Mississippi River Trip: Encounter III

“What was that?” asked Larisa.

“I said: I’ve got everything, you can head off baby.”

“Okay!  See you in a couple of hours.”

Larisa was taking a tour at Mesa Verde that I couldn’t go on – it required a tunnel crawl and my shoulders were too broad to get through easily.  Plus given the sunburn I’d picked up the day before the last thing I wanted was to rub them against sandstone walls.  So Larisa was taking the tour, and I was hanging at the visitor’s center.  I went in and caught a short video on the mountain lion.  Slotary, stalker, attacked lone victims from behind.  Great video.  When it finished I headed outside to catch up on the blog.  I set up in the shade, next to a plug for power, opened the laptop, and began clicking merrily away.

“Well aren’t you just the cutest thing?”

I looked up to see a woman, well-tanned and fit, perhaps in her early sixties.  She had a coif of obviously dyed platinum blond hair atop her head, crowned with a straw hat sold to tourists.  Her body was tightly clothed in a shoulderless top that revealed a lot of cleavage.  Tight pants and bright red heels topped off the package.

 

“Excuse me?”

“Aren’t you just the cutest thing sitting there with your little computer?”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that.  I AM pretty cute.  “Well, thank you.”  I went back to typing.

“You look hot though.  You sure you’re okay, even in the shade?”

“Yes ma’am, I’m great.  Just trying to catch up on some stuff here.”  I hoped that would get her to stop talking – I’m the kind of person who needs to focus when I’m writing something.  No joy.

“What are you catching up on?”

Sigh.

I told her our story, beginning with the Mississippi and ending with where we were.

“So your wife is on a tour for a couple of hours, huh?  Well, I’ve got an RV in the parking lot with A/C and you can come up there with me if you want.  It’ll just be the two of us.  I can’t promise you’ll catch up on much work though.” 

She gave me a wry smile and it struck me like a thunderbolt.  I was being hit on!  I hadn’t realized there was THAT much wildlife in Mesa Verde.

“No thank you, it’s quite cool here,” I replied, feigning ignorance.  “You have a great trip.”

The woman stood there for a few more minutes, then strode away.  Cougars in the wild are one thing, but sixty year old cougars in RVs are another.