Sunday was Father’s Day. It was my first as a solo RVer, and all my kids took time to acknowledge it, which is always special to me.
Father’s Day, 2025 was a day that no one in our family was focused on. Our thoughts and prayers were with Deborah, who had lapsed into the final stage of her life, taking her final breath early that next morning. She is with me on this journey as a Solo RVer, her spirit rides shotgun each day, and helps me deal with the little challenges that seem to occur more often than they should. And they did on June 21, 2026.
Our day began in Trinidad, Colorado, after topping off the gas tank at the Love’s Travel Stop, one of the company’s newest locations. After crossing the border into New Mexico, we chugged along, climbing the 7% grade to reach the Raton Summit, and eased down to the town that bears it’s name, where we stopped by their Welcome Center.
It was closed when we arrived, but would open later that morning, so we decided to drive to the east to visit the Capulin Volcano National Monument, about a half hour along what learned would be called the ‘Ports To Plains Corridor’, that will apparently soon become Interstate 27, to help ease the burden of commercial truck traffic on I-25 and I-35.
Upon arrival, I discovered that there was a road from the base of the mountain up to the rim of the volcano that blew it’s top a bizzilion years ago. The staging area at the visitor’s center was not equipped for the amount of vehicles already there to experience it, and after seeing the narrow road up, and thus down as well, I opted to take a picture of the entrance, wish the others a safe journey, and headed back to Raton.
When I arrived back in Raton, the Welcome Center was open, with a few folks milling around inside. while the Hostess on duty was very friendly and helpful with my questions, and made several suggestions on possible places to see as we continued to navigate I-25 south. One of those places was the Fort Union National Monument.
This was not worth the 8 mile drive off I-25 and the paved road that I would describe as ‘washboard asphalt’, very bumpy, rattling the Beast and Lil’Red, and offered little to see other than what remained of the Fort. There was a National Parks Ranger inside the Visitor Center, said I could take Squirty out to the Fort, and her fellow Ranger said to use the ‘Doggy Gate’ on the side of the building, stay on the sidewalk, and watch out for rattlesnakes’.
I opted to head back to the rig, drive the shake, rattle and roll highway and rejoin I-25 south, where we set our sights on Las Vegas… no not ‘Sin City’, but Las Vegas, New Mexico. We’d spend the night there at the accomodating Walmart, and had another unexpected ‘event’.
The temperature was 98 when I pulled out the generator and got it running to cool down the inside of Lil Red. 20 minutes later as we were enjoying the pleasant 70 degrees inside, the generator just stopped. and the Coolness began to disappear. I got Squirty back in the Beast and ran the engine to get the A/C going again, while I tried to figure out the issue.
It wasn’t anywhere near needing fuel, it wasn’t low on oil, the air filter wasn’t in need of cleaning, the air filter in the A/C unit was a little dirty but not enough to cause that, and the spark arrestor did have some carbon build up, so I did what I could think of the remedy the situation. and as I was having thoughts of having to replace this unit, spend the night in the SUV with the engine running, or sweating it out with no air conditioning. I gave it one last pull, and miraculously, it kicked in and started running. Whatever I did or didn’t do, didn’t matter, it started, and ran flawlessly until it wasn’t needed around 10pm. when the temps had moderated with a breeze to keep the now open windows cooling the inside.
I’m thinking Deborah was watching over us, and did what she could to keep us cool.
