November 13, 2021

Despite the cold nights, this area is beautiful so we are staying a while. We are in Hooper, CO in the San Luis Valley.  We are surrounded by amazing views of mountains, the sun shines just about every day, we made some friends here, and the campground is cheap.  It’s dark skies time as there is a new moon right now so we are doing Milky Way photography and this seems to be the perfect place for it. We also experimented with star trails here with our 360 degree camera.  

We’re learning better how to be off the grid since we are not hooked up to electricity, water, or sewer here.  There are outhouses here we use during the day to conserve our black tank.  I do the dishes in a basin so I can throw the water outside to save space in the grey tanks.  We awoke early a couple of times with no heat.  One time, we just needed to swap the propane tank and the other time the battery had died.  We have started to swap the propane tank before bed just in case and running the generator if needed during the day to top off the battery before we go to bed.

We were invited to the owner Judy’s house for dinner and served Indian fry bread tacos.  The company and the food were both fantastic.

We also made it through our first scary dog fight.  We had been leaving the dogs alone in the camper when we went out and never had a problem…until we did.  It is just awful to come home to the wreckage of a dog fight.  It is not fun to clean up, but worse if the worry and heartbreak you feel when your dogs are injured.  We cleaned them up and bandaged or put antibiotic ointment on the worst cuts and kept them comfortable.  Within a couple of days they were back to normal and now we put Dobby is a nice collapsible crate we have when we go out.  He seems to like it in there and goes right in when we ask him to.

We’ve gone on some nice hikes here.  I hiked Crestone to the Karma Theism Tashi Gormang Stupa which is a spiritual shrine on top of a hill.  The views were great and there was a meditation shed that we used to do a little meditation.  

We also hiked Zapata Falls, La Garita, and Clear Creek Falls north and South in Creede, CO.   Here are some more photos of the places that we hiked at.  Luke also took a cool photo of me at the freezing falls.  I did regret not wearing my boots though.