Focht Family Blog

We arrived in Longmont on Tuesday night. Since we weren’t supposed to check in until Wednesday we stayed the first night at a local Walmart. We called in the morning and they said it was fine for us to check in early so by 9:00 or so we were settled into our sites. We took mom’s camper off of the truck and lowered the camper down. I was amazed at how quickly it comes off. Nathan had it off while I was hooking the RV up to electric and water. The weather couldn’t have been better. All day it was clear and high 70’s with a light breeze.

We took it as an opportunity to open up all the windows and do some major cleaning. I drove mom into town and dropped her off with 4 blankets and 4 bags of laundry. Needless to say we didn’t see her for many hours. We decided to wash the comforter on the bed because we started putting two and two together and realized that two days before my rash started was when we put the new comforter on the bed. We washed the sheets but hadn’t washed the comforter. The biopsies came back that the rash is allergic contact dermatitis and they said until I figured out what caused it, if I was still in contact with it, it won’t go away.

The first laundromat we went to was very small and the person who was using the large washers was washing horse blankets in them. I am severely allergic to horses. Cats send me to the hospital with asthma attacks and I am more allergic to horses, so we decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to wash my comforter in that washer. We found a bigger laundromat and mom was talking to the man who was using their big washers. He was a nurse who used to be in textiles. He said that they often put formaldehyde on comforters to keep things from growing on them while they are sitting. He was washing his whites in lots of bleach in the washer mom used for my comforter. :)

While I was cleaning the RV, Nathan was catching up with work and phone calls. While outside on one of his calls he was getting yelled at by a bird… I am trying to get a better picture of her but this is what I have so far.

Nathan started looking around to see what she was mad about. He found this on the ground not too far from the RV…

I am not sure why she has chosen to build her nest on the ground where her eggs could easily be stepped on but we have been keeping an eye on her since the first day. We also had a chance to update our state stickers since the weather was so nice. Here is what are map looks like now…

Wednesday night the wind howled and was shaking both us and mom. We were having gusts that were getting up to 60mph. Apparently it brought a change in the weather because Thursday morning we woke up and it was snowing! Crazy weather here. Nathan had to work on Thursday, so we dropped him off at Paladin Press in Boulder and we headed to Colorado Springs to see Andrea’s sister, Melissa. We wanted to see her while we were here anyways but we had to go and see her May 1st because our bank has merged with another one and our bank cards are no longer good. Our new ones had been mailed overnight to Melissa’s house so I needed to go and pick them up.

On our way to Colorado Springs traffic was slow, I am guessing because of the snow. We finally started to make some good time and then traffic STOPPED. I ended up putting the truck in park and turning it off. All we could see from our vantage point was a double trailer FedEx truck off the side of the road. While we were sitting there three fire rescue trucks, four police cars, a fire truck and an ambulance all went by. Then two large tow trucks came. According to some of the truck drivers that were walking around a truck wrecked with a car. We never did see the car. I don’t think the FedEx truck was directly involved. I think he may have driven off the side to avoid the accident. What I could see as we went by looked like two semis wrecked. Here is what I managed to get a picture of once we started moving…

We called Melissa to let her now why we were so late. We had called her when we were 10 miles from her exit to give her time to get home and the accident was 5 miles from her exit. After traffic finally started moving (only one lane) we managed to get there without any mishaps. Melissa is 35 weeks pregnant with her second child and while we were visiting with her she was having a lot of contractions. She is having a boy. Who knows… maybe we will get to see him before we leave. :) The kids had fun playing with her daughter, Abigail and after playing for awhile we went out to lunch with them. Here is a picture of Melissa, Abigail, and Samantha as we were leaving for lunch.

Friday the weather started clearing up again although it was very windy all day. We were still getting 60mph winds. Saturday it has been much clearer so I could finally get a picture of our view of the mountains. This is the view directly behind the RV…

I am hoping we will be able to get some sight seeing done next week. I went to a dermatologist here on Friday. She gave me a stronger cream for my rash and it is finally going away. It will remain to be seen if the comforter was the culprit. The doctor here also put patches on my back to test for the most common irritants and I know I am reacting to something because my back is itching like crazy under the patches. I go back on Monday to check to see what I am reacting to and therefore I will know what to avoid.

We are trying to get a reservation to tour the Denver Mint but it is showing as full all next week. I am also planning on taking the kids to Hammond’s candies where they still make candy canes and hard candies by hand.