I got up before J and there was clear blue sky — not good for photographing moose. I put some Nikwax Conditioner for Leather on my new Vasque Summit GTX Hiking boots. The watery liquid was unlike any other conditioning product I've used for boots, so I'm not sure how effective it'll be. After J got out of bed, I had my usual breakfast then worked up a blog entry.

Had Clif Bars for lunch because the rye bread was moldy. :( Worked up two more blog entries.

I went outside around 3:00 to apply some Caig Laboratories DeoxIT contact cleaner on the RV-to-Jeep umbilical cord connections and also on the break-away switch for our US Gear Universal Brake System. Then I applied some DeoxIT Shield contact protector for severe environments. While doing that, I discovered that the set screw for the strain relief for the plug on one side of the umbilical cord was loose, so our bad connection may be due to the wires pulling off from the inside of the plug — we'll see. The plugs slipped on and off the sockets much easier after applying the DeoxIT products.

We left around 4:25 in the Jeep to go look for moose and headed north along the Laramie River Road to an area where we had photographed "Drippy Lips," a cow moose that was feeding in a pond, in September 2007. We didn't see any moose there, so we turned around and headed back. We went over Cameron Pass to Gould, and didn't see any moose either. Then we took a road from Gould into the Routt National Forest where we had seen moose before. We didn't see any moose this time, but we saw lots of hunters camping. :( At the time, we speculated that it was moose season, but archery moose season this year was September 12-27 and rifle moose season was October 1-9. The hunters were probably there for rifle combined (deer/elk) season which is October 17-25. The moose probably didn't realize that they were theoretically safe after having been hunted just a few weeks earlier because hunters were still in the area hunting other game.

Then we checked out the Colorado State Forest State Park (yes, that's the name of it). We didn't see any moose there, but did see an unidentified hawk (either a red-tailed or ferruginous) and two beavers (an adult and youngster). The light was getting low, so we didn't try to photograph them.

We started to head back to the RV and stopped in Gould to try to go online through our Verizon USB sticks. (There's no Verizon reception where we were boondocking.) While my Verizon cell phone indicated a decent 1x signal, the USB stick couldn't get a good connection, so we gave up.
We returned to the RV around 7:25.

Had dinner at 7:40 of J's beef stew w/bread sticks from the Fazoli's take-away. I added some McCormick Peppercorn Medley in its own grinder to the stew to kick it up a notch. We had just finished the regular black pepper grinder, and this was the first time I've had the medley which is composed of black peppercorns, coriander, pink peppercorns (Schinus terebinthifolius), allspice, and green peppercorns. The combination was distinct and tasty.

After doing the dishes, I had my slice of Triple Berry Pie (blueberry, raspberry, and boysenberry) from the Village Inn. (You may read more about how I got the slice of pie on my blog entry for October 14, 2009.) It was too heavy on the raspberry and too sweet for me, and I longed to return to the Toad River Lodge so I could get a piece of their blueberry pie! I worked up a blog entry and talked w/J about travel plans for November.