A new favorite.......

7:28 am - Wednesday - May 27th - Meeker, CO - 48° F, 74% humidity, wind 8 mph out of the east.......cloudy today with a forecast high of 76° F.....on this day in 2012 we were exploring Lake Couer d'Alene with our good friends George and Brenda Cheney.......↴

Well, we now have a new favorite place in the world......Meeker, CO.....what an idyllic setting for a rural Colorado town!  More pictorially about that later.

We've been without our wonderful Norcold pullout fridge since Page, AZ.  Within a day, or two I had ordered the new, improved Norcold off Amazon and had it shipped to our friend's home in Meeker.  It arrived there within 4, or 5 days of our order so it has been sitting in their garage awaiting our arrival since then.  As is often my habit (not as much anymore) I imagined the removal of the old Norcold and the installation of the new Norcold would be an all day affair as the 'Hockwald Way' (with a little Murphy's Law thrown in for good measure) often dictates.  The real life experience was quite different....in fact it was so easy I kept rechecking everything I had done convinced I had forgotten something, or made a mistake....in fact it only took 90 minutes beginning to end......

 The new HDMI cable position....right next to the cigarette lighter plug where I plugged in the new Norcold

......I first had to relocate the HDMI plug and cable from its location below the rest of the electrical outlets to a position to the left of them as the new Norcold is several inches taller than the old one......I imagined all kinds of issues doing this, but I had it done within 20 minutes......

.....below you can see the old hole where the box was located......I used this hole to run the 12 volt cable through to the cigarette lighter plug, which is now right next to the new HDMI cable position....

......once the HDMI cable was re-positioned I removed the old Norcold fridge.......

 Out with the 'old'

.......and quickly set the new Norcold in place.  Instead of drilling holes in the bottom of the new Norcold I used leftover aluminum angle strips on each side and in back to secure it in position.....

 In with the 'new'

 You can see how much shorter the new Norcold is than the old one.  It is still the same size as the old one as it is much deeper inside than the old one

 ......once that was done I was done.  The owner's manual recommends setting the fridge at 40° F.....and that is precisely where the temp sits this morning......

.....once the new Norcold project was 'put to bed' I turned my attention to replacing the broken, plastic door latch which holds our entry door in the open position when we have our screen door deployed.  The 12 year old white plastic one broke while we were at Goosenecks State Park when a sudden gust of wind hit the door when it was latched.  The new one I ordered is metal, and it will not break.....ever......

.....fortunately for me the holes I drilled for the prior latch were exact matches to the new latch, and I did not have to drill, or re-drill and holes.  I plan to paint the latch at a later date the same copper color as the background.  When we bought our coach in 2008 I inherited a pint of the original DuPont Imron paint, which I will use to match the color.

When I was exploring Circle Park on the other side of the White River from our location Monday afternoon I noticed there was a trail going up to the top of the bluff, so TLE and I decided to take a hike to the top to see the view around 3:30 pm..........

 These cut sandstone benches adorn the trail at 

regular intervals all the way to the top

.....the trail climbs pretty quickly from river level and within 7 minutes we had this view of our Newell in Town Park......

.....the view from near the top is breathtaking

 Each of the military branches were represented with plaques, including the Coast Guard

 If you ever wondered what a 105 mm Howitzer looks like, here you go

.....what we did not know before we made the hike is that there is a military memorial honoring all of the local citizens who have served over the generations since Meeker was founded back in the late 1800's, and there is also a beautifully maintained town cemetery.......

.......TLE and I love walking through local cemeteries to get a feel for the history of the area.  We did not look at every single grave marker, but the oldest birth year we found was 1824......196 years ago......

.....it's been a couple of weeks since we took a hike, and this hike was made even more enjoyable by the delightful weather (low 70's Tuesday) we are now enjoying.......

.......we concluded our productive day with dinner at John and Lisa's home.  We provided a bottle of Pinot Noit, and Lisa grilled some steaks/chicken and provided sides of grilled asparagus, baked potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and onions, capped off with an amazing strawberry shortcake dessert topped with whipped cream.  As always the conversation continued unabated for almost 3 hours......life is good!  Glenn and Laureen will be rejoining our 'Summer of 2020' tour on Wednesday, and we will continue our Jello journey northwest.

Thanks for stopping by!

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