Monday, October 03, 2005
Leaving St Vrain State Park - Oct 3
We made it! We survived over 6 weeks of being "off the grid" (no water or electric hookups), using only electricity generated by our solar panels and water measured in the scores of gallons. We were campground hosts here in order to have a free parking space while visiting our friends in the area. They had no hookups for the hosts, since the park was under construction. When we were offered the position last year, and even as late as June of this year, they thought construction would be well enough along that we would have full hookups, but by the time we left Chaco it was obvious to them that we would not have any. The good side of this was that we only had to work a total of 20 hours per week. The down side was that the weather was "unseasonably warm" (ie 90s and high 80s) for most of our stay, and we cannot run our air conditioner on the power generated by our solar panels. We were able to use the nearby pit toilets and take showers at the office. Thanks to our friends who let us do laundry and take showers at their houses, too!! That sure helped a lot.
The park is fairly attractive but way too close to I-25. After the first 4 weeks, they closed the east campground where we were staying, and we had to move to the north campground -- even closer to I-25. The average camper at this park is a smoking, beer-drinking fisherperson, who throws all trash onto the ground or into the fire pit. Hopefully, when the park is remodeled with electric sites that are more geared for RVs, this will improve. When the weather cooled off and there were more RVers, there seemed to be a lot less trash to clean up.
It was good that we only had to work the 20 hours (which amounted to 2 hrs/day each for 5 days), since we were quite busy with our usual mad social whirl! It was very fun and very exhausting. We were able to see almost everyone we had hoped to see. The time flew by. Next time we'll try to stay even longer so we can visit the people we missed this time through.We played bridge with many friends and had great times doing it. There was also a lot of great talking and eating along with the bridge games.
Birding seemed to be bad throughout the area during the time we were there. We went out several times with friends Bill & Becky Eeds and also with the Boulder Bird Club. Luckily, almost every trip ended with an outing to a nice restaurant, so that made up for the bad birding. Two new Cajun restaurants in Longmont were discovered and enjoyed.We hardly ever go to movies in the theater, but we went to two here. The first was "March of the Penguins", a documentary of a year in the breeding cycle of penguins in Antarctica. It had wonderful footage of both the penguins and the scenery. The second movie was the opening day of "Serenity", a continuation of a cancelled TV show that we had enjoyed very much. We loved the movie and hope that it will either cause the series to be brought back on TV or a sequel movie.
Our most unusual activity was to "extra" in a movie being shot in the Denver area, called "Looking for Sunday" (look it up on the web). It may never be released, but if it is, you can bet we'll be there looking for ourselves in the various scenes. Sometimes we were just members of crowd scenes, but several times we got major walk-throughs or to wait in line in back of or next to the female lead. The most "famous" person in this film was Orlando Jones, most noted for his role in a Seven-Up commercial (wearing a T-shirt that says "Make Seven" on the front and "Up Yours" on the back). The shoot was actually in Loveland at a dog track. Earlier in the week our friends Mark & Susan noticed some of the streets near Susan's work in Denver were closed off, so Susan did some research & found that they were shooting this movie, and that they needed a bunch of extras Friday night in Loveland. So the 4 of us drove up & signed up -- there were quite a few college students from U of Northern Colorado there, dressed in jeans & t-shirts, plus a few young & not so young aspiring female actresses with various body parts hanging out. Doug wore his Hawaiian shirt. When the movie is released he plans to write Roger Ebert and ask who that guy in the Hawaiian shirt was. None of us had any speaking (or noise of any kind) parts, of course, since that would require $$ and listing in the credits. We didn't get out until just after 4am, and felt lucky to get out that early, since they had announced that they were expecting to shoot until 6 am. Most of the students had left by then -- they held raffles after each scene was finished to try to entice people to stay, but it didn't work too well -- mostly it was just an indicator of how many people were leaving, as it would take more & more attempts before they got a winner -- by the end they would have to draw 5 or 6 tickets before they would hit one who was still there. What was surprising to us was how disorganized it all seemed, and how little footage they actually seemed to film. This felt like a central part of the film, but they wound up with 5 or 6 scenes, each only a minute or two. We figure they can use those to splice in as fillers between scenes filmed elsewhere with just the stars. Weird.
A professor at CU who has done work at Chaco, Kim Malville, gave a talk on "Astronomy of the Ancient Puebloans" at Fiske Planetarium in Boulder. It was good, but not great. The main point we learned was that the rangers at Chaco once smuggled a cardboard Elvis into Casa Rinconada one summer solstice. Most of his material we had heard often (and better) at Chaco. We talked to him afterwards, but since we didn't seem to be in his clique, he wasn't very responsive. When we told him we volunteered at Chaco he said "Like what? Campground hosts?" the same as one might say "Like what? Slime mold?" When we said we were friends of GB he said "Well, everyone's friends with GB." All in all not a warm & fuzzy person. Willie was especially disappointed that they couldn't re-create what the supernova of 1054 looked like. They could create the shift in constellations but not the actual supernova.
In order to be able to play music while at the co-op in Benson, we are taking Doug's digital piano (full-sized keyboard with stand) and Willie's violin back to AZ in the trailer. It's amazing that the piano is tucked in with only a bit of inconvenience. Willie got to play quartets with her chamber music friends twice and enjoyed it a lot. She hopes to find a chamber group in Benson. Doug will be playing in a 5-piano concert on 11/19 at the co-op.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 8:06 PM 
