.  It was typical, Wyoming high country with mixed fir and Aspen.  The Continental Divide Trail passed nearby and we encountered several through hikers.  Frances made one's day by pumping him full of Oreos.  We drove over to a town called Encampment.  This is when Tim was still trying to successfully find a way out of Ethiopia.  We had to come into Encampment to be able talk with Rebecca and later with Tim.  I enjoyed hearing Tim talk about how he was the only person on the bus who knew anything about changing a tire.  It was necessary to change the tire since there was a bullet hole in the tire that apparently was the result of a pot shot by someone along their route.   My ride from Encampment back to the campground was a good way to work out the stress of worrying about Tim's ordeal....

We hadn't planned to travel to Rock Springs a few days later, but heavy thunderstorms were forecast for Pinedale for the next several days.  We were even warned of them by some forest service workers who were doing trail maintenance on the Polk Creek Trail.  9000 feet of altitude is not a fun place to ride out severe weather.  You can get some really nasty hail at that elevation. We awoke to news this morning that rebel activity near Lalibela, Ethiopia had closed down the airport where my brother Tim was attempting to fly from.  Travel overland is rumored to be even more perilous.  Of course, we have no idea of the real situation, but the result is that Tim is stuck at his hotel with no means of travel.  There is no word of any fighting, etc in the town.  So we spent the morning at the library in Rock Springs trying to contact the Embassy staff in Addis Abeba.  I finally got through, but I must have reached a security guard.  He attempted to ...