Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico Trip 10/2004 part 2

 

Hi,

Wednesday, Oct 13
Today we had a drive of only 150 miles, from Delta to Poncha Springs, CO, but what a drive!

The road ranged from straight and level 65 mph. stretches to 30 mph. very twisty and steep mountain roads.  I noticed that most of the speed limits today were definitely too fast for an RV, and probably so for the average car.

About an hour out of camp we found a car over the edge, nose down and on its side.  We stopped along with someone who had stopped earlier.  There had been only a driver in the car, and he was fine.  They had called for help about 30 minutes earlier and hoped someone would be by soon to pull the car out.

As we headed south-east we were climbing steadily and heading for some very high peaks that were buried in clouds.  By the time we reached them, however the clouds were well clear.  As we reached 8000 ft. elevation we reached the snow level.  This area had snow yesterday as a small front passed through.  Once we reached 8000 ft., we never dropped below it until after we left our campground in the Honda.

The highlight of the drive was going over Monarch Pass at 11,312 ft. altitude.  This is also the Continental Divide.  There was a solid blanket of snow everywhere except the roads, which had been cleared.  We pulled off into a parking area at the top and parked on about 3 or 4 inches of snow.  Even the 31,000 lb. motorhome spun its wheels a little starting up again.  Leaving the pass, we dropped 3000 ft. in 10 miles.  Our campground is just about at that 10 mile point.

We had originally selected the Monarch Spur campground in Poncha Springs, but missed it.  In going back to find it, we found another that is not listed in the Trailer Life Campground Directory.  We pulled in and asked their rates.  It is $17 a night.  Our original one was $27 last year, less 10% Good Sam discount.  We have full hookups and no amenities - just what we want.

After getting settled in, and spending about a half hour and many, many paper towels, I had the windows of the Honda clean enough to safely drive it.  It really gets messy towing it on wet roads!  Every window on the car was opaque - you could not see out at all!

We left camp and headed out highway 50 to Can~on (OK, I don't know how to put the tilde over the n for a pronunciation of "Canyon") City.  It was supposed to be about 50 miles, but turned out to be closer to 70.  There were a number of interesting sights along the way.  After exploring the city, we went back to where we had seen the turnoff for Skyline Drive, and took it.  This is a one way, narrow road which is right along the crest of a razorback ridge.  Only cars are allowed - no trucks, RV;s or busses.  As we followed the 10 foot wide asphalt road and narrow shoulders, the sides dropped at a very steep angle (at least 60 degrees) on both sides.  The view was spectacular!  The city spread about as far as you could see to the left, while the highway and more mountain ranges dominated the right side.  After about 3 miles we dropped down through some very sharp switchbacks into the city.

Thursday, Oct. 14
Today was a "kick back" day.  We left this morning for Salida, about 15 miles from camp.  We found the Arkansas River Headwater Recreation Area Visitor Center.  This area is about 150 miles long and is the formation area for the Arkansas River, which eventually dumps into the Mississippi River about 1500 miles downstream.  Numerous springs and tributaries feed the river and make it a year-round river.  There are a number of river rafting outfits in this area.

The Visitor Center was quite small with limited information and displays.  It is mainly an administrative headquarters.  We chatted with one of the ladies there and learned quite a bit about the river and the area, as well as studying a detailed map of the area.  We also enjoyed a mural above the desk one of the employees had painted.

We then stopped at a self-service car wash and dumped $3.50 in quarters to get the Honda fairly presentable again.

A stop at Walmart completed our adventures for the day.  One of the items I got was a small bucket so I can wash the really dirty sections (behind the wheels) of the motorhome.  I think I will wait until we are at the rally to do that.

We then had some time to relax.  We did a couple of inside tasks, then I read about a quarter of my current book.

The wind has really come up this evening.  It is howling and even shaking the motorhome occasionally!  We will pull out tomorrow morning heading for the Great Sand Dune National Monument.  From there we expect to end up somewhere short of Durango.  We have selected several locations depending on timing.

So far I have had cell phone Internet service every night!  I hope the trend continues.

Friday, Oct 15
We left our campground this morning before 9 and headed toward Durango.  We did not plan to go that far, but to decide where to stop as we saw how the day went.  It was not a bad drive, but did have some delays.  As we were driving we saw an electronic sign by the side of the road that said Wolf Creek Pass would be closed, then gave days and hours, but we could not read them in time.  Betty looked up on the map, and sure enough, we were scheduled to cross over Wolf Creek Pass.  Oh well, there will be more signs as we get closer.

We had been planning to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Monument (and found it became a National Park last month), but had not decided whether to drive the Honda from an overnight campground, park the motorhome somewhere and drive the Honda as we traveled past the area, or to just drive the motorhome all the way in and then out.  We chose the latter.  We pulled into the Visitor Center and parked in one of the oversize vehicle spaces.  After spending some time in the Visitor Center, we came out, unhooked the Honda and toured the dunes area and the campground.  After an hour our so at the dunes we re-connected the Honda and proceeded along our route.  We drove a little less than 50 miles extra to make this stop.

We asked about Wolf Creek Pass in the Visitor Center and the ranger was very nice.  She told us that they were putting in a new tunnel and that sometimes the road was closed for blasting.  Other than that, they had delays, but allowed traffic through.  She didn't know the current status, so called the Colorado road department and found out for us.  That was beyond the call of duty, and we really appreciated it!  The report was that the pass was open, but we should expect a 45 minute delay.

As we approached the pass, there were signs warning of 1 hour delays.  As we pulled up near the first flagger (that's what flagmen are called in this day of political correctness, as most of them are women), we saw an almost unending line of traffic passing us in the opposite direction.  After what seemed like 2 hours, but really was just over 10 minutes, our direction started moving.  We traveled about 15 to 20 miles per hour, (sometimes stopping) for a number of miles.  I have never seen as major a road construction project!  There were a number of giant cherry pickers holding workmen way up on the cliffs.  I am sure they were drilling and planting the blasting charges.  Wire screen was draped down, probably in an attempt to keep the debris off the driving surface of the road.  There were massive areas of re-paving with a line of asphalt trucks that must have been over 20 long waiting for their turn to dump their loads.  Then, of course, there were the normal periodic clusters of men along the road doing something or other.   After about 20 miles and several more flaggers, we drove out of the construction.  I have no way of telling, but between the wait at the flagger, and the reduced speed, we may have been delayed as much as 45 minutes, but probably somewhat less.

The summit of the pass was right in the midst of all the construction confusion.  I assume this was the reason their were no signs giving the elevation.  According to my GPS, we reached somewhere between 10,900 and 11,000 feet.  (At 10,000 it stops giving 1 foot resolution and goes to 100 feet.)  This was 200 or 300 feet lower than Monarch Pass.  This was less exciting, as there was no trace of snow, and there was no installation at the peak.  The only signal was that instead of a serious climb, you started a serious descent.  Even though there were no signs stating so, we discovered on a map that the summit of the pass was also at the Continental Divide.

During the climb, a pickup pulling a large horse trailer went buzzing past me.  Later as he was pulling a grade, I pulled past him.  Later I was following him down the grade.  We dropped 3000 feet in 10 miles.  After a while smoke started pouring from his trailer brakes, and I'm talking major clouds.  The smell was distinctly that of overheated brakes, also.  It wasn't till then that he decided to use his engine and transmission to control down hill speed.  I would like to have seen him pull over to let his brakes cool, but he just continued down.  He did arrive safely at the bottom.

We had found a Passport America (50% off camping) campground near Pagosa Springs, and decided to camp there tonight.  We found the campground, paid, and parked.  This is the first campground in a long time where the leveling of our Foretravel did not have enough range.  I had to bring out my blocks and put them under the rear wheels, and then the leveling system just got us level.

After a while, we drove back into the town of Pagosa Springs.  One end of town is very quaint, and looked almost like a Swiss village with many small shops.  We drove through the town looking for a coffee shop type of restaurant, but could only find fast food or fancy places.  We found a steak and barbecue place that we thought we would try.  There was about a 20 minute wait and we looked at the menu.  Every barbecue selection was either entirely ribs or was ribs plus something else, and very pricey!.  Betty does not handle ribs well, and I just had them a couple of days ago on our last day with John and Barbara.  We left and went back to camp.

Saturday, Oct. 16
We had a very short drive of less than 100 miles today, so dallied around camp until almost noon before leaving.  By about 2 we found the Walmart/Sam's Club in Farmington, NM where we decided to park overnight.  We cannot get into the rally holding area until 8 AM tomorrow.  We paid dearly for our "free" parking spot tonight with a bill of about $160 at Sam's Club!

Tomorrow morning we will head to the fairgrounds, about 8 miles from here, and try to get parked for the rally.  We will be there 3 days early, so should have plenty of time to  see the surrounding areas and maybe even relax a little.

I received an email from Barbara Cairns stating that high winds Wednesday had stripped the leaves from the beautiful trees we had seen the previous day on the Grand Mesa.  Timing is everything!

Sunday, Oct. 17
We had a very long commute this morning from the Walmart in Farmington, NM to the fairgrounds where the rally will be held - a total of about 8 miles!

We spent a quiet night in the Walmart parking lot with about 6 or 7 other rigs.  We pulled out about 8:30 this morning and about 15 minutes later we were talking to the welcome committee of the Rocky Mountain Area of the FMCA.  FMCA stands for Family Motor Coach Association.  This rally runs from Thursday through Saturday.  We arrived as early as they permitted and will have plenty of time the next few days to explore this corner of New Mexico.

We are parked very close to the rally events in the Handicapped-with-electric area.  We have water and 50 amp electric service here.  We are parked next to another Foretravel.  The owner is an interesting fellow.  He was complaining that his coach is full of electronics.  He hates electronics and has cut most of the wires.  I am not sure just what he is talking about, but he invited me to come over later with my screwdriver and help myself.  Might be interesting!

After meeting several of the couples around us, I spent about 2 hours with my brand new Walmart  bucket and some rags washing the terrible road spray mess from the motorhome, followed by a session on the front attacking bugs.  After completing all this, the motorhome looks pretty good again.  It was really dirty, especially behind the wheels.  It started sprinkling lightly just as I was finishing.  I got the ladder and buckets put away and got back into the motorhome and it started pouring!  I am sure glad I finished when I did!

We are spending a relaxing Sunday afternoon watching football and baseball (and staying dry).

Monday, Oct. 18
We decided to drive the Honda to Silverton or Ouray today.  We pulled out around 9 heading first for Durango.  We continued on north and started to climb.  Durango is around 6300 feet, and as we reached 8500 feet or so, we encountered fairly fresh snow.  There were areas where all the pine trees had snow on their branches, and the ground, other than the road, was solidly covered.  There were still occasional bright yellow Aspen - it was beautiful!  There was low overcast, or light fog as we got into the clouds, most of the way.  We went over two passes that were just about 11,000 feet, then down the grade into Silverton, which is around 9300.

Silverton is an interesting town.  The old part is filled with quaint shops selling everything from fudge to tee shirts to funnel cakes, and lots of gift items.  We were lucky and arrived shortly before the Durango-Silverton train.  We went 12th street and waited for it.  The tracks run down the center of 12th street stopping at the edge of Blair street.  The train stops within 10 feet of the end of the track.

Today's train was a double header.  There were two steam locomotives pulling about 14 cars.  It was very exciting to see this form of history pulling into the "station".  I took a lot of video and a number of digital pics.

We then toured the town along with a couple hundred train passengers.  We did a driving tour, selected an area, then walked that area.  We toured several shops, ending up at a small eatery.  Their specialty was funnel cakes.  Never having had one, I didn't even know what it was.  We ordered one between us and split a drink.  The funnel cake gets its name from the fact that the batter is poured from a pitcher with a funnel type spout.  The finished product is a flat disk which is created from the interweaved strands of batter.  There are openings everywhere, and you just pull off a formation to eat it.  It was delicious!

The one "downer" was that as I was backing Betty into the second shop we visited, the chair bumped over the rough threshold and the foot plate shattered!  The newer chairs use a plastic foot plate, and I first thought I must have crashed it into the concrete sidewalk, but I couldn't have because I had her tipped back at the time.  I finally decided that it was the weight of Betty's legs on the plate, amplified by the shock of the threshold that overloaded the plastic.  Betty likes to use only one foot plate, so she can still put her feet on the ground.  As a result we never use the right foot plate, and very foolishly, I did not even bring it with us!  I will examine our options tonight.

On our way back, we pulled of at Purgatory, between Silverton and Durnago.  This is where for several years, Gene and Betty Wilkison, our good friends of Prescott, came with their son Bruce and his family.  Bruce and Lenore, both musicians with the Phoenix Symphony at that time, had a musical vacation hosted by the resort there.  We had heard so much about this place, it was interesting to see it for ourselves.

After a couple hours in Silverton we headed back to Farmington - we decided not to continue on to Ouray.  As we passed through Durango, we took a driving tour of several areas of that city.

Back at the motorhome, we watched - and watched - and watched Boston finally beat New York in the 14th inning!

Tuesday, Oct 19
This morning I spent quite a bit of time talking to our neighbor, Rod.  He is the one who hates electronics.  He invited me over to his Foretravel and I looked at the equipment he has.  He has some fine gear, but it is factory installed equipment and it would be a very bad idea to remove it.  I offered to help him get it working and checked out, and to teach him how to use it, but he said he had no interest.  It turns out that he didn't really cut any wires, but he did disconnect a bunch!  He has never turned on the TV or the dash radio!  He didn't even know what the satellite TV receiver or the CD changer were.  In a drawer in the bedroom he found a couple units he did not know anything about.  They were another satellite receiver and the control box for his auto-seeking rooftop satellite antenna.  We found the cables for this box in the compartment with the active receiver.  He did not even want to connect this box.  He has tied the rooftop dish in the down position, as he said it rattled.  There was also a second "car radio" installed in the right hand cabinet.  This was for the previous owner's wife who liked to listen to Rush Limbaugh with headphones.  Her husband hated Limbaugh!  It didln't even make sense to remove this radio, as it had been mounted on the panel in the cupboard and would leave a gaping hole.

We had a very enjoyable conversation.  This is his third Foretravel.  His first was one of the rare gas engine pushers, with a Lincoln 460 engine mounted in the rear.  His second was a Grand Villa with a Catapillar engine, and his current one is a 2000 U-270, very similar to, but 2 feet shorter than ours.

Our mission today was to locate a replacement foot plate for Betty's chair.  I looked up all the health equipment stores in the local area, and selected the two most likely ones.  We headed out to the first one.  When I asked in the office, the two girls there really didn't know if they had the parts or not.  They called a fellow who thought they had one in the warehouse which should work.  A few minutes later he came in with a used, but flawless one that looked like it had all the right dimensions.  When I asked "How much?", he referred to "the boss", one of the girls.  She said to take it and have a great time in Farmington.  When I protested, she said they probably would have thrown it out eventually anyway.  How's that for hospitality?

We then headed to Walmart (where else?).  I had selected several digital photos to have prints made for a test evaluation.  After putting in my compact flash card, and selecting the photos I wanted to print, the machine produced a slip (not a receipt) to bring back in an hour for my prints.

We then went next door to Sam's Club again and I bought 4 more boxes of Cracklin Bran.  I used to enjoy this high fiber cereal, but have not seen it lately.  When I bought a box Saturday, I found the two contained boxes had coupons for a $50 EE savings bond.  You need 10 coupons to get the bond.  As the total cost of the 5 packs (10 boxes) was less than $35 this sounded like a pretty good rebate!  I'm not sure what the purchase price of this bond is now, but it used to be $37.50.

Betty's new foot plate works just fine!

We picked up our prints back at Walmart and they look great.  This looks like a good alternative to the old film and print combo.  Our biggest problem with the digital has been the lack of prints.

We passed a barbecue place and decided to try it.  Unlike the place last week that had only very high priced ribs, this place had a good selection of plates and sandwiches, and reasonable prices.  We opted for ham dinners and they were good!  When we mentioned to the owner that we were with the motorhome rally at the fairgrounds, he said he was catering 350 dinners there tonight!  Apparently the rally feeds the volunteers!  I know they don't feed us!

We will do a little more exploring tomorrow before the rally officially starts with the evening program tomorrow night.

Till next time,

Dick and Betty
 

Here we are stopped at Monarch Pass.  This is the highest we got this trip.
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The top of the pass is at the Continental Divide.
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This is the view we have out our windshield at Poncha Springs.
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A portion of the dunes at Great Sand Dunes National Park.
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An extreme telephoto shot show some hardy souls climbing near the top of the dunes.
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The trees along the road to Silverton were freshly covered with snow.
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The clouds are starting to break and further enhance the beauty of the scenery!
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We are looking down on the town of Silverton.
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The Durango-Silverton train is just pulling into the station.  The station is really just the end of the tracks which run down the center of 12th Street.
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This is Shiprock which is about 40 miles south-west of Farmington.
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