Trucking on.....

7.7.13

Rocky Mountain National Park

We got up early to take a trek into this huge, beautiful park.  We started off the day by traversing over the mountain to 12,000 feet, well above the tree line. The beautiful tall evergreens fell away to tundra. It is stark, cold and in my opinion a little spooky. Very little will grow and the growing season is only a few short weeks. The winds were hard and the cold went straight through to your bones. I don’t tolerate cold at all and I didn’t find this part of the trip very pleasant though it was interesting to see. We went for a short hike at the top and breathing was not easy. The air was very thin.  Thankfully we went downhill from there. The drive was beautiful and we saw elk and even a few moose.  After getting back down the mountain we took another hike to view a waterfall. It was a beautiful hike but we did notice that compared to Custer Park, Rocky Mt. is grand central station. There were people everywhere! Sean surmised that is probably because of its fairly close proximity to Denver so it has a huge population to draw upon and a major international airport. I preferred Custer to Rocky Mt. but both were incredibly beautiful.

We got home at a decent hour, as we needed to get laundry done and start to get ready for the next days drive to Glenwood Springs.

7.8.13

Glenwood Springs, CO

Our drive to Glenwood was our first really large elevation change while hauling the rig. The truck did a great job pulling it and Sean did great handling it all but it is pretty thought provoking to see all the long runaway truck ramps on the side. I hope to never need one of those.  We took our time and enjoyed the sites all through the Rockies.  We pulled into Glenwood springs and reminisced about our last trip there when the kids were small. We had rented a condo in Vail and spent a week exploring the area. I doubt if they remember much of it. We did spend an afternoon at the hot springs in Glenwood and if they remember anything, it is probably that since there were big slides for them to go down. 

We went through town to Carbondale where our RV park was.  Our site backed onto the Crystal River. We could see and hear it from our window all night. The park didn’t have a pool, tv or internet but we didn’t miss it for a minute. It was probably the prettiest park we have stayed in but it also had a pretty price tag.  Sean noticed on one of our slides that a cable was fraying. We sent a text to the rv repair guy we used in Texas and he told us how to find the parts. We ordered the replacement cables and had them sent to my brother Kent’s house in Camp Verde. Kent lives about 15 minutes from the rv park/timeshare resort in Sedona we will be staying at. Poor Sean, he is being dragged into being a handyman whether he wants to or not! The plan is to replace the cables as soon as we get to Arizona. Anyway, we fretted about the cables a bit then went for along bike ride. There is 35 miles of trails here and you could ride all the way to Vail and beyond if you wanted. We rode into Carbondale and had a look around. Very cute little town. 

The next day was spent in Glenwood Springs. We saw Doc Holidays gravesite and spent many hours at the hot springs.  Hopefully it will cure all that ails us.  We shopped and headed out to our beautiful rv site for the night.

7.10.13

Moab

We didn’t rush out the next morning but had a nice walk and a leisurely breakfast. It was good that we did as we found out quite quickly by the large flashing signs that I70 was shut down near the Colorado/Utah border. They shut it down at 7:30 a.m. so we figured it would be open by the time we got there.  We kept our eye on the signs and I looked up the Colorado highway information on the Ipad and saw that it was still shut down and there was no idea as to when it was to open. By lunchtime we decided to pull over into a state park and have lunch and wait out the closure.  After about 1.5 hours, Sean had enough of waiting and we hit the road again and just figured we would chance it.  By the time we got to the closure we decided to give the detour a try. The road was terrible! It was bumpy and full of cars and truck rigs. I don’t think the road had been used in years.  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why a major interstate had been closed down for no apparent reason for most of the day. After seeing the ugly and desolate area, I am convinced it was an alien crash and they had to get the aliens bagged up and taken to Roswell.  Why else would you shut down such a huge interstate with no exploration on the radio or Internet other then “police investigation”?  Hmmm………. Well we finally made it to Moab and got set up in our RV park. Then the FUN began!

My nephew, David, lives here part of the year and runs his Extreme 4x4 Tour Company.  David built from the ground up, his very own extreme, rock-climbing machine.  It is amazing and we were lucky enough to get an evening tour with him.  He met us at a local motel and to my surprise; my niece Emily (and David’s sister) was here for a visit too with her boyfriend! We all got into David’s monster of a machine along with a couple from Germany and off we went!  He took us on a 3-hour tour that was incredible! I laughed and screamed the whole time! Sean sat in the back and got a great view and an even rockier ride. I sat in the middle row with Emily and felt a little more protected. David did a great job building this machine and we passed up hummers, jeeps and every other 4 wheel drive machine you can think of. They all looked at us in envy as we went places they couldn’t dream about going to.  David was a ton of fun and when he wasn’t busy scaring us to death, would give us bits of information about the area. We were out so long that we saw a beautiful sunset and even did a bit of driving in the dark.  It was the most exciting time we have had yet!

7.11.13

Jett Boat

The next day we met David at his friends business, Jett Boat. He got us the family discount and we went on a 2-hour tour on his high-speed boat on the Colorado River. It was hot but he would do 360-degree turns and this would cause large wakes of water to splash up on you. We went through the canyon and waved to the rafter and kayakers. The water is not very high and this part of the country could use some rain!  It was really pretty and we could see up on top of the canyon walls and where we had been with David the night before. After we were finished David took us to this little local dive restaurant that had great burgers and then he had to go do some marketing of his business and Emily came over with her boyfriend and we visited for a while.  She is headed back to Austin tomorrow and we are on our way to Arizona and Sedona!