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Friday, April 29, 2011
Sitting in Cortez, CO Walmart
Hello and good evening. We are parked in the Walmart parking lot in Cortez, CO right now, about to go to sleep. We left Ouray this morning and drove here, via the Million Dollar Highway & through Durango. The pass over the mountain was awesome!
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| Million Dollar Highway |
On Tuesday, we drove into Telluride, through the snow the entire way...and way back. We had lunch at the Brown Dog, which was very good. We took a walk around the town, through the blizzard and stopped at many stores along the way to get out of the snow. Unfortunately, all of the ski slopes were closed for the season, so I wasn't able to enjoy the perfect snow for anything but being cold. We had a very good time in Telluride and headed back to the camp at about 5pm.
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| Street in Telluride |
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| Yaks near our campground. |
Laurie and I decided to go to the hot springs in Ouray to see what they were all about. We drove up to the building and it was still snowing heavily. We found our way in and it is like a town rec center. They have a weight room and a large pool area where there are 4 pools separated by concrete walls. Each pool is a different temperature, starting at 89 degrees. We put our bathing suits on and hurried out through the snow and jumped into the hottest pool. It was 104 and like a hot tub. It was so cool, just sitting there, head and neck out of the water, watching the snow come down. We stayed in about 15 minutes, just long enough to get relaxed and we jumped out, put our cold shoes and shirts on and hurried back into the locker rooms. Actually, being outside in the snow wasn't as cold as I thought because our body temps were up pretty high. It was very relaxing standing out in the snow...for a few seconds. :) We played a few games of Sequence after a nice, steak and lobster dinner.
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| They have water slides across the pool! |
We decided we would stay another night at the campground, to be able to let the snow melt a little, and check out the Million Dollar Highway, which was a road that goes over a mountain range. We heard, from Dan, the campground host, that it was beautiful to see. He suggested driving it to see if we would be comfortable taking the motorhome and fifth wheel over it. We drove the truck over to Silverton, across the mountain. The road was amazing. Much of the road did not have guard rails because of snow plows, pushing the snow over the edge of the road and sometimes they put a guard rail up and an avalanche will knock it down. At one point, we had to wait for a snow plow to finish clearing the road of an avalanche. They work pretty hard when it snows so much, and they do a great job. There were only a few icy spots going over the mountain, and most of them were melted by the time we got back.
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| Unusable Porta Potty at crest of mountain pass. I hope no one is in there! |
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| Silverton Train Depot |
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| View from road. |
On our way back, we stopped through Ouray to walk around and see what there was to do. Again, a lot of the shops and restaurants were closed because of the time of year.
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| Ouray, CO |
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| Ice climbing park in Ouray |
We left the campground in Ouray today. Most of the snow was melted and we could actually see grass and gravel again, around our campers. I want to say that the KOA that we stayed at, was very accommodating and the campground hosts couldn't have been nicer. Also, I want to thank the owner for allowing us to stay there, even though they were technically closed. They saved us a lot of driving time and the headache of finding an open, nice, campground. I would DEFINITELY recommend if anyone is traveling this way, to stop and stay a while at the Ouray KOA. They have cabins also. Dan and Kay, the hosts and fellow travelers, were friendly and knowledgeable about the area. I'll be staying in touch with them throughout the trip, as we have much in common...we like to have fun! Go to www.koa.com to check out the site.
We braved the highway in the RV's and passed over it with flying colors. Both vehicles did great and there no "almosts" or "mishaps" along the way. We tried to stay at the Durango Walmart, but were not allowed due to the size of the parking lot and how busy they were. No big deal. Cortez is closer to Mesa Verde, where we are going tomorrow. I better get to bed because we are "supposedly" getting up "early" tomorrow...meaning before 9:30. :) Enjoy the pics!
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| Silverton, CO |
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| Church in Silverton. Notice the dirt streets still |
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| Cascade Falls |
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| Whoa! |
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| King of the Road! |
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| Zoom in! There are 6 skiers at the top! Not sure how they got up there. |
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| Joe & Jan cruising down the road. |
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| Cortez, CO. Right behind the Walmart where we are staying. |
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Hello from Telluride
It's snowing again! Go figure. It's the end of April, so why wouldn't there be snow falling?! There's about 2 inches on the picnic table grill that we cooked our steaks on last night. It is beautiful though. The ski slopes are already closed for the season so there is no chance of doing any skiing.
We left Pikes Peak a few days ago without being able to see it. The road was closed up to the top of the mountain because of snow. We'll have to do it another time. We went by Florissant Fossil Monument and saw some petrified redwoods and fossils from an old lakebed where a volcano had covered it up many years ago. The fossils were of mosquitos, spiders and other types of insects and bugs. There were no dinosaur fossils. I thought we were going to see dinosaur fossils, but apparently that is in another park. I can see mosquitos anywhere! :) haha.
We did see a prairie dog town. It was about 20ft by 20ft with many holes in the soil. They kept popping their heads up to see what is going on and then hurrying off to another tunnel underground. Supposedly they are a big part to the eco system out here. There are a lot of animals that depend on the prairie dog to survive. Ok, that was our nature lesson for the day. We hitched our wagons and headed out towards Telluride. We crossed the Continental Divide mountain range on the way.
The "ole rv" did a quick 20mph up a 6%-7% grade in first gear, for 7 miles uphill. Yes it took forever and we pulled over at every pull-off to allow cars to zoom by. But it did give us time to see the sites...snow and more snow. At the top, there was a visitor's center, but at that point the motorhome had forward momentum and you don't want to stop her when she is on the move. So, we just kept on rolling...downhill for another 7 miles. We pulled over after we got off of the mountain because Mindy got sick in the back of Joe & Jan's truck when they got to the peak. I guess the altitude got to her.
We drove to a National Park outside of Gunnison, CO on the biggest lake in CO. We camped there overnight and drove into Gunnison the next day (yesterday). It was a cool, little town. We had some breakfast and let the ladies shop. Joe and I went into a gun store there and the gunshop owner said that it is not unusual for it to snow on July 4th. No way! I have seen all the snow I need to see for a while, this Winter or Spring, or whatever season it is right now. Laurie picked me up a hat for my ears to stay warm, since I didn't bring mine because I didn't think we would encounter blizzards in April. We stopped by a store with deer, bear, kangaroo, beaver, wolf, etc pelts. It was a cool looking store. They had every kind of mounting and hide that you could want...except cow, which is what I am looking for. After that we drove to where they brew Crested Butte beer, but they were not open until 3pm, and it was only noon. I guess they are not early drinkers out here.
We left our campsite and drove to Black Canyon. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it is a canyon carved out by the Gunnison river, over 2 million years. It was beautiful too. You were able to walk out to the edge and look over, at many spots throughout the loop drive. At one point we pulled over to take a look at the canyon and I walked down lower to another edge and Mindy followed me. Jan thought she jumped off of the edge, chasing a butterfly or something and let out a "Oh no!" I guess she didn't see me walking around down below and thought Mindy had taken her own life. It was so funny!
We drove the loop around the South rim of the canyon and took off. It was snowing on and off all day. We finally ended up finding a KOA that was closed until next week, but the owner allowed us to pull in and stay. We are near Ouray, CO where they have hot springs to dive into. We are going to drive into Telluride today and stay another night here to be able to drive the road over to Silverton. Right now, it is probably too snowy to drive the mountain road and tomorrow is supposed to be nice weather again. High of 60 and sunny!
I'm going to dive into a lego my eggo waffle right now. Talk to you soon!
We left Pikes Peak a few days ago without being able to see it. The road was closed up to the top of the mountain because of snow. We'll have to do it another time. We went by Florissant Fossil Monument and saw some petrified redwoods and fossils from an old lakebed where a volcano had covered it up many years ago. The fossils were of mosquitos, spiders and other types of insects and bugs. There were no dinosaur fossils. I thought we were going to see dinosaur fossils, but apparently that is in another park. I can see mosquitos anywhere! :) haha.
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| This is 13ft wide and 6-7ft tall. |
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| This is 8ft tall |
We did see a prairie dog town. It was about 20ft by 20ft with many holes in the soil. They kept popping their heads up to see what is going on and then hurrying off to another tunnel underground. Supposedly they are a big part to the eco system out here. There are a lot of animals that depend on the prairie dog to survive. Ok, that was our nature lesson for the day. We hitched our wagons and headed out towards Telluride. We crossed the Continental Divide mountain range on the way.
The "ole rv" did a quick 20mph up a 6%-7% grade in first gear, for 7 miles uphill. Yes it took forever and we pulled over at every pull-off to allow cars to zoom by. But it did give us time to see the sites...snow and more snow. At the top, there was a visitor's center, but at that point the motorhome had forward momentum and you don't want to stop her when she is on the move. So, we just kept on rolling...downhill for another 7 miles. We pulled over after we got off of the mountain because Mindy got sick in the back of Joe & Jan's truck when they got to the peak. I guess the altitude got to her.
We drove to a National Park outside of Gunnison, CO on the biggest lake in CO. We camped there overnight and drove into Gunnison the next day (yesterday). It was a cool, little town. We had some breakfast and let the ladies shop. Joe and I went into a gun store there and the gunshop owner said that it is not unusual for it to snow on July 4th. No way! I have seen all the snow I need to see for a while, this Winter or Spring, or whatever season it is right now. Laurie picked me up a hat for my ears to stay warm, since I didn't bring mine because I didn't think we would encounter blizzards in April. We stopped by a store with deer, bear, kangaroo, beaver, wolf, etc pelts. It was a cool looking store. They had every kind of mounting and hide that you could want...except cow, which is what I am looking for. After that we drove to where they brew Crested Butte beer, but they were not open until 3pm, and it was only noon. I guess they are not early drinkers out here.
We left our campsite and drove to Black Canyon. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it is a canyon carved out by the Gunnison river, over 2 million years. It was beautiful too. You were able to walk out to the edge and look over, at many spots throughout the loop drive. At one point we pulled over to take a look at the canyon and I walked down lower to another edge and Mindy followed me. Jan thought she jumped off of the edge, chasing a butterfly or something and let out a "Oh no!" I guess she didn't see me walking around down below and thought Mindy had taken her own life. It was so funny!
We drove the loop around the South rim of the canyon and took off. It was snowing on and off all day. We finally ended up finding a KOA that was closed until next week, but the owner allowed us to pull in and stay. We are near Ouray, CO where they have hot springs to dive into. We are going to drive into Telluride today and stay another night here to be able to drive the road over to Silverton. Right now, it is probably too snowy to drive the mountain road and tomorrow is supposed to be nice weather again. High of 60 and sunny!
I'm going to dive into a lego my eggo waffle right now. Talk to you soon!
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Happy Easter!
I can't believe it is Easter already. Seems like I was just saying Happy Thanksgiving not too long ago. I am sitting in the motorhome, typing, while Laurie is still sleeping...but that happens a lot. We are surrounded by about 1-2 inches of snow and we are sitting at 9300ft at Mueller State Park, in Colorado (Near Pikes Peak). We have had a busy past few days but I'll condense it into a few paragraphs. Don't want to wear you out with the boring driving stuff anyways.
We left OKC a few days ago (I say that because I can't remember what day...they don't have names right now) and drove to Dodge City, KS. Home of the 2nd largest meat processing plant in the world. Yeah! You're driving through the fields of KS (and by fields, I mean tons of fields. That is all there is.) and you come into this industrial town with corn silos the size of a 6 story building, railroad junctions and cows in pens. My eyes were going crazy trying to look at everything, since we hadn't seen anything for hours. Even cows were exciting! :) Laurie had us pointed towards a Walmart parking lot in town, so after a rough ride on a brick road, we pulled in. The parking lot had a huge field right next to it, so we could let the dogs run wild. They were so excited. We unhooked the 5th wheel and rode into town to check out all of the shopping and wild west things to do. Ha! It took us 5 minutes to see what there is to do. You can go take a tour of a scaled down version of Dodge City, where Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and many more frequented. (Actually, I forgot to add, Dodge City was where the cattle market was and still is. Ranchers brought/bring their cattle into town to sell. After days on the trail, men would stop into town to sell their cattle, get a drink, entertainment and of course...women.) There wasn't any shopping...at least that Laurie and Jan wanted to do, so we had a nice dinner and went to bed.
We woke up to the wind blowing the rv from side to side. It was blowing about 25mph and it was going to be a long day driving into the wind. We ran over many tumbleweeds as we were driving and they would blow right out in front of us. I didn't know whether to swerve to try and not hit them. :) Joe ran out of gas also. That's why he carries 25 gallons of diesel with him. We were almost to CO Springs anyways. We made it to Colorado Springs at 6pm on Friday. We made a trip into Sams to pick up some well needed items...you know, honey buns, oil, walkie talkies, etc...The essentials. We woke up yesterday morning and moved the rv's to Mueller State Park, near Pike Peak. It was quite a drive up to the park for the old motorhome, but she made it. I had to downshift into 2nd gear and drive 20mph-35mph a lot. Good thing Joe is a buffer between me and other traffic, or I would be getting some nasty looks. :) We saw a few deer while driving in the park. They were used to people because I was able to get up fairly close (20ft) to them. It was snowing on and off all day yesterday and was 30 degrees with the wind blowing. We all were pretty chilly. We weren't prepped for the cold. We brought shorts and summertime weather gear, not blizzard gear. Laurie was able to find a couple of jackets at the Goodwill when we were driving around. We visited Manitou Springs where they have 7 natural mineral springs, each with a different taste than the other. So, Joe and I took a walk to check out some springs and Laurie and Jan went shopping. The first spring we tasted was located in a store, right up through their floor. It tasted like sulfur! I had to hold my nose while drinking it. Needless to say we needed something to get the taste out of our mouths, so we bought some coffee flavored popcorn. We tasted 2 more springs and I liked the 3rd one the best. It had a salty, carbonated flavor to it. I put my water bottle under it and filled it up.
Our next stop was Garden of the Gods State Park. You can drive around a loop and view all sorts of rock formations and hiking trails. We didn't hike any trails because of it being so cold. We took some great pictures.
We left OKC a few days ago (I say that because I can't remember what day...they don't have names right now) and drove to Dodge City, KS. Home of the 2nd largest meat processing plant in the world. Yeah! You're driving through the fields of KS (and by fields, I mean tons of fields. That is all there is.) and you come into this industrial town with corn silos the size of a 6 story building, railroad junctions and cows in pens. My eyes were going crazy trying to look at everything, since we hadn't seen anything for hours. Even cows were exciting! :) Laurie had us pointed towards a Walmart parking lot in town, so after a rough ride on a brick road, we pulled in. The parking lot had a huge field right next to it, so we could let the dogs run wild. They were so excited. We unhooked the 5th wheel and rode into town to check out all of the shopping and wild west things to do. Ha! It took us 5 minutes to see what there is to do. You can go take a tour of a scaled down version of Dodge City, where Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and many more frequented. (Actually, I forgot to add, Dodge City was where the cattle market was and still is. Ranchers brought/bring their cattle into town to sell. After days on the trail, men would stop into town to sell their cattle, get a drink, entertainment and of course...women.) There wasn't any shopping...at least that Laurie and Jan wanted to do, so we had a nice dinner and went to bed.
Our next stop was Garden of the Gods State Park. You can drive around a loop and view all sorts of rock formations and hiking trails. We didn't hike any trails because of it being so cold. We took some great pictures.
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| Kissing Camels |
We made reservations at a place called Flying W Ranch, for dinner. We heard that the food was great and the they have a band that plays after dinner. We drove up and there were turkeys in the parking lot. I thought they looked nice and plump, just right for cooking. It made my mouth start watering for some turkey and gravy. But, they didn't have them on the menu. We enjoyed some good food and after dinner, there was a 4 piece band that played. They played old songs like "Rawhide" and a song from Sons of the Desert. It was a well oiled machine, from the dinner line through the comedy acts that the bands puts on. It was worth checking out.
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| He's outta here! I guess he saw my mouth watering. |
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| They are outta here too! |
We are planning on driving up Pikes Peak today. I just called the update for the road and we can only go up 13 of the 19 miles because of snow. The highest we can go is 11,215 feet. The mtn is 14,115ft high. The winds are 12-14mph and the temp is 20 degrees today. Should be nice! ha! Beach weather! Oh well, we can't be picky. It is sunny today so I should be able to get some good pictures. So much for riding my bike down though. :) The consensus said that was a bad idea anyways. Apparently all of my Pikes Peak training I have been doing down in FL, won't do my any good. :) We are taking off now. I'll update as soon as I get another chance. Have a good Easter!
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