On Monday, April 12, Batteries.com shipped our order, as we had expected. On Wednesday, April 14, Jeff came to pick me up after work. We had some last minute grocery shopping to do. He had to leave home at 4:00 in order to pick me up at 4:30. As of 4:00 when he left home, the battery had not arrived. Jeff was worried that we wouldn't get it before our trip. We had also decided to try and find a shoe for the tripod, so Jeff brought the tripod along when he came to pick me up.

After Jeff picked me up at work, we ran by a camera store. They had shoes, but none that would fit the tripod. We ran over to another camera shop, but they had just closed. We decided then not to waste any more time looking since we had already spent an hour on it. We would just have to do without the tripod on our trip. So we headed towards home and stopped to pick up groceries on the way.

When we finally got home about 6:30 or 7:00, we found that the battery had arrived. We immediately placed it on the charger, and it took the full amount of time to charge up. We now had two batteries to take with us. Brand new, the camcorder sold for about $600. The amount we paid for it and the two batteries came to around $200.

Wednesday evening, we got on the state park website and printed out the directions to Mancos State Park. We also got on MapQuest.com and put in our starting and ending points. Our route will take us south on I-25 to Walsenburg, then west on highway 160 all the way to Mancos and Mesa Verde. It estimated the trip to be about seven hours with a total distance of about 345 miles.

Jeff had to work the 10pm-6am shift (that is, 10pm Wednesday night to 6am Thursday morning). As Jeff was getting ready to go to work, I printed out our camping checklists, then gathered up a lot of our supplies (tent, sleeping bags, air mattresses, extra blankets for the cold nights, propane stove, propane lantern, etc). Then I loaded a lot of that stuff into the vehicle so that we would have less to do Thursday morning, and be able to get on the road sooner. Our trip would take us over Wolf Creek Pass so I also checked the road conditions on the internet. Wolf Creek Pass was listed as dry. But it also had restrictions listed on it - no vehicles over 12 feet wide, and the road is closed from 10pm to 5am. They are doing construction and the restrictions pertained to that. It wouldn't affect us. Jeff filled up the vehicle with gas on his way to work.