Rocky Mountain Egg Rendezvous

One of the reasons to come to Colorado (other than the weather) was to attend the Rocky Mountain Egg Rendezvous. In it's fourth year, it's much smaller than the Quartzsite Gathering that we attend in February. The majority of the attendees were from the Four Corners states.

On Monday, I joined the lineup waiting to get in, but we were a couple hours ahead of the noontime checkout, so it wasn't a surprise that the reserved group sites at Chris Park hadn't been vacated yet.

It didn't take long for people to get situated. One of the draws of Chris Park is a large Pavilion structure with tables and power outlets.

There were at least four shade structures that popped up around the area. They became quite popular, both for shade and to avoid the handful of evening mosquitoes.

One of the more popular spots was the row of six spaces that had power pedestals. I believe that each of these spaces carried a $5 surcharge per night if power was desired.

Camping here was very different than the style of the spot I had last week, but the Pavilion brought advantages, including a pot luck.

People perked up when Alan drove in with his Scamp 19. It wasn't the trailer that was getting the interest, it was his '36 Ford tug that caught everyone's attention. A very sweet rig! I tried to trade him for my Tacoma, but no deal. :-(

Getting High in Durango

On the 27th, with some regret, I left my wonderful home for the past week near Mancus. I headed for Chris Park, a group campsite north of Durango. I never saw the train as I passed through Durango, but I did hear it and see signs of it near the road north of town. My destination was the Rocky Mountain Egg Rendezvous. (More on that in the next post.)

It's always nice to see Jerry & Wanda! We often cross paths with them at the Quartzsite Gathering, and are making plans to do a canoe trip with Jerry and some others next January. Jerry writes the EggsRolling blog and is a geocacher, so we headed out to find a five part multi-cache that hadn't been logged for a year. We started out on the river trail in Durango learning history.

The cache instructions were clear that for access to the final cache location you could either do a steep 1 mile hike from near down-town, or "For those who would rather drive, there is a rough road that approaches the final cache site from the west. You’ll still have to hike a little ways, but most of the grade change is eliminated." We elected the rough road option, but they failed to mention the locked gate.

A "little ways" became very nearly two miles each direction, but our elevation changes were decreased significantly from about 1000 but our grade changes couldn't make up their mind. Up, down, up, up, down, up. It really was beautiful.

The best part was after we discovered the cache that we had spent the morning chasing, we realized there was another traditional cache nearby, so we logged that one while we were there.

A great view of downtown Durango was our reward, and well worth the effort. We still think choosing the "rough road" option was much better than facing Smelter Mountain unnecessarily.

After the Rendezvous, I'm headed north to Silverton for a while, but I'm going to make time on my return to visit the roundhouse and museum at the Durango-Silverton railway.

The Muffler Man

On the north side of County Road P, west of County Road 26 (they use really imaginative names!) is the most intriguing collection of old mufflers and tailpipes that I'd ever seen. The collection is way too large to get into one photo.

They're arranged around a pond, and apparently at one time, the vegetation was kept under control by goats, if the sign on the gate meant anything. Clearly, the artist had a sense of humor, but seemed to be serious about fishing without a license.

The artist seemed to have an unending source of mufflers that he would combine with tailpipes and other "stuff". A lot of work had gone into creating and staging the display that is open to the public during daylight hours.

Lots of cowboy / western theme with some subtle and not so subtle commentary at times.



Some of the art is best seen from a distance, while other has lots of detail. The weather when I visited seemed appropriate for picnics and playing in the tree house. On the other hand, the tobogganers were likely going to have to wait awhile for their chance.

What can you say?

Oxen pulling out a stuck tractor. Based on the style of tractor, I'd say they've been there awhile.

A creative riding lawnmower!

This one reminded me of our years in Papua, except for the cowboy hat!

There were a couple examples of political commentary as well. As usual, you can click on any picture for a larger version.

And the other piece of political commentary. The sculptures were really hard to photograph with the white paint and the bright sun.

Over in one corner was a nice stone chapel. Hours and hours of work went into creating this place!

And here's the answers...

Sure was fun to visit but I was left wondering about the ongoing maintenance. It looks like the artist may not be able to maintain it like it was originally intended.