A Small Change of Plans

We left Heber City and headed south to Montrose, CO to another of our favorite campgrounds, Centennial.  We lucked out this time and got a site on an end with no one in front or beside us with an amazing view.

 

We are quite fond of Montrose and the surrounding area, Ridgway, Ouray, even Telluride are right down the road, Black Canyon of Gunnison is nearby, and Last Dollar Road.  But one of the first things we had to do was go to Gnarly Tacos in Ridgway for their amazing tacos!

Beans, they call them Whistleberries:-)
Ahi on the top and Korean BBQ on the bottom

Ahi, pork belly, and fish

Eclectic and delicious!

I related earlier of our travails with the cruise control, sometimes doesn't work, sometime works for a few minutes, and sometimes works for 300 miles?????  We replaced the controller, same results, so we decided to replace the clock spring, and like so many projects it was a 30 minute expectation that evolved into several days.  You have to pull the steering wheel to get to the clock spring, we had replaced it one time many years ago and had used a cheapo puller jury rigged with some angle bolts, but this time it wouldn't budge.

You can see the two angles in the hub, they just straightened out

So that found me looking around for a decent steering wheel puller, and after 3 auto parts stores followed up with a hardware store we finally got the wheel off.  By the way a clock spring is what allows you to turn the wheel and still operate lights, wipers, cruise etc, no matter where you turn it.  Pretty clever actually.

Inside the clock spring

The new in my hands, the old on the top of the column

But the bad news is, it didn't fix the problem, now what?  I'm trying to work on that now:-(

Enjoyed some beautiful sunsets.

Next was Last Dollar Road, a fairly famous drive through incredible mountains, forests, and fields starting just south of Ridgway and ending at Telluride, it is a fairly rough 4X4 road, but worth it, a real favorite of ours, especially in the fall.

Started it off with a shot of a house used in the filming of True Grit, with John Wayne.

It was a beautiful fall day with a touch of snow on the peaks.

And our view for coffee with snow showers over the peaks

Ha, then back for another round of tacos before our next ride.

A fish and a shrimp

2 fish and a chicken

This time we went up over Owl Creek Pass, 10,114', then by Silver Jack Reservoir, almost empty, over to Cimarron, then had coffee overlooking some of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

Jan took this picture, Black Canyon terrifies me, it is so deep, 2,722', and so steep and sheer, so I do everything I can do to stay away from it, but if heights don't bother you it is amazing:-)

As for the slight change of plans.  We had planned after Montrose to go to our "secret boon docking" spot near Clear Creek Falls, unfortunately there has been huge flooding that closed Wolf Creek Pass, and parts of Pagosa Springs so our route from our spot to our next stop in Durango was impacted, and also the forecast of highs in the low 40's and lows in the 20's didn't seem all that inviting, so the two situations changed our route to go directly to Durango where we are now.

A Touch of Winter

We're finishing up a nice week here in Heber City, UT over the mountain from Salt Lake City and Park City.  We are in one of our favorite parks, Mountain Valley with virtually no neighbors:-)  This is a large park, all paved roads, large premium sites, all concrete at least 80' by 30', privacy hedges, and entire parts of the park are adult only, with views in every direction.

One of the first things we did when we got here was head over the mountain to go to one of our all time favorite Vietnamese restaurants, Oh Mai, a small place that has grown to 7 locations after being featured on Triple D, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.  First banh mi's, we each got a different one and shared, a garlic rib eye and a pork belly.

They were awesome!  Then on the way back we drove up to the top of Park City and dropped back down into Heber City.  Beautiful views and fall foliage.

The next evening and night we were hit with major storms to include hail along with torrential rain.  The next morning we woke up to this.

Hello winter

We took a nice ride through some mountains north of Heber City.

Finished it up having coffee beside Strawberry Reservoir.

Then we quietly celebrated our 52nd Anniversary with a nice bourbon, Weller 12 and a special Crown Royal and I made shrimp and grits for dinner.

Then we just had to go back to Oh Mai, this time for pho, yummy on a cool day.

We ran some errands, Costco, grocery store, then wanted to drive back over the mountain through Sundance on Hwy 92, a narrow 1 1/2 lane, windy, pretty drive.  And it was, although there was more traffic than we expected, and surprising, at least to us, our experience had been  that 95% of the traffic goes west to east, so it flows really well around the hundreds of very tight corners, well this day it seemed we were in the minority going that direction, making it not quite as enjoyable as usual, somehow dodging cars in the middle of blind curves just wasn't wonderful:-)

As we climbed up above Salt Lake City to start our route and then started down, we got to talking about a place we had been to many, many years ago with, in our memory amazing french fries, but we couldn't remember its name.

Then as we drove through a busy congested area we both looked over and saw Cubby's, and asked each other, "Was that the place?"  Jan looked it up quick and confirmed it so, of course, we had to turn around and get an order of fries, and yes, they are still delicious!

The views were great, especially with coating of snow here and there.

We stopped for coffee on the way back at Deer Creek Reservoir, pretty low.

Try to ignore our filthy window:-)

One more day here, more errands, flu shots, then on to Colorado tomorrow.  This was our  morning surprise.

Oh Ennis, Such a Disappointment!

We had such anticipation heading down the road for Ennis, we have been going there for 7 or 8 years and always looked forward to it.  Even though we weren't fishing this year we were still looking forward to getting into our site with its incredible views, and enjoying the peace and quiet, and darkness of the RV park.  Since we were there last the park was sold to another company and we wondered what might change.  First off the reception in the office checking in was dismal, not a hello, smile, nothing, just handed a list of rules and off we went to our site.  The first thing we notice is there is now a house sitting on what used to be several of the primo view sites, and next to it are 2 5th wheels in sites that are supposedly pull-ins, with a wooden fence surrounding one of them.  Then as we turn into our site we notice the site next to us looks like a garbage dump, there is a utility trailer backed in, then a class C with stuff and crap piled everywhere, an absolute abomination.  As we get settled in, we also notice that the area in front of the sites, where the view is looks like it hasn't be trimmed back, maybe ever.  It always been a bit rough but nothing like this, and then the barking dogs.  Well, they never stopped barking for the next 4 hours, we saw they were on runners inside the fence where the fifth wheel was parked.  Going crazy we decided to look over the new rules, we had intended to wash our rig while there, we always were allowed to in the past, but no, no washing of RV's or vehicles allowed.  Then you are warned to be sure your site doesn't have any storage bins or stuff piled around or under your rig, the penalty, eviction.  No dogs may be tied out unless the owner is with them, no barking dogs will be tolerated, etc.  We had booked a whole week, and when this cacophony didn't let up for hours and hours, we decided then and there we would leave early, a real pain as there are no refunds for that.  We were only able to shorten our stay by 2 days, and we were really glad of that because in the next several days after we would get back from being away most of the day, the barking dogs were waiting and barking and even joined in with another tied dog at the next fifth wheel.  Amazingly, the ones inside the fence barking all day and left alone belong to the office staff!  And the one next door was a staff member as well!  Suffice it to say we will not go back, and the company that bought the Ennis RV Park is Starry Night, and they have several other RV parks and lodging around the country that we will be sure never to visit if this is an example of their management.  Okay, enough.

Still has the views though. 

One of the days we took a beautiful drive up through the hills and mountains on a big loop, and had a nice picnic.

Then as we were circling back we at first noticed this one guy.

Then we noticed he had company.

And then as we were driving away, yet another came up out of the brush.

We stopped on the way back at the Ennis Overlook for coffee, it sure was a gorgeous day.

We took a long drive up (south) along the Madison River past Quake Lake, and Hebgen Lake to West Yellowstone, and a nice picnic along the way in an almost deserted National Forest campground.

Then into West Yellowstone where we walked around the town and found an awesome cup of homemade huckleberry ice cream, what a treat.......for me.  Then back around to Quake Lake again for coffee.

Another day we headed into Bozeman to do some errands, get the truck tires rotated, hit Costco, etc, and of course, stopped for a sushi lunch at Dave's, and even that seemed a little off, maybe it's just our memory inflates our opinion of things:-)

Then after a pretty sunset on the mountains we bid farewell to Ennis.

Too bad I can't play the wonderful sounds of barking dogs:-(

Down the road 65 miles to Henry's Lake State Park, one of the prettiest parks and views anywhere.

A few days here and then heading south.