Vacation Journal

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.