We have been gone a month today and I haven't even started my blog. Not sure why, I have been very lazy, just relaxing and sightseeing. I will now try to catch up. We have gone over 2200 miles, been alot of places and seen alot of beautiful scenery.
We left Aug. 30th. We had had a stressful year taking care of my folks, but they were doing great, so we decided to take a SHORT vacation. We would be gone 4-6 weeks, go back and leave again about the end of Nov. Plans changed. We lost the house sitter we have had for the past 2 seasons, so thought we had to leave the house empty. A few days before we left, we got a new house sitter. Duane, our new next door neighbor, knew somebody that might be interested. We met Kevin and everything fell into place. We really like and trust Duane, so we feel the same about Kevin. Kevin and Duane are good friends and both are Seattle cops. He will do all the maintenance, mowing the lawn, blowing leaves, cleaning the gutters etc. We then decided to come back just for a few weeks and then leave again. Plans changed again! We decided to not come back until May. We want to be back for Elissa's (our granddaughter) birthday. It cost us $500 in diesel to get to Colorado. It would have taken us another $500 to get back and another $500 to get back down to So.Ca/AZ. We decided we could use the $1000 to have more fun, not just for diesel.
When we got to Utah, the weather got very HOT. When we stopped in Brigham City, Utah, it was 98 degrees. YIKES! A very strange thing happened. As many of you know, Denny never wears shorts or sandals anymore. Used too, but not for many years. The week before we left, we went to the beach at Golden Gardens. It was 85 degrees and Denny still wore his Levi's, shoes and socks. He said he wasn't hot. The first thing he did, after hooking up, was put on some shorts. I was shocked. I almost didn't bring any because he hasn't worn them for so long. I put some in just in case. He even asked for a tank top, but I put those in the Goodwill a long time ago. Since then he has worn them several times. Will wonders never cease?
Had one close call in Idaho. I am the navigator and usually do a good job. Not this time, I failed! We were on the freeway, close to Boise. I had him in the wrong lane. We almost made a turn into Boise. Because of Denny's skill at driving and good brakes, he was able to avoid going the wrong way. Couple more feet and we would have been committed. With an RV as big as ours, it isn't the easiest thing to turn around, especially when you are in a big city. WHEW! I better be more careful. Denny might want to find a new navigator if I keep that up!
Had another very strange thing happen. In the mountains of Southern Utah, there was a VERY LOUD boom. It sounded like it was below my feet. Scared us. We certainly don't want anything to go wrong with the truck. Denny thought we might have lost our PAC brake. We did, but that wasn't the boom. When we got to our camp for the night, Denny looked under the truck. The spring that holds the hood up had popped off. It was still there, but not connected. Strange. When we got to Gunnison, he took it to a garage. He didn't have the tool to fix it. They worked on it for 1/2 hour and never charged us anything. They said they had never seen anything like that ever happen. BUT, no charge. We were quite shocked.
Our first goal was Gunnison, Colorado. We have bought into Western Horizon's Campgrounds and this was our home park. We never thought we'd go there because we usually don't leave until Nov. It closes Oct 30th because of bad weather.
This view of the Blue Mesa Reservoir is from our park. Blue Mesa is the largest lake in Colorado. It is 20 miles long
More catching up later.......bye for now
