Back to Colorado

Since our Murphy visit we have arrived back in Colorado, right now in Carbondale, leaving for Montrose this morning, then after the holiday weekend we will make our way to Durango for our 5 week stay.  This is a bit of a transition for us, as you know we don't normally hang around one place for an extended time, but Durango is special to us, and so, of course is Florida for the winter.  This time we have an appointment to get our battered truck fixed as well.

Even with our project in Dubois, WY, we did have a good time.  The campground, Longhorn Ranch, was an unexpected pleasure.  We were in one site far away from everyone else, huge and right on the Wind River.  Once again we had planned to fish, but with our cooler replacement, and finding we were there at the wrong time to fish, the water was still very warm, we didn't wet a line.  But we learned our lesson hanging around each day waiting for the AC in Buena Vista, so this time while the cooler was being shipped we went up to Brooks Lake, which was recommended to us by our fisherman friend on the Madison.  It wasn't too far, about 25 miles or so, and was very beautiful surrounded by mountains and meadows filled with wildflowers.  We took a picnic and had a lovely lunch overlooking the lake.

Beautiful spot

Very pretty

We noticed a trail that seemed to go around the lake so off we went.  Well, it turned out the trail was part of the Continental Divide Trail, and did not go around the lake, but we took it a mile or so, watching carefully for bears.  There were signs everywhere as it is quite remote and with the high foliage reminded us of the many "beary" spots we saw in Alaska.

Wildflowers abounded!

It was beautiful even in the rain that poured down for about 15 minutes

We had a chance to go in and walk around the quaint western town that is Dubois, and had a great lunch at the very busy Cowboy Cafe.

Then we headed south to an overnight stop in Vernal, UT at the KOA, at first a bit timidly as we worried about our cooler repair, but all was and is well with that. After our quick stop we continued on to Carbondale, CO.  One thing we noticed and tried not to dwell on was how absolutely lucky we were to have had our cooler fiasco happen where and when it did.  Let me tell you, on this entire route to Carbondale which is about 500 miles, at least 450 is absolutely in the middle of nothing with no cell phone coverage, must be that clean living:-)

Interesting views

Pretty desolate

The coach at an overlook

Our route took us over the dam at Flaming Gorge on a side of the lake we had never been on before.  Pretty interesting, but the photos are not real great as the rains came down as we got near the dam.

Rain showers as we get closer to Flaming Gorge

Crossing the dam

Looking back down at the lake

So with our cooler, then jack fluid, then generator slide out, we came to our exit off I-70 in Glenwood Springs, a route we had taken before.  There were many construction signs and lane changes and closures which we watched carefully to see if any of it impacted our travel.  Seeing nothing, we exited and immediately the road narrowed down between jersey barriers and a sharp curb that I honestly did not think we could fit through!  I am so careful with our tires not to ever curb them, I felt that unless we could turn around, NOT POSSIBLE, I had to at least curb the tires if not rub against the barriers.  With 10 or so cars behind us and nowhere else to go we proceeded oh so slowly and miracles of miracles I did not hit the barriers or even curb the tires, but we weren't done.  The construction cones were so narrow as they led us up and through an intersection, and then up to the bridge where we cross the Roaring Fork, and WHAT, the bridge isn't there, ROAD CLOSED!  Now we are in traffic, in downtown, narrow streets, people and cars everywhere, now what?  I make a turn away from the bridge, can't make a U-turn, too tight, so head up a cross street that heads right up the mountain, and stop.  We make a plan that involves us heading up the mountain and making a very tight turn to somehow get back onto the interstate.  We had to raise the rig to make this off camber turn, and then see ahead, "NO LEFT TURN".  That's the way we have to go!  The hell with it, we turn anyway, get back down to the construction, make our way through another extraordinarily tight lane and finally get back on the interstate going back the way we came to exit at an earlier exit that we think will get us across the river and down to Carbondale.  We do that through more construction, both of us pissed, and can't believe there were no signs!  We really think we must have missed them.  Well we get to the KOA, and tell our story when we check in and find out the owner was up the interstate earlier today and she was amazed there were no signs either, she even called the Colorado DOT to report it!  So we weren't crazy.

So we spent several days here trying to fish, well actually fishing, just not catching:-)  We fished in the beautiful and famous Frying Pan and also the very pretty but warm Crystal River that was just a walk from our campsite.  We had a good time, but no fish.

The beautiful Frying Pan

Picturesque Crystal River

A view of Mt Sopris on a walking trail right beside the campground

Murphy comes to visit

I guess inadvertently Jan and I were getting a little smug after our ordeal with the AC unit.  We were just cruising around enjoying life and not giving Murphy his appropriate due.  It's been about 6 weeks since the AC replacement.  So as we were driving from West Yellowstone to Dubois, WY, we were pulling a pretty good sized pass and saw a scenic overlook.  We pulled in to take a look marveling at the fact we had finally left the smoke behind, read a few info signs and as we are walking back to the coach by the side of the truck we notice it is covered in some kind of liquid!  Oh my, and so is the left rear of the motorhome, all over the louvers for the radiator stack, and oh man, dripping out of the bottom of the coach.  We open the engine compartment and it is all wet as well.  NOT GOOD.

At least we are off the road in a safe place, except we are in the middle of nowhere, 35 miles to Dubois, which is a town of less than a thousand, and with no cell service.  So the diesel mechanic and I get changed into some work clothes, raise the rear of the coach and crawl under and around to try to find the leak which I thought at first was coolant but now realize is ATF, automatic transmission fluid, which is what our hydraulic system uses to run the cooling fan and power steering pump.  

We can't find the leak.  It is made more difficult by the fact everything is pretty much covered with fluid, so we decide finally after much wiping, poking, and peering that the only way to find it is to start it.  So we do.........and nothing happens.  Huh?  We look at each other and decide we will try to drive it to the campground in Dubois and see what gives.  So we tentatively make our way down the road, constantly watching all the gauges for any sign of abnormality, and pull into The Longhorn Ranch, our campground for the next 4 days.  Jan goes in to check in and I go out to see how the leak looks, leaving it run. It is basically dry, a few drips but nothing of consequence??  So when the rig in front of us moves, I move our coach forward and then since it is taking some time for Jan to come out, I shut it off.  She says we need to unhook the truck, so when we walk back to do so, now we have what looks like several quarts leaking out!  We are tipped a little and wonder if that might be having an effect.  We get unhooked, move to our site, dump a ton of cat litter on the puddle, and start to look to see if there are any mechanics or repair people around.  It is 5pm by now, so we just wait until the next day to pursue it any further.

We find a truck towing/repair service in town that also advertises working on RV's, so I figure I'll go and ask if they can come and take a look.  They are very nice and obviously tell me they would be happy to come take a look, but it would be much later in the day if then.  Okay, well we aren't going to just hang out to wait.  So diesel mechanic, Jan and I tear into it, and oh by the way, it has hardly leaked at all overnight.

Hard to see in this picture,
but the whole thing is covered in ATF

This gives you a better idea of how dirty it is

I should mention a few things, first of all, the campground is very sympathetic and offers help if we need it, many places won't let you work on your rig at all, and where we are is away from everyone else, it's really a prime site, so we have lots of room, it is Wednesday so we have a few days before the weekend, and we don't have to be anywhere for 4 days. We start by crawling around looking for a leak and since we still can't find it remove the louver covers to see what's what.  This is a stacked assembly with the engine radiator on top, hydraulic cooler underneath, with the CAC, transmission cooler, etc, behind.  Well, do we find a mess, ATF everywhere, and it looks like the culprit is the hydraulic cooler itself.

The engine radiator is on top, the hydraulic cooler on the bottom

And man is it leaking

Now there is a company in Oregon, Source Engineering that is known for producing radiators, coolers, CAC's, suspension parts for Monaco coaches.  I put in a call to Jim and send some pictures and see if he might have one of these.  Meanwhile I drive back to the towing company to let them know we now know the problem.  They are very nice and offer to come by later and see what's up.  

We have also figured out why we had the huge leak when we checked in.  There is kind of a tray under the stack that can probably hold a gallon or so of liquid, and when we tipped a bit after I moved the coach, it just spilled out.  In a few minutes I get an email back from Source to say they have one in stock at over $1400 !  We are kind of stuck and we tell each other we are saving a bunch of money cause we are going to replace it ourselves.  We get Source to overnight ship it, another $200, but what choice do we have, and then I go back to the towing company and tell them we are all set, it's only a 1 1/2 miles away.

So how to tackle it?  And what do we do with the mess?  And what do we do with the bad cooler?  We decide to sacrifice a blue tarp we have, fill it up with floor dry to absorb the ATF and dispose of it that way.  The campground has a guy that wants the aluminum cooler so we are all set.  We go buy floor dry, a couple corks to plug the lines, 4 gallons of ATF, and a 1 1/4" wrench since we are told the fittings will be a bear to get loose, turned out they were a piece of cake.  And then we wait, since we can't go any further without making a huge mess and most importantly we want to be absolutely sure the new one is the right one.

Now just to add insult (and more Murphy) to the mix, we had moved the driver side bedroom slide in to make access easier, so after our evaluation we went to move the slide back out and nothing!  We could hear the motor run, it's our only electric slide, the others are hydraulic.  So another project right now.  

Luckily it was a simple problem, the gear that runs along a track had lost its locking bolt and just had to be realigned and tightened, now access to it is another issue:-)  But together we managed to get it in, aligned, and "Bill" tightened.

Jan getting it aligned

Problem solved, at least for the slide.  We went out exploring and hiking instead of hanging around waiting for the cooler, it will be another post.  It arrived around 1:30pm, we had decided between us that 2pm would be our cutoff time to start the project, so we started!

The new correct cooler!

It was truly a mess.  We got our tarp arranged, but when the fittings come off, the ATF pours out, and the cooler is full as well.  But we contained it and the corks really worked.

Yes, a mess

The cork in the fitting

Now when we got the old one out, we were presented with another huge mess.  Our coach is 10 years old, so between the cooler and the CAC, which can't be seen or gotten to, had accumulated leaves, dirt, sticks, all made worse by the ATF leaking, it's a wonder it cooled adequately.

What a mess!

So we picked it clean, then Simple Green'ed it 3 or 4 times and cleaned it up the best we could before we installed the new cooler.

Even more mess

But we got it in and replenished the ATF, ran it for awhile, it's self bleeding, then added more ATF, checked for leaks, and pronounced it fixed!!

Shiny and new!

All done

But Murphy was not done with us!  We have both hydraulic jacks for leveling as well as air.  Primarily we use air, but whenever we are going to be under the coach for a few minutes we use both, so the next morning as we are getting ready to go, we raised the jacks, but continued to get a buzzer saying the jacks weren't up.  We checked and confirmed they were so that buzzer also means you are low on fluid.  No problem we'll just add some.  Now the reservoir for the jacks is up front, so you need to run out the generator to access it.  We push the switch to move the genny and .......nothing!  We want to add fluid so we don't have to listen to the buzzer for the next 300 miles, but you cannot, even Jan can't fit, service the reservoir with the genny not out, so, we decide to just listen to the buzzer and worry about the generator slide later.  It did finally stop by the way.  Then not to be outdone, Murphy struck one more time.  We arrived at our new campground in Carbondale, CO and decided to put out our rear patio awning to block the sun.  We had our cocktails and then press the remote to retract the awning and nothing!  Changed batteries, pressed the electric over ride, nothing, so I had to go up on the roof and manually retract it with an electric drill:-)  We will worry about that later as well.  So now we are going fishing and I'll catch up with our other, non repair travels later.

Wow, another week has flown by!

We went to a new place for us, Henry's Lake State Park in Island Park, ID, just 17 miles southwest of West Yellowstone.  I have mentioned our love-hate relationship with state or national parks.  Usually the sites are larger with more space, but they are overrun with kids or partiers, loud, busy, especially on the weekends.  Now don't get all upset, it's not that we don't like kids or families enjoying themselves, it's just the two of us much more prefer quiet, darkness, and calm where we stay.  Well, Henry's Lake SP was wonderful!  It is all paved, including the sites which are enormous.  There is tons of space between, killer views, lots of walking, and right on the lake.  There are only 8 full hookup sites with electric, 50 amp, water, and sewer, but most of the others have water and electric.  A majority of the sites are huge and can easily accommodate our 45' and the truck, no problem.  It is peaceful, and large enough that even with the kids, families, partiers, it is great, we highly recommend it.

The view right from our campsite

And near sunset

It also gave us a great jumping off spot to go fishing, some more, on a different spot on the Madison, drop in to see some friends of relatives in a remote lodge on Cliff Lake, pop into West Yellowstone, and to do some exploring of the area.  The smoke had moved out for a few days, but returned with a vengeance.  This is from the very bad fires near Missoula, about 200 miles away!

So first, we went to visit a friend of one of Jan's cousins and her husband in Pennsylvania who operate a lodge on a beautiful remote lake, Cliff Lake.  The color is amazing!

Yeah, that's the real color

Then we went to scope out the fishing on the upper Madison.  There are several access points, so we went into one that has a good reputation and ended up having a delightful conversation with an older gentleman that has been fishing all over the west that lives in Colorado, in fact we spent over an hour talking to him.

Checking out the Madison 

After that we went over to a local fly shop, bought some streamers and they told us things were pretty slow right now with the warm water temps, yeah tell us something we don't know:-)  

The smoke had moved out quite a bit for a change so we took a ride to Red Rock Lakes Wildlife Refuge west of Henry's Lake, to see what we could see.  It is famous for its trumpeter swans.  It turned out to be a 150 mile loop on rough dirt roads, but remote and beautiful.  We saw some swans but they were pretty far off.

View west of Henry's Lake

Our coffee spot in the refuge

Later we did a loop around and through West Yellowstone that was packed with folks getting ready for the eclipse and up by Hebgen Lake, then by Quake Lake, the lake formed by the catastrophic earthquake in 1959 that caused a slide that blocked the Madison River and flooded the area forming the lake.  It killed 28 people that were camping along the river and Hebgen Lake.  It is an eerie setting as the trees still poke out of the water all over the lake.  Then we continued around back to our campground.

Our coffee spot on beautiful Hebgen Lake

We had heard the fishing was a bit better in the river between the lakes, Hebgen and Quake so we gave it a try.  No luck although the scenery was absolutely killer on a beautiful day!

The Madison River between the lakes 

Me working it

No fish, but man it was gorgeous

We ended up fishing there 2 mornings with only a few bites.  
We finished our time at Henry's Lake and moved all 17 miles over to one of our favorite campgrounds, Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone.  It is a large, well run, manicured, easy to maneuver, large sites, lots of grass and all paved roads, although fairly expensive.   And you can walk right into town, which we did to do a little shopping and to get our picnic breakfast and lunch stuff for the next day in the park.  We only had one day to go and it was eclipse day.  Now don't hate us for this, but neither Jan and I were very hyped on the eclipse so we did the park instead.  We wanted to scope it out again specifically for fishing next year when we come back.

We went to Lamar Valley first for sunrise and breakfast, a mere 72 miles.  Then after heading up to the eastern end of the valley we encountered a black bear crossing the highway with a few onlookers.

Coming through

On up the hill and out of view

We wanted to look over Slough Creek, we had been there many times before watching wolves, but never to evaluate it for fishing, though we had heard it was good.  The park has miles and miles of fishing opportunities, and requires its own license to fish.

Well Slough Creek looked spectacular.  Wadable, fishy, and beautiful!

Peaceful and fishy

Not a very good photo, but you get the idea

A Cutthroat feeding

We had a nice picnic lunch overlooking the creek during the eclipse, and wow, we had the park to ourselves.  I guess everyone was elsewhere watching.

Some bison crossing the creek during our picnic

A prime looking bull, rut is right around the corner 

We had a wonderful time in the park, we always do, and it was especially great with so few other people.  We even checked the Madison out on our way back to West Yellowstone.

What a day!

So now we are in Dubois, WY and have had quite an experience I'll share in my next post getting here.  We hope to do some exploring here, then we will head farther south finally into Colorado.

Whole lot of fishing, not a whole lot of fish.

When we decided to make this year all about fishing, several famous trout waters came to mind, Yellowstone, North Platte, Gallatin, and of course the Madison.  These are rivers that according to history are what dreams are made of for fly fishing trout fishermen.  Being new to all this, we were not completely clear on exactly what the primo times of the year are for each one.  We hit the North Platte just a little late, but still did well.  We hit the Yellowstone a bit early as the water was still high and we almost missed our float there due to muddy water, and as it turns out we hit the Madison a bit off schedule as well.  We are now in a little town called Ennis that is centered on fly fishermen.  It is a really cute place with bars and restaurants, shops, etc, and 3 fly shops.  Its population is 890!  But understand the Madison runs right through it, there are probably 5-6 river access points within 5 miles, and a plethora of fly fishing guides and outfitters.  

Some cool sculptures in town

Everyone here talks about fishing, the very nice campground we are in, Ennis RV Park is filled with fishermen, almost everyone that stops in, is here to fish the famous Madison.  In fact many of them are here from when the park opens in April until they close in October.  To fish.  It is very cool.

A shot of the river with 2 sandhills flying over

Look close and you can see how clear the water is

Heading into the river

I don't want to bore all you non-fishing folks, but trout for the most part are voracious eaters, but very temperature dependent.  And their fare varies as the year progresses.  If the water warms up a lot, think late summer, they get a bit lethargic and don't eat much. The converse is also true, very cold water slows things down also, but you need to remember they do still eat.  In spring and early summer there are different "hatches" of aquatic insects coming off the water, these are their smorgasbord.  These insects, mayflies and caddis for the most part, are completing their life cycle of going from a nymph, a creepy crawly guy from under and on top of the rocks in the water, go up to the surface and emerge as a flying insect to mate and die to start the whole cycle over again. Trout feed on these throughout their cycle, but when the hatches occur they are moving and presenting themselves and the trout love it.  You as a fly fisherman can fish with flies that imitate these insects at different times in their struggle to make it into the air.  You can fish nymphs down deep in the water, as we did on the North Platte, or as dry flies which float on the surface imitating the insects as they ready and dry to make that flight off the water.  As the season progresses through late summer and into fall, there are fewer hatches, so the trout, when the water is cool, move on to terrestrials, such as grasshoppers, ants, etc, huge trout will even eat mice!  

Even the art work is about fly fishing!

So right now on the Madison things are a little slow as the transition from hatches to terrestrials with warm water especially in the afternoon have slowed things down somewhat.  Jan and I have hit it hard, but other than having one fish on the line, and several bites, we have not been successful, as have most of the other anglers we meet.  One advantage to this is as things slow down here before it makes its resurgence later in the fall, is there are very few fisherman.  You almost have this big beautiful river all to yourselves, this is one of the most heavily fished rivers in the US, and that also makes the fish extremely wary and if they've been around for awhile pretty damn smart about what they eat.  Also as I mentioned before it is fire season out here and the smoke has been thick.  This is the reason we have very few pictures right now, the scenery here is fantastic, if we could actually see it:-)  

We also got an opportunity to wade a little different than we had before, with the warm temps, it's mostly in the 80's during the day, and the warm water, relatively speaking, it makes wading in our waders pretty warm.  And we noticed that the majority of the fishermen we saw were fishing in shorts.  But the river bottom is covered with rounded rocks that are slippery and the current is swift so you really need your wading boots.  So we got some neoprene booties that take up the thickness of your waders, so you can still wear your boots and your shorts!

We have just had several days of rain showers which have helped get rid of some of the smoke.  It was a welcome relief.  So now we can see again!

Rain showers all around

The excellent view right from our campground!

This is our last day here, but we have already decided we will be back next year.  We'll try to hit the timing a little better and we want to do a float trip here.  The campground is nice, as I said, large sites, plenty of room, close to the water and town, and we just found a very good meat market that is a local legend, Deemo's Meats with great selection and dynamite home made jerky!