Doc Hudler's Place

After lunch today we drove up to Doc Hudler's place north of Gardner in the mountains. Hardy and Judy are camped at the bottom of his drive, since they weren't able to drive up to the house. The drive is a bit rough at best, and when they arrived, it was very muddy (to say the least). We were expecting the doc to be there, but it turned out that he had left this morning to drive his guest back to Rolla, MO.

We were still able to take advantage of the wonderful location--once we got there. The first part of the journey was straightforward. Then just outside of Gardner, we got on an unpaved county road, which was smooth and wide for the first few miles. Then we got to the National Forest segment of the road, which was narrow, rutted, winding, and had steep drop-offs. We were amazed that Judy had been able to tow the Casita up this road in the dark and mud!

Boy, were the views spectacular! We walked up to the cabin and sat on the porch in some comfortable rockers and just enjoyed the view and the company. The doc has an observatory perched on the side of the hill, with panoramic views. We had hoped to watch the Perseid meteor shower from this great vantage point with deep, dark skies. The weather didn't really want to cooperate. It was intermittently cloudy, with occasional light showers, and the weather forecast called for more clouds until 2 a.m.

Judy had fixed some veggie chili, which we all enjoyed, along with cheese curds and crackers and grapes and some cornbread I had baked.

We have really enjoyed this chance to visit with our friends from the Valley.

Tomorrow morning we'll leave and head south towards Santa Fe. We made reservations at a Corps of Engineers campground at Abiquiu Dam for next Monday for four nights (the reservation window opened on Monday). We're hoping to be able to get into our site (or another) on a walk-up basis tomorrow.