Third Day on the Road … and We Arrive @ Trinidad Lake State Park, Colorado

Friday, 5 June 2015
Carpios Ridge Campground — Trinidad Lake State Park
Trinidad, Colorado

Note (8 June 2015): I briefly took my blogs offline by making them private, but an expert on Google’s Blogger forum said I probably had to keep the blog public so that Google can find it when they look into the DCMA violation I filed.  So I changed back again.  Since the blog is out there already, might as well post to it until action is completed on my filing.  When might that be?  Your guess is as good as mine.

In the meantime, you might notice a change in the tone of this post.  That’s because I simply copied and pasted from the private journal.  Skip over what you don’t want to read ;-)  And if some of it doesn’t
make sense, remember the words were written before I switched the blog setting to be public again.

Blogging No More?  Maybe.  But First …

Our third day on the road … the last leg of the drive to our weekend stop before we continue onto Colorado Springs, where we will be spending a month.  The trip started in Port Aransas on June 1.  So how is it that this is day three when the date for the post reads the 5th and we started out on the 1st?

Well, I’m not counting the first two days … the drive from Port A to Houston, where we had a maintenance appointment for the Phaeton; and the day we spent at Coach Care for the work to be done.  We ended up staying an additional night at Coach Care, but by 3:30p we were on the road.  Hence, I am considering that to be the first day of our trip.

Grackle chick from our site in Port A.
Not the greatest quality, but they are memory shots, so I am keeping them.

If the first few paragraphs sound like a summary of the past few posts, they are.  I have started a private journal and this is the first entry in that journal.  I will copy and paste the words to the blog, which I have decided to maintain for now with limited readership.  If I continue to post to the blog in this manner, I will likely combine my two blogs — this one, and the Two to Travel blog … which is the one that got me into the blogosphere.  At that point, readers can decide whether they want to continue reading or not since the tone of the posts will read even more like a journal than they do right now.  And there may be far fewer pictures inserted — but I wouldn’t bank on that.

Plagiarism or Copyright Infringement?
Either Way … It’s Illegal.

After a good night’s rest at Amarillo Ranch RV Park, we were ready to get the Phaeton’s wheels rolling.  Since we had only 250 miles to go, we dallied a bit before starting our ‘breaking-camp’ routine.  I was checking my emails when I found a message from someone in the UK — I’ll refer to her as EA —  inviting me to a G+ Hangout.  I didn’t know the woman, so I almost deleted the message.  But something — who knows what instinct — had me visiting her G+ profile instead.  Perhaps she was someone I had met during our travels; or maybe she was a follower of one of my blogs.  Anyway, I found a link to her blog and went to check it out.  That’s when my blogging future took a turn — at least until I do a whole bunch more research.

There were only two posts on EA’s blog and they both dealt with plagiarism.  Someone had stolen some of her posts, and she was working with Google to get the problem resolved.  Hmmm.  It seemed like too much of a coincidence that she would be contacting me right when she was dealing with this problem.  So, I went to check out the G+ Hangout message she had left.  I didn't have to accept her invitation to see the message, and that made me feel better about clicking open the message box.

Drat … and as a friend later wrote, a slew of unprintable curse words.  In the course of her investigation, EA had found one of my posts had been plagiarized as well — “it’s possible there may be more, …” she went on to say, giving me the title of the Phaeton Journeys post in question.  Entitled Greetings from Gaffney, it was a run-of-the-mill blog entry; nothing exciting or special about it.

So how to go about finding who had plagiarized the post?  My first thought was to search for the title using a search engine.  Not a good idea — ‘post thieves’ apparently are sometimes smart enough to change the post title when they ‘re-use’ the content.  Instead, the suggestion was to use a sequence of words that were unlikely to appear elsewhere in that specific combination.  And that’s what I did.

Boom.  Right off I came across a search result with those exact words in some blog entitled Ellison’S Bicycle.  There it was.  Clear as day.  Not just random words and sentences.  Not just a picture or two.  The whole blog entry had been lifted and re-posted.  The blogger had not changed the name of the post, but had pre-dated it to July 2012 … more than a year before we were even in Gaffney!

[I am not providing a link to the blog in question as one of the goals these IDIOT post thieves have is to direct traffic their way.]

But wait; that’s not the end of the story.  The next search result sent me to what looked like a redirect of my entire blog.  Now, to be honest, I am not sure that’s what this is.  For all I know, it’s the RSS feed for my blog, and I somehow stumbled upon it.  Or it is someone wanting to make money by selling a collection of posts.  This is another piece I need to research.

To say that I was pis*d would be an understatement.  Why would anyone want to live my life.  No; I take that back.  Someone may want to live my life, but NO ONE gets to do so.  Me alone … I am the only one who gets to live my life.

So here I am, sitting in the passenger seat in the cockpit, wanting to take the bull by the horns.  But any action on my part has to be put off — at least until we get the Phaeton on the road.

Fast forward … two hours later.  We’ve negotiated what little Amarillo traffic was on the road; and we’ve turned onto US Hwy 385.  No more turns for a while.  Time to get back to the blog theft issue.

Still fuming, and knowing that I need time to research how to resolve the matter, I decide that I need to take the blogs offline.  But I don’t want to disappear into the ether and leave my regular readers — few though they are — wondering what has happened to me … to us.  So, I put a quick, unformatted, no-nonsense post on my active blogs to advise everyone that Two to Travel would be going offline.  The outpouring of supportive comments warmed the cockles of my heart.  If I can, I will find a way to keep my travel stories going.  But how — well that’s the question du jour.

On the one hand, what happened with this plagiarizing incident may be the excuse — incentive; kick-in-the-butt; call-it-what-you-will — that I’ve been looking for to get out of the blogging business.  Don’t get me wrong.  I truly love writing the blogs.  After all, they are the virtual memories that I know Mui and I will enjoy when we are no longer able to travel as we do now.  That’s why I started the blogs to begin with.  And to share our travel adventures with distant family and friends.  That others found Two to Travel as I dubbed us, and started to follow along was a bonus.

A side benefit to blogging — it keeps me honest.  What I mean by that — blogging helps me to maintain the discipline to process my photos and write about our travels.  Most of our travels since I started the blogs have been documented, and not gone by the wayside as so many of them have when I was journaling about them privately.  Admittedly, there have been a few that I have left hanging — but only because subsequent travels took me off on new adventures.

On the other hand, since starting to blog, I have stopped writing about what is an exciting and interesting aspect of travel — the prep.  What went into getting us to the point where we find ourselves packing our bags and taking off on our adventure.  The details — big and small; the fun and the frustration of planning.  And those innermost thoughts and opinions that I’m unwilling to put out on the blogosphere.  After all, what goes on the internet, stays on the internet.  I’m of the opinion that not everything is for public consumption; some things need to remain private.

So here we are.  I have put everyone on notice that I will be taking the blogs offline.  I have begun a private journal — some of which … particularly the travel stories … may be published in a blog to share with the blogosphere again, or with a select few people.  I may keep one journal for day-to-day things and have separate journals for individual trips — that would make sharing those stories easier … I could put them in a blog; or save them as pdf files to email to friends and family.  How to add photos — well that’s TBD.  As is much of the whole issue that led to this journal.  I’m just brainstorming here.  It is my journal after all ;-)

What About Our Travel Day?

Setting aside the plagiarism/copyright/theft issue and returning to our travel day.  It was an easy one.  I could just say that and be done with it, but then … I would miss the details at some point, wouldn’t I?

Today was a driving day not unlike the ones we drove before we ended up in Port A at the end of 2013, plunked ourselves down at Gulf Waters, and stayed there — except for our overseas travels in 2014 and earlier this year.  It really is right that the Phaeton rolls more often than it sits.

After the flat, flat, flat roads of Texas, we noticed immediately the slight grade as we approached the NM state line.  It was exciting to enter a new-to-us state — if only briefly … we’ll be back later this summer.  In the process, we gained an hour as a gift — we’re in the Mountain Time Zone now.

Even though it was only 11:00a, our tummies said it was noon, so we pulled into the first rest area we came upon.  Mui warmed up some leftovers for us to eat as cars and RVs came, stopped, and continued on their way.  Had to laugh at the grackles that were everywhere around the rest area.  Thought we had left them behind in Port A, but apparently not ;-)  There were plenty of barn swallows flitting about, too — and I even managed a photo or two.

Barn Swallow

The remainder of the drive passed quickly.  The scenery now included extinct volcanoes and the terrain was ever-changing.  There was a very noticeable grade to US Hwy 64 as we wound our way into Colorado — a not-new-to-us state, but first time visiting with the Phaeton.

Streets and Trips gave directions, and we followed them to Trinidad Lake State Park.  We got there, but through roundabout local roads that had us wondering for a while if we were lost.  We were in the park — that we were sure of.  But where was the campground?  Was there a road — or at least a turnaround spot — if the road across the Army Corps of Engineers dam was a dead end?  These questions were going through our minds when we came across two guys who told us to keep going, take a left, and then another left, and “They’ll help you at the top of the hill.”  Alrighty then.

Houston, Texas to Trinidad Lake State Park, COlorado ... 862 miles (1,379 km) — three days of driving.

Turns out we were almost to the junction with SH 12 — the more direct route to TLSP.  A few more minutes and we were approaching the visitor center.  Mui stopped to dump the tanks; I walked over to the drive-by window to check us in and get the day passes required for entering Colorado state parks.  As it is doubtful that we’ll be visiting enough parks during our short stay to make the annual pass worth purchasing, I opted for the $7/day pass for the Phaeton — the toad gets in free.

Settling in for the Weekend …

The Carpios Ridge Campground is lovely, with piñon and ponderosa pines and junipers serving as wonderful privacy hedges in many of the sites; especially on the perimeter.  I had booked and paid for site 34 via the Reserve America website to which the campground website directed me.  All the FHUs were already taken at the time, so I settled for what looked like a nice, long, and very private electric-only site — $20/night + $10 rez fee.  For three days we can live without water and sewer hook-ups — we came prepared.

The campground sits on a ridge overlooking Trinidad Lake; only a few of the sites have a lake view.

After a doing a recon drive with the toad to get the lay of the land — always a smart thing to do when visiting a campground for the first time — we brought the coach down, backed it in, and went about settling in.  By 1:30p, we were all set.  Vacuuming and swiffering the floors took an additional few minutes, and then the rug was rolled out.  Ahhh, yes.  The Phaeton felt like home again.

Phaeton in site 34 … from the next loop up.
You can see the site is totally private, with trees on both sides of us.

There’s enough room to back the toad onto the pad in front of
the Phaeton, but Mui prefers to park the car sideways.

Plenty of room on either side of the Phaeton.  Though it looks like
the trees are touching the rig on the driver’s side, they aren’t.

The patio is not paved or concrete, but it gets the job done, and is totally private.

Panoramic view of the campground from site 34.

Just a few steps through the trees and the view of Lake Trinidad opens up.
We can see part of this view from the bedroom window.

Off we went then to Starkville, just a few miles down the road, to pick up some groceries from Walmart.  Then it was on to neighboring Trinidad for a look-see.  The brochure I was given when I checked into TLSP showed a quaint little town, with interesting buildings.  Reality wasn’t quite so quaint.  The town seemed quite dead, with lots of buildings in need of TLC.  Perhaps the fact that there were few people out and about had something to do with the impression we came away with.  I will say, though, that everyone we spoke with was warm and friendly.  In any event, we decided we would grab a quick bite to eat and return home.

Using the TripAdvisor app, we chose Nana & Nano Monteleone’s Deli & Pasta House — the #2 rated restaurant in town.  Simple place; family-owned; recipes handed down through the generations from what I gathered from reading the history of the place printed on the back of the menu.  Food was decent — nothing to really write home about.  The portions — even the small size — were oversized … guess what we will be eating for dinner tomorrow ;-)  Mui’s spaghetti aglio e olio was definitely a better choice than my rigatoni with red sauce.  The tiramisu was quite good, though.

We’ve had on and off rain — short lived — since arriving in Colorado.  I checked the weather when we came home and found some strong storm activity to our east.  At the campground it was sunshine and patchy blue skies until the sun set.  There have been some occasional gusts — like the one that just rattled the coach for a couple of seconds — but that’s about it for now.

The Radarscope app on the iPad is set to track the weather in this area; the weather radio is programmed for this county.  So, if any of the forecasted storms head in this direction we will hear about it soon enough.  Hopefully not, though.  After the stormy and wet month in Port A, we’re really hoping for some lovely early summer weather here.

© 2004-2015 Two to Travel's Phaeton Journeys.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED by ERIN ERKUN.