Woke up this morning to a wonderful breakfast in Centennial, CO with the Colorado Clines. Hand pressed coffee, coffee cake, eggs, bacon, fruit – you spoil us. Began the next leg of our journey around 9:00am with a gorgeous Colorado day – sunny and blue skies. We got our first look at the Rockies, which never disappoint.
In one of our not-so-bright moves of the trip, we sort of pushed the fuel limits of ole haRVey and the fuel light came on while we were in the middle of nowhere. Given that we are now averaging closer to 7 mpg (ouch), it was a little touch and go for awhile. We eventually rolled downhill into a gas station and spent $180 to fill the tank. Double ouch. And yes, I did manage to avoid another day behind the wheel.
For our first spontaneous move, we changed our route and went to the Royal Gorge just outside of Canon City. If anyone is curious as to what Canon City is famous for- apparently it houses 13 prisons – including the one our illustrious former Illinois Governor now calls home.
At 83 and sunny, we decided to spend a bit of time at the Royal Gorge state park and bridge (one of the tallest suspension bridges in the state? US? World? ). We started by taking a gondola across the gorge – almost 1,000 feet above the river and got a fantastic look at the bridge. On the other side, we did a short hike, watched people fly around on some ridiculous sling shot over the gorge, saw some white buffalos and then walked back over the gorge on the bridge.
The bridge itself? Pretty cool – mostly for walking, but an occasional car would share the “road”, which consisted of a bunch of 2x12s laid side by side for 1/4 mile - creaky and crumbling – awesome in high wind! Got to the other side in one piece and took a “tram” down to the bottom of the gorge. The tram was some bizarro set of 8 or so cages all linked together. We all stood in these cages while this contracption, seemingly built circa 1930 took us 1,000 feet to the bottom of the gorge. We looked at the river. Oh, cool. And went back up.
Driving on the secondary highways in SW Colorado is just awesome! I mentioned it was 83 degrees, but as we were driving, there was still snow on the ground in shaded areas. Scenery is just so spectacular – and as proof, Tyler actually looked out the window at one point and said “wow – this is so cool”. Now we did have to enter a no cell service area to get that wow – but totally worth it. It warmed my heart to look in the back bedroom and see Tyler on the bed, looking out the window for several hours.
Drove a few hours through Gunnison and next to the amazing Blue Mesa Reservoir – see photos. The family had to (and will continue to have to) listen to me point out every mile I biked, every hill I climbed, every town I slept in, and as Lauren pointed out, every place I had to go to the bathroom, when I did the Bicycle Tour of Colorado 10 (gasp) years ago, since we are covering about half that route.
Got to Black Canyon of the Gunnison around 7pm just in time to catch a few peaks at another gorge before the sun went down. We were quite possibly the only people in the park at the time and pulled into a visitor area and made another awesome RV dinner affectionaly known as raccoon guts (skewered flank steak that stays curly when de-skewered). It gets pretty dark in an empty park at the top of a mountain and discussions of zombies (a running theme with this family) started. That got us moving pretty quickly out of there!
And now for the title of today’s blog entry… as we were driving out of the park, Damon and I spotted a single deer in our headlights. We yelled to the kids to look out the window at the deer and noticed what was arguably somewhere between 50 (Damon’s estimate) and a billion (my estimate) deer in a field next to us. It was pitch black outside and we were hanging out the windows with flashlights. The lights caught hundreds of glowing eyes – it was pretty awesome!
It is about 10pm and we are still driving trying to find a place to camp tonight – hoping a park we have our eye on is open for the season. Failed to check that 90% of RV parks do not open until mid-April/May. Oops. More spontaneity!
Quote of the day:
Damon – Oh haRVey! I didn’t know you had it in you! (as we hit the top of Monarch pass at 11,312 feet)
Scare of the day:
Tyler – DOOR!!!!! (when the RV door flew open as we were on a hairpin turn on our way to Royal Gorge). Needless to say, with every passing day, we add at least one thing to our checklist. Close door. Check.
Just got pictures up: 2012 03 RV Trip
No comments:
Post a Comment