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.