Rocky Mountain High

Ruby Mountain Campground, Nathrop, Colorado to Pullout south of Copper Mountain, Colorado – June 5 and June 6, 2103

On the internet we’ve identified a campground in Leadville that is reasonably priced and convenient to downtown. We cruised by in Big Guy to take a look at it and we were disappointed. It seemed to be entirely populated by full time residents complete with all the deleterious that  goes along with them. Plus, even though we were assured when we called ahead that they could fit us in, we didn’t share the same optimism. Instead, we found a parking lot that had spaces for RVs carved out and parked there so we could explore the town while we contemplated our next move.

Neither one of us remembered seeing a “No Camping” sign in the parking lot, so we thought we might have a “Plan B” in the works. After checking again, we found a sign that said “No Parking from 2AM to 6AM”. Driving 6 blocks from one end of town to the other for 4 hours early in the morning didn’t sound doable so we’re gonna need a “Plan C”.

The Visitor Center was housed in a beautiful old Victorian building. But once inside we were pretty much on our own as the attendant seemed more interested in talking about how hard the Town Council was making it to start any kind of a new business than dispensing information about the highlights of Leadville and the surrounding area. So we grabbed some brochures and decided to go get some food while absorbing the printed information.

At the Golden Burro Café and Lounge we chose the waitress and owner gave us more than enough information about what to see and do in the area. In fact they made us feel special by giving us a map to the “Route of the Silver Kings” that is out of print that they kept hidden in the back room.

Some quick facts: Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the United States; it is referred to as the “Two Mile High City”; and it is the only municipality in Lake County.

The day was getting away from us and we had silver mines to find. When the last mine played out in 1980, the land around Leadville was so polluted from the runoff and tailings that it was declared a Superfund Site. The Superfund designation is about to expire as the government declares Leadville is 98 percent pollution free.

Here is part of the Silver Kings route.

Now it’s time to figure out “Plan C”. Supposedly Copper Mountain Resort allows RVs to stay overnight in their bigger parking lots. So think that’s where we’ll head. We head out on the “Top of the Rockies” hiway and get higher and higher.  Along the way we pass frozen lakes (and this is June, it’s supposed to be summer). I guess up here at 11,000 feet the suns not that hot (grin), or the ice was really thick.

Frank remembers reading about a large paved parking lot about 9 miles from Copper Mountain that has no signs prohibiting over night parking. We find it and pull in deciding that it will fit the bill nicely. This will be our first night sleeping at over 11,000 feet. If we don’t pass out from lack oxygen first.

When we woke up the following morning, we found our careful planning of concerning elevation increases wasn’t worth hooey! The headaches were there, gulping air at the slightest exertion, do you suppose age has something to do with it? We relaxed most of the day attempting to acclimate and found that if we took it easy there were no problems.

Later in the day, we were full of pep and decided that we could handle a short hike up that mountain in the background of the above picture. Here’s EJ gearing up.

The streams are full of snow melt.

EJ encouraging Frank to “Hurry it up!”

“Hey! Wait for me!”

The summer growing season is short up here and buds were popping out all over.

Even though this was a beautiful spot, we need to move along. We’re going to try Copper Mountain and see what the parking situation is there. The lodge is right next to Interstate 70 so we’re a little leery about that. We’ll see.

We’re Back! (Or at least the Blog is)

Lake City, Florida to Ruby Mountain Campground, Nathrop, Colorado –May 12 thru June 4, 2013

Hey!! We bet ya’ll thought we plum forgot about you. Not the case as we’ve been regularly chastising ourselves for not continuing the blog sooner. We’re using the excuse that we’ve been so busy having fun that we just couldn’t squeeze it in. The truth being, neither one of us are morning people, and when the evening gets here we’re both to tuckered out to start anything anyhow, which leaves the middle of the day when we’re busy having fun (or doing chores).

Today, however, we are stuck in Loveland, Colorado awaiting repairs to Big Guy’s air conditioning system, but that’s another story. We can’t go anywhere so now is as good a time as any to kick this thing in gear and resume the blog.

As you remember. we left on our 6 month journey May 11. From there our journey took us to Lewisville, Texas for a few days to visit the new President George W. Bush museum at Southern Methodist University. We came away with a newfound respect for President Bush and his wife Laura.

(“I don’t care how ya’ do it Cheney, I want free beer for all my buds”)

A visit to see Frank’s Dad was long over due so we pointed Big Guy westward and aimed for San Angelo, Texas. Our spot by the power pole was waiting for us so we could plug in and run the air conditioning as the temps were going to be in the 100’s. 

Dad was in the midst of buying and selling utility trailers so we helped him unload one and load up another with his stored goodies. Never can have too much storage space, you know. Even though Dad’s apartment has two walk in closets, space was a little tight, and a 10’ x 6’ utility trailer solved that problem nicely.

Of course at the end of a hard days work a proper social hour is a necessity. Tall tales are told, news is announced, and maybe a little imbibing goes on too. It’s a good way to wind down the day.

Dad is a true geek.  There’s no other way to put it. He has a computer for the bedroom, one for the living room and even one to use when he’s in the recliner. That’s not even counting the Kindle Fire and iPad. In fact, while we were there he got another package of electronic goodies from Amazon.

After spending 11 days with Dad, visiting and helping out with things he just couldn’t fit in his busy schedule it was time to get on with the theme of this trip and that is “To find cooler weather”.

As we wandered north from San Angelo we discovered that the small Texas towns are very RV friendly. In fact many communities have small RV parks that invite you to stay a day or 3 at no charge and even throw in free electricity to boot. And while we’re enjoying their hospitality, we may as well have a little cookout.  Who says you have to rough it while living on the road.

But even as friendly as these little towns were, it’s still too hot and it’s time to continue north. We finally began to see the snow capped mountains in Colorado when we decided to get off the road and stop at an abandoned New Mexico rest stop about 20 miles south of the Colorado border on US285. It was to be our first dose of near freezing night time temps.

The next morning we received a phone call from our friend Sheryl  wanting to know where we were. We told her and she said “Well, my brother and I are right up the road! Let’s meet for lunch.” I have to say we were definitely surprised as she was supposed to be in Kentucky! So we met for lunch at the Boat House Cantina in Salida, Colorado.

 

Now begins a trend we haven’t experienced on previous summer trips. It’s called the “Linger Longer” effect. For instance we had only intended to stay in Salida long enough to have lunch with Sheryl, Billie and George.  We ended up staying for 3 days. That this is a trend will be explained more later on in this blog.

Here I’ll insert a little foreshadowing. It was during this period that we noticed Big Guy’s air conditioning wasn’t quite right. We didn’t know what was wrong, we just knew it wasn’t right.

We moved on to Ruby Mountain Campground near Buena Vista, Co. It was a primitive campground in that it had no utilities, but it was in a beautiful setting. The road to the campground was a little scary, but Frank wasn’t worried (the dropoff was on EJ’s side). The ride was worth it as we had the area almost all to ourselves and we were right next to the Colorado River.

And wildlife was plentiful on water and in the air.

After staying several days longer than intended (once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. We haven’t yet established a trend) we decided to keep moving higher into the mountains. We also really thought that by drawing out our elevation gain, the   oxygen depravation effects wouldn’t be as dramatic. Naivety doesn’t help a bit when reality kicks you in the butt. Despite our measured gains in elevation we would soon be wheezing and gasping for air like the flat landers we are.

Farewell Fox Valley

At 4:30pm we finally began the 2013 installment of our Summer Adventure. We’ve been preparing for 2 weeks now. Our first estimated departure date was May 2nd, which slid to May 9, and then 2 more days to May 11.
Even though it was late in the day and rain was looming on the horizon, we pulled a away from Fox Valley and gave two air horn blasts to say goodbye to everyone.
Jeanne and John helped to give our day a good start by inviting us over for “poor man’s blintzes” at 8:30 this morning. We had a great visit and the blintzes were terrific.
Unfortunately, we encountered a couple of problems in “Big Guy” and had to run around Orange Park looking for replacement parts. The cabinet door to the cat food (very important) had to be repaired and the door handle to the  bathroom decided to freeze up. These two critical items had to be repaired before we could depart.
Trips to General RV, Lowes and Home Depot only yielded enough parts to fix the cabinet door so we had to cobble together a repair for the bathroom door handle.  We hope it holds and that one of us doesn’t get locked in there. (Or out!)
Right after our departure, we encountered an accident that had 3 lanes of traffic backed up for a half mile. Finally we reached I-10 and EJ checked the radar to find we were headed right into a thunderstorm. During the storm, the windshield wipers decided to act up. What a grand departure we were having. But if you own an RV or a boat and go adventuring, you’ve got to be part mechanic too.

After a total of 87 miles, we decided to call it done for the day and stopped in Live Oak.  By the time we had settled in at the local Walmart parking lot, the rain had stopped and the temperatures had dropped into the high 60’s. Air conditioning won’t be required tonight.

All in all, a good end to an eventful day.
And we weren’t alone….

The Final Countdown is on

Our departure date was highly optimistic but I think this picture sums it up nicely.

Erie, Pa to New Concord, OH

Cambridge, OH – October 15 to 21, 2012 Our Current Location

For the most part we prefer to dry camp or stay at a city,county, state or national park campground. Generally, but not always, commercial parks are a little too crowded for our taste. We scored the almost perfect campground in Erie, PA. Owned and operated by the city it is presented as a marina campground. Situated on the shores of Lake Erie, the campground is located next to the canal leading to the East Basin. So we got to see lots of cargo ships transiting the canal to load and unload. The Coast Guard Station is located across the canal and they provided reveille and taps daily.

 

 

The campground also had full hookups, very important after having dry camped for 8 nights and a Laundromat.

 

 

On one of our excursions around the area we discovered a yard full of quirky art. You need to click on the picture to get a closer look at what they are made from. We wondered how the neighbors felt about this. I guess it would make it easy to give directions, “Yeah, we live in the house next to the yard full of weird stuff”.

We also explored Presque Isle State Park where we found a small bay full of houseboats. Later we found out that the bay contains the maximum number of houseboats allowed by the state and that the only way to have a houseboat in there is to buy a lease from the state. So, until someone moves their houseboat out of the bay, no one else can move one in.

EJ had coordinated with her uncle for us to come visit. So now we’re on the way to New Concord, Ohio. It’s overcast and traffic got a little congested, but there are still some beautiful fall colors to enjoy.

We had scoped out a campground, the closest we could find to New Concord, and drove through to take a look. We didn’t get a warm fuzzy feeling from it,so we opted to spend our first night at Walmart. The next morning we contacted the Elks Lodge in Cambridge, OH and asked if we could park in their lot and got the OK. So we spent the morning getting set up there before driving over to meet EJ’s relatives, Dick and Sally.

They had made arrangements for us to see the National Road Museum. It’s actually called the National Road-Zane Grey Museum and we wondered why someone would combine these 2 elements into one museum. Well, as it turns out there is good reason for the combination. Back in the 1700’s is was next to impossible to pass through Ohio because of the thick forest that covered the state.  Ebenezer Zane, Zane Grey’s grandfather, contracted with congress to cut a trail for horseback riders across Ohio. Although the trail was barely big enough for a horse, thousands of settlers used the trail to build settlements along the way.

Between 1811 and 1828, construction on the road brought it from Cumberland, MD to New Concord, OH then eventually all the way to Vandalia, IL. The road originally consisted of dirt, next crushed stone then, in WW1, it was completely bricked to accommodate military traffic.

The museum chronicles all this complete with vehicles of the period and a wonderful diorama. There is also a display of Ohio pottery as well as one of Zane Grey the author. And of course we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to change our looks, Yeehaw.

The next day we all drove to Columbus, OH for lunch, to surprise EJ’s Aunt Sue. She was indeed surprised, and even rendered speechless, which surprised the rest of us!

On the return to New Concord we stopped at a pumpkin farm and market. There was a big crowd and we wanted to see what the attraction was. We came away with some small gourds and pumpkins to use as decorations in Big Guy.

Dick and Sally also took us for a drive on some of the original National Road to show us the original brick roadbed. We also saw several examples of “S” bridges and mile posts.  The “S” bridges are examples of the most economical method of building a bridge at the time. They are built perpendicular to the current.  A well cut rock and mortar bridge could only span so far between footings and this provided the shortest distance.

We had a great time in PA and OH, but now it is time to pack up and hit the road.