Cheyenne, Wyoming

Saturday morning we drove into Frontier Park for the 50^th anniversary of the Lazy Daze Caravan Club. Much to our surprise, the registration and parking was so smooth that we were parked and saying hello to old friends within 30 minutes. Best organization we have seen in our RV travels!

We are also making new friends. There are Lazy Dazers here from almost every state. We have talked with people from New York (where I was born) North Carolina, Virginia, Maine, Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Texas. The most interesting is the couple from Kona, Hawaii. They own two restaurants there but love to RV in their Lazy Daze. How? By keeping it in Washington state. There are 320 rigs in camp, with about half coming from southern California.

We had the first problem with our Lazy Daze while coming over the Rockies. The refrigerator works on propane while going down the road or in camp without 110V electricity. While going over one of the 10,000 foot passes, we stopped to take pictures and noticed that the refrigerator had shut down. It didn’t want to light up and kept recycling the ignition sequence. We attributed that to the high altitude and restarted it successfully when at lower altitude. We are dry camping here in Cheyenne, so are on propane. Then yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the unit had shut off again and it took 4 start cycles to get it going. That lasted until early this morning, when I noticed that it had gone out again. Thankfully Terry Joe, who is a backscratcher and camped next to us, is a refrigeration expert. He took the unit apart this morning and cleaned the gas jet, ignition wire and burner tube. It fired up right away after this. Thanks Terry!

Loveland, Colorado

We drove up US 285 on Thursday. It goes over three passes between 9000 and 10000 feet elevation. The interconnecting valleys are all at 8000 to 9000 feet and just beautiful. Most are high pastures, with horses and cows.

Then we dropped like a rock down to Denver, the mile high city. We picked up the freeways and headed north on I 25 to Loveland. We found an RV park on the Big Thompson River. We are under huge cottonwood trees, so no DSS reception tonight. We find that we are not watching much TV anyway. We are trying to get through the books we have. My next project is “Son of the Morning Star”, about Custer and the Little Big Horn. Ken Atkins lent it to me. The 130^th anniversary of the famous battle is in just 3 days. Too bad we can’t be there for the event.

Friday we drove to just south of Cheyenne and met friends from the Backscratchers tribe of the Lazy Daze nation.

Salida, Colorado

Salida, Colorado

We left Durango mid morning on Tuesday. This was the big push to get over the continental divide. So we disconnected the CRV from the RV and Pris drove the CRV. Wolf Creek Pass is 10,850 feet elevation with up to a 7% grade coming from the west. The Lazy Daze was working hard, in second gear and making 30-35 mph. But everything worked as it should, with no overheating. The air was very cool, in the 50s at the top. There were patches of snow at the pass, with lots of tourists playing in it.

We came down the hill with no adventures and stumbled on the small town of Salida. It has a quaint old town and has the Arkansas River flowing through it. We are staying in an RV park right on the river and were fortunate to get a site bordering the river. The river is about 100 feet wide here and is running pretty fast, with small rapids. There were a number of rafts and kayaks going by in the late afternoon. It was great sleeping with the rapids sounds last night. It was 47 Wednesday morning, the coldest yet.

I just finished “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck. It was given to me as a retirement gift from Phil & Sharon Garrison. It came with a bottle of JD, one of my favorite medicines. Thanks again, Phil & Sharon.

The book was interesting. Steinbeck did an around the country trip in a truck camper in 1960. He took the trip with his dog, Charlie, to reacquaint him with his country. He was near the end of his writing career then and felt he had lost touch with those people he had based so much of his earlier writings on. So much is still the same in our RV travels. Most of the people he talked to wanted to join him in traveling. We find the same thing. The people in the small towns were very friendly, and still are. He had a view of how our modern life created too much waste and was fouling our country.

However, much has changed. He pulled off the road most of the time and just camped in a nice place. That is hard to do now, the police roust you out. Today there are modern RV parks and national forest/park campgrounds that cater to RVers. His RV was primitive by today’s standards and it was not as pleasant as we have it today. There was no interstate highway system then. So travel was slower. It is interesting that we are avoiding the interstates as much as possible, because we want to see the country also. And then there was the last chapter in his book that described his attending a desegregation event at an elementary school in New Orleans and his disgust at the locals’ reaction to the happenings. I would like to think we have come a long ways to solving those problems in the last 46 years.

Steinbeck was finishing his career with that trip, which he started the day after Labor Day 1960. Pris and I were just starting our college lives then as in coming freshmen, me at the University of Florida and Pris at some girls’ school in Tallahassee. We had just completed orientation and were starting classes when he took the wheel of his RV.

Durango, Colorado

Saturday we left Monument Valley and headed east. We stopped at four corners so I could stand in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado at one time. We had to wait about 15 minutes for the crowd having their pictures taken.

Durango is very nice. It is at 7000 feet elevation, so it is cool at night and not too hot during the days. A beautiful river runs right by our campground and the town as well.

Sunday is maintenance day, including paying bills. All of the campgrounds we have been staying in have WiFi hotspots, so internet connection is easy. So far, so good!

The old Silverton railroad runs by the campground. It runs from Durango to Silverton and back, a few times a day.

We have had to change our plans for getting to Cheyenne, since some of these Colorado roads are made for mountain goats and not RVs! The passes are as high as 12,000 feet and the roads have hairpin curves, 8% grades and no road shoulders with vertical drop-offs of hundreds of feet.

Monument Valley, Utah

Thursday, June 14

We were lucky last night with the fire, there was virtually no smoke and no ash. The fire crews really knew what they were doing.

Thursday dawned with some clouds to the north east, just where we are heading. Got an easy start at 9:30 and headed out of Flagstaff up US 89. After about 40 miles, we entered the Navajo Indian reservation. It is the largest reservation in the US, covering 27,000 sq miles. It is mostly in Arizona, but also in Utah and New Mexico. The Navajo are also the most populous tribe in the country. We then turned east on US 160. The land here is high rolling plateau, at about 6,000 feet elevation. We started to see the beautiful buttes and mesas as we approached the town of Kayenta, which is just to the south of monument valley.

We arrived just after noon, it’s tough to have these long work days. This retirement is really hell! Got the coach set up and the Direct TV satellite acquired and then had a nice lunch.

This afternoon we drove around to see the basic sights. It's some very beautiful country.

Friday, June 16

We went on a tour of the valley this morning, narrated by a Navajo guide. This place is something. I took more pictures than I can ever use. Most of the valley does not have water, so the inhabitants have to truck in water. No electricity either. Most still live in hogans (the mud covered huts) in winter and under open lean-tos in the summer.

Flagstaff, Az

Well after one month, we are on the road! In that month, John detoxed from work, we moved Jeff and Damilya into our house and we got the motor home ready for the great journey.

We were worried about the heat in the desert, so decided to get an early start on our first day. Up at 2:30 AM! The coach was ready to go so we were on the road by 3. The sun came up behind some beautiful clouds about 5. We were heading east on I 40, east of Barstow by this time. It never got very hot, just about 85.

For our California friends, gas cost $2.87 a gallon at our first fill up. That’s 46 cents cheaper than when I filled up before the trip. At this rate, they will be paying us to gas up by the time we get to the east coast.

This was a long traveling day, just short of 500 miles. We generally want to take it easy and only go 100 to 200 miles a day. The idea is to see the country, not drive though it.

Our campground in Flagstaff is at 6713 feet elevation (so says my new GPS navigation software), so it is much cooler here than other places in Arizona. The sky is blue and the air is clear, just like LA.

We are still getting our house in order, there is junk everywhere. That will take us a few days.

Day 2 in Flagstaff dawned clear and windy. A low of about 65. Not as cold as expected. It was off to explore old town Flagstaff, which is quaint. Lots of micro-breweries, restaurants and nice stores. Then on to Wal-Mart for the things we forgot.

We then tried to get the coach organized and have come pretty close. Everything is in its place for now. We will see.

We went shopping about 4:30 and when we came out of the store we saw the monster fire that started 2 miles southwest of town. It was burning hot (black smoke) and was moving toward town.

When we got back to our campsite, which is about 4 miles northeast of town, we turned on the tv to see what was happening. It didn’t sound good. The wind was blowing at 25 mph, with gusts to 40. The humidity was just 5%. The forest service was very pessimistic, with these conditions. The fire threatened some sub-divisions and was going in the direction of the famous Lowell Observatory, which was about 2 miles away at the top of a ridge. That’s where Lowell looked for life on Mars and Pluto was discovered in 1920.

With our experience with fire in southern California, I thought the town was toast! But the fire crews really pulled this one off. Water drops and hot shot crews had it almost under control by sundown and the fire hadn’t advanced very far, inspite of the wind. By the time we went to bed, there was very little tv chatter at all about it.