Final "Bon Voyage"

The RV is parked up in it's new winter home in Anderson - just south of Redding in California, and now I am finally home in New Zealand after some minor holdups with storms in San Francisco delaying my departure from there. So "bon voyage" to the United States for this year.

The funeral for Brenda's Dad was held on Thursday last week - so I unfortunately missed that. However, Carl's final "bon voyage" was a memorable service attended by a crowd of around 90 of his friends, family and work colleagues.

In Loving Memory Of
Carl Henry Philip
21 November 1937 - 1 September 2017

Both Brenda and I would like to extend our many thanks and best wishes to all those people that have passed on their condolences and kind thoughts to us in the past couple of weeks.

Although this tragic event has cut short our trip this year, we are thankful for the time that we did so enjoy here in the US. We didn't get to do everything we planned - but that's life - and what we did get to do was really great.

We will be planning more trips to the US in the next few years - I am sure!

Going home - but not by train!

After leaving Sante Fe we headed north-west up onto the Colorado Plateau and stopped for a couple of nights at a place called Chama in New Mexico - but close to the Colorado state line. We only picked this town because it had a good looking RV park and was mid way between Sante Fe and our next big stop at Mesa Verde.

We scored a great campsite next to the river with our own deck overlooking the water - very nice:

Parked up with some tall trees for shade

And the view from our deck overlooking the river

Our neighbours (Linda and Harry) spend their summers out here at Chama.

Here we are with Linda and Harry having a few evening drinks around the campfire

Now Linda and Harry are into trains, and Chama has a world reknown original set of steam trains that have been lovingly restored and are available to the public to ride on as part of the old Denver to Santa Fe rail line that used to carry the ores and mineral wealth of Colorado to the markets in the south. Linda works in the ticket office and Harry is the fireman on one of the trains. Here are some pics.....

Harry giving Brenda a tour around the engine cab

Working up a head of steam

Now connected to the coaches and ready to roll

So, if you are ever in New Mexico, or just love a good steam train ride, then we would thoroughly recommend a day out on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Rail train. Many thanks to Linda and Harry who made this surprise unplanned event one of the true highlights of our trip.

I took lots of video on this trip - mainly because I knew that Brenda's Dad (Carl) would love to view it all. He's also a train nut.

Sadly, in less than 24 hours of completing our train ride, we learnt that Carl had passed away (peacefully in his sleep) in the early hours of Friday morning (1 September). He had suffered from heart issues for some years and we suspect that his heart just gave up. Brenda immediately booked tickets for home and is now at Los Angeles awaiting her long haul flight back to NZ. She should get home on Monday morning.

I cannot accompany her as I need to get the motorhome back to the west coast and put into storage. I hope to then get a flight back to NZ myself, but will probably miss the funeral.

So our trip planned for three months here in the USA has come to an early stop as we head for home to be with the family.

We have so enjoyed our brief time here on this trip and I don't doubt that we will be back again soon. I will do a final update of the blog when I get back to NZ in the next couple of weeks.