WILDERNESS LAKES, MENIFEE, CA

Nov, 30, 2016

This is our first destination park of our travels. We have been coming here for many years, but we got the best site we have ever had. There are canals that go thru the park, so several sites back up to the water.  Three of the four times we have been here have been on the canal, but never as nice as this one.  Our site is on a corner, so no one is beside us. Also we got to back up further than usual, so we don't even see our neighbors. Every window has a view of the water.  The previous people had just left, our lucky day. We walk around to find a good site, then I wait there while he gets the RV. Several people stopped to ask if we were taking it, felt very lucky. All of these pictures were taken from our chairs outside . They stock the canals with birds, ducks and fish. Can't resist taking pictures of all the different birds and ducks. Sorry

The bikes  on the left are ours on the back of the RV

Denny in our chairs, relaxing after our first bike ride.

As I said before, we went on our first bike ride.  I have seen a lot of the Tiny Shows on HGTV, but never saw one in person, but saw it on our bike ride. Would love to see the inside

ON TO WYOMING

July 9, 2016

On an earlier post, I mentioned that to get Denny to agree to this trip, I added a spot that I knew he wanted to go to. This was the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.  We had been there in 1975 and Denny always wanted to go back.  We spent 4 days there.  My shock came when I wanted to reserve a campground. When we go places, we like to get as close as possible plus we like our amenities, meaning full hookups of power, water and electric.  There was only one in Jackson, but it was $92 a night. WOW!!! have never paid that much before, but as they say in real estate, LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.  There were places further away, but didn't want to spend our time and diesel getting there. When I was  first quoted that, I thought they were thinking  I wanted the adjacent hotel, but no, it was for the campground. For that price, we expected something very nice, but, again, no.  It was okay, but far from what we expected.
 When we left and got to our next campground in Idaho, we met some people that also had stayed there.  We all had a laugh about how bad it was for $92.  The campground in Idaho was 100% nicer and MUCH cheaper. 

I was actually a little disappointed in the park.  You know sometimes when you remember things, they are nicer than they really are?  Well, that was the case here. You can't really get close to the mountains, you just drive around in a big valley looking at them from a distance. Not nearly as spectacular as other national Parks. It  does have one unique fact. It is the only mountain range that actually grows. Every year it grows an inch.  I, of course, geocached along the way.

Beautiful Jenny Lake

This is a resort on Colter Bay, didn't expect to find this

This was a Virtual geocache. You take a picture of a certain place and log it to get credit. This is the only kind allowed in National Parks.  There are no containers that  you sign a log.



After visiting the park, we went to Teton Village, a ski area. Nice, but doesn't have the hills like our area. Very expensive place to ski. It is a big destination area with hotels, condos, restaurants and shopping

After 4 days, we started for home. Made a HUGE mistake. We bought a RV GPS this year. It is geared for RVs and tells you if a road isn't good for  it.  I looked on the map and decided it would be nice to take a different way out. The road looked good in the beginning. Our GPS told us it wasn't rated for RVs, but it looked good to us. MISTAKE !!!!!!!!   As soon as we  decided to go for it. it became steep and very curvy. Hills are rated for steepness, grade 6 is about the steepest you want to go on in an RV. This was rated as a 10,  no place  for us to turn around. Denny said it was the most stressful, scariest road that he has ever driven on. At the top, we had to stop because our transmission was overheated.

We definitely learned from now on to trust our RV GPS!!!


We were gone a month. Never have traveled in the summer,  it was a nice change since we didn't travel last winter

SHORT ROAD TRIP TO COLORADO

JULY 2016

We took a short road trip in the RV in July, 2016.  Our friends, Kim and Al, full timers, spend the summer in Southern Colorado.  They are also avid geocachers. They were going to a big geocaching event at Littleton, CO and wanted us to come. I knew I could never get Denny to go all that way for a weekend, so I planned a month long adventure. I included a place he had been wanting to go to for a long time as an extra incentive. To my amazement, he agreed right away. Could have blown me over with a feather, I was shocked. The reason he agreed so quickly  is that he thought it would be a good 70th birthday  present for me.  I had given him a 75th birthday party the year before.  He thought he should do something for my 70th, but he would have no idea how  to plan a party, so when I brought this trip up, he jumped on it. I would rather have a month long road trip than a party anytime.

The first scary thing that happened is that we had a  tire blowout  going down the road at 60MPH.   It happened on I-82 outside of Prosser, WA.  The road was pretty rough, but we thought it was because they had grooves in the pavement, but we didn't remember being quite so rough. When we got past it, the tire blew. Luckily there was a big enough space to pull over. The tire was toast. Denny put on the spare and we went to Costco to get a new one. The luckiest thing is that there was actually a big enough space in the parking lot to pull over our rig.  They gave us a new one and we were on the road again. It only put us back 1.5 hrs, so we felt lucky.

We left June 26th and got to Montrose, CO. on June 30th. We visited for a day and left for Littleton, CO.  on Friday.  The mega event was held Saturday. Had a lot of fun meeting fellow cachers. Even saw some cachers I knew from Seattle. People come from all over the world to go to these mega events.

On the way there, we stopped at Pikes Peak. We had never been there. It is over 14,000 ft. It was quite the road up there. It is a paved, but very curvy and steep with lots of switchback turns. The scariest thing is that there are  no guardrails. YIKES!!

 It was very cloudy so we didn't really get to see much at the top. Only on the way down did the clouds dissipate enough to see, but really no safe place to pull over for pictures.  Denny took this picture of my friend Kim and I finding a geocache. If it looks like I'm clinging to the rock for dear life, I was. It was very steep.

After the event, we went back down to Montrose for another week.  Kim and Al do LOTS of off-road 4x4 trails. They asked us if we were afraid of heights and we said no. Didn't realize why they asked us that. We went offloading 3 times. Very scary, but exciting. Off roading in the Colorado Rockies is quite the adventure. We went directly over the top of mountains, all above 12,000'.  We were above the snow and tree line. We can cross it off our bucket list,  eventho it was never really  on it. Ha. The trails are very narrow. If you have a 4X4 coming the other way, you both have to get over to the edges as far as possible.  If you are on the outside, it is very scary because the  drops are steep at 100-500' down.  Sometimes we came within inches of the edge.😱  Pictures can't really do it justice, but here are a few.  In the pictures, the roads look a lot wider than they really are.