Vacation Journal

We drove to Montrose first thing this morning to get a flat fixed on Charolette’s bicycle.  It turned out to be a defective inner tube which the dealer replaced at no charge.  I also got a haircut while we were in the big city (population 12,000).  And, of course, we did some shopping at Wal-Mart.

This afternoon we drove to a place called Clear Lake.  It’s at the end of a 8.5 mile drive on dirt roads, the last four miles being a 4-wheel drive road.  I’ve long since run out of words to describe the scenery we see out here.  I’ve used awesome, beautiful, etc. way too much.  My feeble mind doesn’t know how to describe today’s drive.  It may be the best scenery we’ve ever seen out here.  We climbed through a lot of switchbacks, past two gorgeous waterfalls, into a scenic bowl with a turquoise lake at 11,900 feet.  We ate a picnic supper while we were there.  We were the only people there.

On the way back to Ouray, we again got to see sunset on the Red Mountains (impossible to describe).  It was a nice day considering our plans last night were to simply do laundry and hang out.  We plan to try another 4-wheel drive road tomorrow if the nice weather holds.

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"You can't get lost if you don't care where you are."  (Retirement motto)

"Not all those who wander are lost."  J.R.R. Tolkein

We went 4-wheel driving in Yankee Boy Basin.  For the first time ever, we drove all the way to the end of the road.  The last couple miles are rough, with large rocks sticking up and holes and ditches and very sharp hairpin curves going up at steep angles.  I did manage to scrape the skid plates a few times, mostly coming down, but we made it in good shape.  At the end point, the altitude is 12,370 feet.  When we got there, there was a Jeep Liberty parked.  There was also a young couple (30-ish) sitting there.  They had just walked to the top of Mount Sneffels.  The foot trail starts where the road ends.  From here you only go 0.9 miles to reach the top of Sneffels.  Did I mention you also go up 2,000 feet?  Charolette and I passed on the walk.  We decided we would do it some other day, when hot places freeze over.  It had taken us almost an hour to drive the last two miles (with no stops).  The couple had walked the last two miles of the road to get to the foot trail because they didn’t want to drive their Suburban on that road.  Anyway, they started walking back down the road about two minutes before we started back.  We never caught them.  In fact, they lengthened their lead.  The road was so rough that you can walk it faster than you can drive it.  The views near the end were awesome.  Except for the road, there were no other signs of civilization.  It was a very nice place to be.

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"You can't get lost if you don't care where you are."  (Retirement motto)

"Not all those who wander are lost."  J.R.R. Tolkein

We goofed around in the morning (snail mail and email for me).  We drove to Montrose for lunch and to visit two quilt stores.  Charolette has been doing a “shop hop”.  These were her sixth and seventh shops which is the minimum number to qualify for the drawing for prizes.  She turned her card in at the last shop.  The shop hop ends on August 31, and we don’t plan to get to any other shops before then.

We bought two bicycles at a bicycle store in Montrose.  These are “comfort” models.  They are designed for a mix of paved and dirt paths.  They have shocks on the front wheel and the seat.  They have larger tires like a mountain bike.  These tires have bumps on the outside for some gripping on mud/dirt, but they have regular tread in the center for use on paved roads.  We had bought a bike rack that fits into the trailer receiver on the Jeep at the Camping World Store in Wheat Ridge on Thursday night.  We had the bikes loaded on the rack.  We stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up some locks and other things and headed for home.  We didn’t go for a ride this evening because it was sprinkling most of the evening.  Maybe tomorrow.  We had decided to buy the bicycles yesterday.  We went to three bike shops in Montrose today.  The one where we bought had better know brands, and they were having a 10% off sale on all 2005 models. 

On the drive back with the bikes, we did some exploring near Ridgway to check out their bike path.  They have one that starts in the town square and follows the Uncompahgre River north out of town for several miles.  It crosses the river using an old railroad bridge.  It’s a paved trail.  We plan to try it sometime this week.  We might also drive 170 miles back to Glenwood Springs Canyon and give that trail another try.  Our list of things we want to do is about to exceed the amount of time we have left here (4 weeks).  And, we keep forgetting to work in many rest/loafing days.  It would be nice to just sit in my lawn chair and read and nap and watch birds.  Oh well, one of these days we’ll do that.

We went to church again at First Presbyterian of Ouray.  Then we went to Ridgway to eat lunch at the True Grit Café on our way to Owl Creek Pass.  Owl Creek Pass is about 15 miles up a dirt road.  Right before you get to the pass, you pass the meadow used in one of the last scenes in the movie True Grit.  This is the scene where John Wayne puts the reins in his mouth and a rifle in each hand and charges the bad guys on horseback.  Chimney Peak on Courthouse Mountain is very visible from this meadow.  I’ll send a picture.  One interesting feature of Owl Creek Pass is that Owl Creek crosses at the pass.  It is coming down the mountain going from the southeast to the northwest across the pass.  I can’t remember seeing a pass before with a creek or river going through it.

We returned to our campground and sat outside for awhile and worked crosswords and Su DoKu puzzles.  Su DoKu seems to be the latest craze.  The New York Times now has one every day, and so does USA Today.  They use numbers, but no arithmetic is involved.  Since it was sprinkling lightly, I put out our awning so we could continue sitting outside.

After the rain quit, we went for a ride on our new bicycles.  We spent most of the ride figuring out how to shift the 24 gears.  We’re getting the hang of it.

The temperatures are still in the lower 70’s for highs with lows near 50.  There is not supposed to be any rain for the next few days, so we will probably do some 4-wheel drive trails.

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"You can't get lost if you don't care where you are."  (Retirement motto)

"Not all those who wander are lost."  J.R.R. Tolkein

We spent most of the day driving.  After breakfast, we headed to Mount Evans.  We encountered a three lane backup on I-70 due to an accident.  One of those signs over the highway with messages in lights told us about the accident.  After one mile of creeping slowly along, we took an exit, circled back, and took a back road through the mountains to get to Mount Evans.  We were still a couple miles from the accident when we exited.  We found ourselves on a very scenic drive past Red Rocks Amphitheater and a very neat little town (Evergreen) in a small valley.

We finally got to the top of Mount Evans.  The road goes to 14,130 feet, which makes it 20 feet higher than the road on Pike’s Peak.  However, the dirt road on Pike’s Peak does get to the actual top of Pike’s Peak.  The paved Mount Evans Road stops about 150 feet shy of the actual top of Mount Evans.  The drive up Evans was scenic.  We did see all three of the main kinds of mammals that live up there – Mountain Goats, Bighorn Sheep, and Marmots.  It took us over three hours to get to Evans and back down to the Interstate.  I was impressed by the number of bicyclists going to the top.  This might be because the road up Evans is sloped more gently than the road up Pike’s Peak.  The reason it took us so long to make the drive up and back is because the road is much longer than the road up the Peak. 

We drove on to the Dillon/Silverthorne area and bought something to eat at a McDonald’s drive thru.  Our plans for the day called for us to get halfway across Colorado to Grand Junction before the quilt shop there closed.  We ate in the car and got to the quilt shop at 4:30.  We had driven 234 miles from Wheat Ridge to Grand Junction, not counting the trip up the mountain.

It was 85 miles from Grand Junction to our campground.  We stopped in Delta to eat at The Eatery again.  The food was still good.  Too bad it’s so far away from our RV. 

I-70 between Denver and Grand Junction is a fascinating drive.  You see all kinds of scenery.  You go over two major high points – Vail Pass and Eisenhower Tunnel.  You go up and down a lot on the east end.  You never go more than a mile without a curve for 200 miles of the road.  Sometimes the curves are so tight that the speed limit on the Interstate is only 50 miles per hour.  In Glenwood Springs Canyon, just east of Glenwood Springs, the canyon is so narrow that the east-bound lanes are at the bottom and the west-bound lanes are often up on the canyon walls on a bridge.  Sometimes part of the west-bound lanes are suspended above the east-bound lanes.  We have driven this road many times and consider it one of the most scenic there is.  There is also a bicycle path through the whole canyon with rest stops every 7 or 8 miles.  We have ridden bikes through part of the canyon.  The Interstate is on the north side of the canyon.  Railroad tracks are on the south side.  Quite a few trains go through here.  A lot of rafters go through the canyon in warm weather.  It’s well worth a visit.

It was mostly a day of traveling.  We left the RV in Ouray to go to Wheat Ridge, Colorado for one night.  We stopped at two quilt stores on the way – Hotchkiss and Glenwood Springs.  We were speeding along I-70 going eastbound near Vail when we passed a fifth wheel trailer with Oklahoma tags going up one of the many steep, tall hills out here.  I told Charolette that the trailer had Washington County tags.  As we passed, I looked at the driver and saw that it was an old friend of mine, Warren King.  Since I was going about 30 miles per hour faster than the trailer, I finished passing and drove on until I could find a spot where I could safely pull off the road and park.  I waited for Warren and looked out the window and waved as he came by.  I pulled out behind him.  He recognized me and he pulled over in a truck parking area a couple miles down the road.  We got out and talked about 10 minutes.  He had just left the Flaming Gorge area and was headed to Blackhawk, Colorado.  We were both amazed by the chance meeting.

We also stopped in Golden, Colorado to see some quilts on display in the home office of Primedia, a company which prints several quilting magazines.  Then we checked into our La Quinta motel with high speed wireless internet (I may stay up all night).

Gas is running about $2.759 per gallon or more for regular unleaded in the backwoods of Colorado where we are staying.  We found some for $2.539 here in Wheat Ridge.  Today, I discovered an interesting fact about the gas out here.  Regular is 85 octane, mid is 87, and premium is 91.  Back in Oklahoma, the octanes are 87, 89, and 91 (if I remember correctly).  My Jeep needs 87, so I have to buy the mid level gasoline.  The highest I have paid for gas so far this trip is $2.959, which is also my all time high, beating the $2.829 I paid in Death Valley.

We just goofed around Ouray on Tuesday.  Wednesday morning we did laundry.  Wednesday after lunch we did a six-mile, four wheel drive road up near Red Mountain Pass.  We took a picnic lunch and stopped on an overlook at 12,200 feet to eat.  We had great views of mountains and alpine meadows in all directions.  After our meal we drove through a herd of sheep (several hundred).  We passed the tent where the sheepherder was staying.  He had three dogs to help him.  His tent had a stovepipe coming out of it, so he had a stove of some type for cooking and heating.  He was right at 12,000 feet above sea level. 

After supper, we decided to drive back up the Million Dollar Highway and watch the sunset on the Red Mountains.  It was awesome.  We again drove the four wheel drive we had been on earlier in the day.  The sheep had moved further up the mountain.  There was smoke coming out of the pipe in the herder’s tent, so we assumed he was cooking supper.

We continue to enjoy any drive through these mountains.  The highs for the last 10 days have been 65 to 75.  The lows are 50 to 55.  We do run the heater every night.

At 7:45 on Saturday we were entertained by about 300 people running past the back window of our RV.  They were participating in a ½ marathon from Ouray to Ridgway.  We had a great view.  We took in a little of the local culture by attending some of the events at the High Graders Holiday (a celebration of local miners).  We got to see hand mucking (filling a huge container with mine waste using a shovel and your hands), stake driving, and drilling holes in rocks.  They treat this like a rodeo.  They time events and have a winner in each event and an overall winner.  There were $10,000 in prizes, so they take it somewhat seriously.  The thing lasted for two days.

In the afternoon we drove to Montrose to do our Wal-Mart shopping and to go to a movie (the two things we planned to do Friday before we ended up attending a quilt show).  Actually, Charolette attended the quilt show.  I sat on a large comfortable couch they had near the entrance to the show and took a nap.  Both of us enjoyed ourselves.  We bought out Wal-Mart and then saw the movie.  I got two half-dollars in change at the movie, one from buying tickets and one from the concession stand.  I wonder if this theater owner uses halves on purpose or if it was just a coincidence that they had some today?

On Sunday we attended church services at the First Presbyterian of Ouray.  The service was mostly their high school youth talking about their experiences at the recent Calvin Crest Christian Camp they attended near Fresno, California.  They were a delightful group of young people.  The minister and several other church elders went with them.  One of the minister’s sons was on staff at the camp for the whole summer.  His other son and his daughter each attended for one week.  After camp the whole crew (26 people) went to Redondo Beach near LA for a couple days.  Apparently this church raises the money every year to help pay the expenses of any high school student in the area who wants to go, whether they attend this church or not.  It was a great experience for all.  The minister said he couldn’t count the times he was given compliments about how well-behaved and courteous the group was when they stopped at restaurants and Starbucks while on the road.  I enjoyed hearing them talk about it.

After church, we changed clothes and took off for Silverton to attend a brass band Concert.  This was the Great Western Rocky Mountain Brass Band Festival featuring the Great Western Rocky Mountain Brass Band.  There are over 50 people in the band.  They come from Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, California, Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, Washington, Tennessee, Kansas, Vermont, Kentucky, New York, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.  This was the 24^th annual festival.  Each musician pays his own way and donates his own time for a week to the festival.  They spend four days rehearsing and three days playing.  They were awesome.  Many of the musicians are music professors or music teachers.  Others are members of other bands or symphonies.  They were good.  The director has been the director for all 24 years.  He is from Minnesota.  He recently retired as the Divisional Music Director for the Salvation Army.  Before that he was the director of the St. Paul Salvation Army Band.  He did most of the arranging.  He also writes some music.  He has a great sense of humor and did the narration for the concert.  If we are here next year, we plan to attend again.  They also had concerts on Friday and Saturday.  Next year, we would like to attend more of the concerts.

After the concert we had a late lunch at the Brown Bear Café in Silverton.  We returned to Ouray to relax for the rest of the day. 

Our hummingbirds remain very active, mostly Broad-tailed with an occasional Rufous.  Twice today I saw a Black-headed Grosbeak on our suet feeder.  I love watching them.  I put some peanuts on top of the wooden fence separating the back of our RV from the road.  Two Steller’s Jays made short work of picking them up and hiding them in the trees across the street.  I get a good view because the bottom of our rear window is above the top of the six-foot fence.

We had reservations for the boat ride on Morrow Point Lake given by the National Park Service. You walk down a couple hundred steps into the Gunnison Canyon just below Blue Mesa Dam. Then you walk downriver about ¾ of a mile on the old Denver & Rio Grande Railroad bed to reach the dock where the large pontoon boat is kept (the boat holds about 40 people). At that point, the river is no longer flowing with rapids as it has entered the upper end of Morrow Point Lake. When we first got into the canyon, the river was flowing very fast with rapids. We had reservations for the 12:30 ride. We got down to the docks about 11:45 and ate a picnic lunch we had prepared. We shared a picnic table with a couple from Massachusetts. They asked where in Oklahoma we were from. When we said Bartlesville, they said they had been there to see the Price Tower. About 75% of the people we meet know about or have been to Bartlesville.

We took this ride last year and enjoyed it so much that we chose to do it again. We had to drive about 75 miles to get here. The boat ride lasted almost two hours. We were in a narrow canyon the whole way with walls several hundred feet tall in most places. When we turned around about three miles above Morrow Point Dam, the water was 280 feet deep with walls reaching 400 feet above the water. On the way, we passed the Curecanti Needle, probably the major landmark of the whole Gunnison Canyon area. The ride was just as awesome the second time as the first. I heartily recommend that everyone try it. It runs between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend. The ranger who gave the talk during our ride owns houses in both Colorado and Tucson, Arizona. During the winter he works in Saguarro Cactus National Park near Tucson. He is a retired pilot who flew private jets for corporations.

After the boat ride we drove further east into Gunnison so Charolette could visit the quilt show they are having this month. Then we drove north and went over Ohio and Kebler passes. Our route took us to Delta, a city 20 miles north of Montrose. We drove on about 45 miles of dirt roads and went through the largest Aspen groves we have ever seen. We plan to come back here in late September when the Aspen have turned. Both passes were just over 10,000 feet. Last year the Denver newspaper rated this road as one of the five best places to see Aspen in Colorado. As usual when you are meandering through the mountains of Colorado, the scenery is varied and spectacular. No two roads look the same. There are similarities, but each has its own unique appearance. I don’t think I can ever tire of driving through these mountains.

We stopped at a random restaurant in downtown Delta, right on the highway. We found a gem. The menu choices were basic and simple, but the food quality was excellent. My BLT was served on their own superb, homemade wheat bread. The bacon was unbelievably good. Charolette had smothered porkchops that were excellent. The corn on the cob was locally grown and shucked at the moment it was prepared for your meal. Charolette could see one of the cooks shucking corn from time to time. Even though Delta is 55 miles from Ouray, we plan to get back to “The Eatery” at least one more time on this trip.

We didn’t go to Mount Evans.  We watched the news on Wednesday night and learned that they were still having major problems with traffic on I-70 near Idaho Springs.  During the heavy rains last week, they had a major landslide that completely covered the west-bound lanes.  They only have one lane in each direction right now and things back up.  They periodically have to stop traffic while they blast some of the boulders that are on the road.  Apparently two or three of the boulders that fell are the size of a house.  Anyway, we called and changed our motel reservations to next Thursday night.

We did go for a four-wheel drive on Thursday afternoon – San Juan County Road 14.  I’ll send a picture.  The road climbed up to a ridge top at 12,000 feet and followed the ridge for a mile or so.  We had great views in all directions.  We’ve decided to come back here a couple times with picnic lunches.

We also took a sunset drive along the Million Dollar Highway to watch the sun set on Red Mountain.  There are three Red Mountains near the pass between Ouray and Silverton.  They are called Red Mountain #1, #2, and #3.  We actually were watching #2 and #3.  They are, in fact, red and they are very bright red at sunset.

Friday we drove down to Durango, which is a 100 minute drive from Ouray.  We were going to pick up a photograph we purchased at the Ridgway Crafts Fair last weekend.  We met the artist at noon in the Denny’s parking lot.  We wanted a size (8x16) of a certain photo that he didn’t have in stock at the Fair, so he ordered one for us and matted it.  It shows golden aspen and Campbell Peak near Telluride.

We originally planned to visit a quilt shop, shop at Wal-Mart, and go to a movie.  While Charolette was at the quilt shop, she learned of a quilt show going on that day over near Cortez.  She also learned that a “shop hop” was in progress, so she signed up to get the prizes at this store.  We changed our plans and drove over to a quilt store in Dolores and then visited the quilt show.  The quilt store in Dolores was owned by someone named Robertson.  Charolette noticed that their shop hop gift was a pattern by a lady named Robertson who owned a quilt shop in Overbrook, Kansas called Osage Quilt Factory.  Charolette has been there before.  She asked if the two Robertsons were related.  It turns out to be the same lady.  She retired from Kansas and moved to Dolores, Colorado.

We drove back to the RV on a road we had never been on before just to check it out.  As with all roads in Western Colorado, it was scenic.  We stopped in Ridgway to eat at the True Grit Café.  Ridgway is the location where a lot of the movie True Grit was filmed.  It’s 10 miles north of Ouray.  We had a nice day with pleasant weather.  We got back to the RV about 7:30.  I had to refill two of the hummingbird feeders because they cleaned them out in one day.

I haven’t posted a log to my vacation journal for a few days because we basically aren’t doing anything of significance.  I am using free wireless internet at the Ouray Library.  I’ve never noticed wireless internet in a library before, but if Ouray has it, I’m guessing that it is becoming somewhat common.  This library has five PCs for the public to use and a large table for people who bring their own laptops.  The speed is very fast.

Yesterday we had three Black-headed Grosbeaks on our suet feeder at the same time.  The feeder is just outside the rear window of our RV, so we had good, close looks.  We continue to have lots of hummingbirds.  They empty the most popular of our three feeders in less than a day.  We are getting regular visits from Black-capped Chickadees, Steller’s Jays, Crows, and White-breasted Nuthatches.

We’ve walked around town several times to look at shops and to eat.  I’ve bought several puzzles (thinking, not jigsaw) in the local toy store, which is well-stocked.  I’m getting to be friends with the owner of the toy store.  He and his wife are retired from Boston.  They travel a lot using Ouray as a home base.  He is getting ready to go to his 50^th high school reunion in Massachusetts and then on to a 26 day trip to Europe.

Tomorrow we are taking a two day trip to drive up Mt. Evans (over near Denver).  We’ll be spending a night in Frisco.  On our way back we will do one of our favorite things – a major shopping stop at Wal-Mart for food and supplies.

Today we did laundry.  I’ve also relaxed a lot in the last few days, and I’ve also caught up on housekeeping chores with the RV.  The weather continues to be pleasant – high’s around 75.  The low last night was 50.  We run our heater every night.

We’re here in Ouray.  We made it without any significant problems.

Our RV trip odometer shows we drove 1,001.9 miles.  I learned a lot about how to drive one of these things.  It’s really pretty easy, especially compared to pulling a fifth wheel.  The Jeeps tows easily.  It’s easy to hook up and unhook.  We can do it either way in about five minutes.  We unhooked each night and drove the Jeep to go eat and look around.  It is also fun to drive around and easy to park compared to the F250.

The most noticeable glitch we encountered was a toll booth on the Kilpatrick Turnpike in Oklahoma City.  The first toll booth on this turnpike was manned so it was easy to pay.  The second one was not manned.  Charolette got out and fed some ones into their machine that gives you tokens for the toll basket.  With four axles, we had to pay $2.00.  We got a token for the first bill we put in the machine.  However, the second one failed to return a token.  Stupidly I had Charolette try again and we were ripped off once more.  Charolette put our one token in the machine and we drove through and set off the alarm.  They had a TV camera watching the booth, so if they bother looking, they will see that we overpaid.  However, I’m half expecting a ticket to arrive in the mail.  I’ll refuse to pay.

We had smooth sailing across the rest of Oklahoma and most of Texas.  We spent the first night near Elk City, Oklahoma.  We left I-40 at Vega, Texas and worked our way over to Raton, New Mexico where we spent the second night.  We encountered a very heavy thunderstorm about 45 minutes before we got to Raton.  We had to slow down to about 40 miles per hours.  It also rained most of the night at Raton.  I had to get up in the middle of the night and start the heater.  The low in Raton was 55 degrees that night.  We left Raton about 8:00 Friday and got to Ouray at 4:30.  We crossed three passes.  We slowed down to 25 miles per hour on the worst part of two of them.  Otherwise, they were fairly easy.  The gears on the RV work well to keep your speed under control on the downhill side.  We have an Allison automatic transmission and I’m impressed with it.

After checking in and getting set up, we learned that Ouray had had a heavy rainstorm Wednesday night which caused a mudslide that blocked the road into town for a few hours on Thursday.  We were glad we hadn’t arrived on Thursday.

We had to run the heater again on Friday night.  Saturday, we went to an Arts and Crafts festival in Ridgway (10 miles north of Ouray).  Then we went to Montrose to eat, wash the Jeep, and shop at Wal-Mart. 

Sunday we went to church at the First Presbyterian Church of Ouray.  Then we drove over the Million Dollar Highway to Silverton to eat lunch.  We returned to Ouray where I cleaned the RV wheels and put on our tire covers.  I also refilled our hummingbird feeders.  We have lots of hummingbirds.  I haven’t had any success yet with my suet feeder, but we had lots of woodpeckers last year, so I know they will eventually show up.  I also have not seen any birds on my seed feeders, but some sparrows did eat the seed I put on the ground.  Last year we had some Mountain Chickadees eating at our feeders, so hopefully they will show up soon.  I also have not attracted any Magpies or Steller’s Jays with my peanuts, but I know they will also show up.  They were a lot of fun to watch last year.