On the move

We left Durango one day early.  We felt with the very cold weather coming, we'd rather be in Taos, not trying to move when it gets down to single digits, yeah, single digits!  There were only 6 of us left in the campground as we bid farewell and headed south to "warmer" temps.  Ha! An indication on our last day it was time to go, go, go.

That snow is not much higher than us

Right above the campground

It's pretty, but it's time to go

 It was only 25df when we departed and we were very anxious to see how our new wax valve would perform.  And we can report, all looks good.  Our engine temps were great the 200 miles to Taos, including going over a big pass at 10,500', and several other serious grades and we never saw a temp higher than 195df, back where it needs to be.  We were hoping the outside temps would be a little warmer as they never got above 40df the whole day, but we are very confident our cooling issues can be put behind us finally.

Now before we left we had a couple other things to do.  Jan wanted to hike Spud Lake again, me, not so much, so off went the intrepid hiker by herself.  She reported she had a wonderful time, especially as she never saw another person the entire hike!

The beaver pond was already frozen on the way to Spud

She made it!

Jan's sister, Karen had stopped in for one night after some service on her motorhome before she went home and we were sitting enjoying happy hour we all saw a flash, a brown flash fly from under the passenger seat towards the driver's seat, a Mouse!  But we weren't the only ones.

Our protector, Bert, intent on finding the mouse

Of course we never saw it again until morning when we found him in a trap!  

Two more things to do and then we'd be off.  Jan got her hair cut, and then we met for our last lunch out at The Irish Embassy Pub which we enjoy.

Jan's delicious corned beef sliders

My delicious Rueben

But the best?  Two nice pints of Guinness!!

So off we went, stopped for lunch at our favorite overlook on the way.

Baby, it's cold outside!
25df

So we arrived in Taos, set up camp:-)  Filled our water tank, unhooked the water hose and sewer to get ready for the 5df night we are expecting, and had the distinct displeasure of waking up to a snow covered ground to boot!  We are beginning to think that maybe late Oct into early Nov is a bit too late for these areas.  Hmmmm.

Success with the slide seal and counting down our days in Durango

We have been staying in the same site here at Alpen Rose RV Park for the last several years.  It is on the eastern end of a row with exceptional views and a huge grassy yard, but, almost every day the wind whistles up the valley from the south and on the end there is no protection.  Usually there is a break in the wind, but this year has been bad, we've only been able to sit outside a couple of times.  We decided to try another site as an experiment, it is on the other end of the row, and has trees and shrubs blocking most of the wind.  We think we will probably switch to this site next year when we come back, we lose a bit of the view, but still have a large grassy yard, and it is mostly out of the wind.  And of course moving meant we had to retract and extend the slide on which we had just replaced the seal, and we are happy to report it worked perfectly, a resounding success!  When we get close to the end of our stay we make a list of the couple of things we still want to do, restaurants we want to go to, hikes we want to do, well, you get the idea.

One thing we hadn't done yet was to pick up a sushi lunch and go to the overlook above the Hermosa Valley, it's got a great view, and a nice 2/3 mile walking trail.  And yes, if you have been a reader for awhile, you've seen similar pictures.

Yummy!

Looking north 

And south back toward Durango

Haviland Lake is just north of us up Hwy 550 towards Silverton, it is a gorgeous small lake that we have visited many times, even if just to sit near the shore and have coffee.  We decided to try to hike around it.  What a mistake:-)  A guide book said there was a "fishing trail" around the lake, but what we found was an almost non existent path, that cut along a cliff with broken unstable chunks of sharp rock that was particularly challenging, then when finally around that area, the path split into many routes that cut through high grass peppered with thistles and brambles that poked us and stuck in our clothing.  Then we had to turn around several times to avoid boggy areas, but finally made it around.  Even with the challenges the lake is beautiful, we felt triumphant and also said at almost the same instant, "we aren't ever doing that again!"

A nice view across the lake

Look how clear that water is!

The wax valve I talked about in the last post arrived so we got it replaced.  It was a pretty easy job.  We drained as much antifreeze out of our coolant tank as we could, and then temporarily moved our hydraulic filter to make room to get to the valve.

The filter unhooked from its mount

Then pushed out of the way

That gave us fairly easy access to the wax valve.

Pretty wide open now to the valve

We knew we wouldn't lose much hydraulic fluid when we removed the small lines as we had already done that previously, but even with draining the coolant tank, the position at about halfway down the radiator, we knew we were going to have a mess with the coolant spewing out.  We whittled a cork down to fit the hole, and as quickly as I could, removed the valve and jammed the cork in place while we removed the fittings from the old valve and installed them in the new valve.

The cork in the dike:-)

Changing over the fittings

Then in reverse, pop the cork, and jam in the new valve as fast as possible.  We figure we only lost about 1 quart or so.  New valve all in, ran the engine, made sure we had no leaks, and made sure the fan was running at a slow speed.  All checked out.

New valve all installed

We ran the engine at high idle for 20 minutes, but couldn't get it hot enough to have the fan speed come up, so the real test will be when we leave here to drive down to Taos over a pretty big pass to really see if the new valve works correctly.  We have our fingers crossed.

Another week, and we even got a few things done

We celebrated another anniversary for us, 46 years!  A toast with some really fine Bourbon, a nice dinner, and just really enjoying life.

Happy Anniversary to us!

We drove up to Silverton before the town closes up for the winter, and got to enjoy some beautiful fall colors.

Breathtaking

We had lunch, walked around the town, really winding down at this time of year, bunch of shops already closed.  Then up and over Molas Pass to Andrews Lake to hike around it and have coffee.

Andrews Lake

A great day

Engineer Mt

Gorgeous!  Little Molas Lake

Then the next day we wanted to get up to Kennebec Pass before the weather closes it for the winter.  It's very high, over 11,000' and the road is incredibly rough, and it was the first road we found last year to be closed for snow.  We packed a lunch and headed up.

Not a bad view for lunch

It was quite windy and cold, so we ventured out and around but did not go for a hike.

We replaced our trusty propane fire pit while we were here, for some reason, maybe age, over 4 years old, and leaving it outside all winter long in Florida may have impacted it, but the flame just wasn't coming up to snuff, even after a good cleaning.  So after a bit of research we replaced it with a new one, and we have to say the new one is awesome!

Our nice view from our site, although we haven't been able
to enjoy it as much as we'd like.  The wind funnels down through and chills us to the bone.
In fact, next year we will probably try a different site just for the wind.

Now, I don't want you to think it's all play here, we did have to address a few items on our coach, surprise, surprise.  I have gone on and on about our hydraulic pump problems this year, and another symptom has been making itself known, even before our travails, but I convinced myself it was an anomaly.  Our cooling fan is driven by the infamous hydraulic pump, but controlled by a wax valve that is mounted into the radiator.  It is considered a simple and for the most part failsafe approach to controlling the fan speed, although like anything they fail.  Part of my mistake was attaching all that was happening to the errant hydraulic pump.  I had noticed on several occasions while fueling with the coach at high idle, the cooling fan was screaming, and when we knocked it back down to normal idle, it slowed appreciably.  But I called it a fluke, this even went back to last year once I thought about it.  Then the icing on the cake was when we traveled in tandem with Karen from Montrose to Durango, she said it looked like I was a dust machine, right from the get go leaving Montrose, even when the engine was still cool, and then when we entered the campground in Durango, she said she could hardly see us for all the dust we were throwing up.  Let me explain.  The wax valve is designed to control the fan speed as I said.  It actually has a specific wax that melts with heat.  It starts to melt at 185df and by design it melts completely at 199df, and as it melts it ports more and more hydraulic fluid to the fan causing it to run faster and faster until at 199df it is running at full speed.  It is apparent our valve has failed and is causing the fan to spin at top speed as soon as the rpm comes up enough to fully power the hydraulic pump, in other words it is stuck open.

The wax valve.
It is screwed into the radiator, and you can see the two
hydraulic lines coming in and out

Kind of like the pump, it is not easy to find the valve.  The normal source is in England where the valve is made, but due to our recent address change they weren't able to send it.  But we did find several places here in America that have or could get the valve.  One was incredibly expensive, out of line really, another wanted a 10 day lead time, but we finally found one in Illinois, Legacy Hydraulics that had it and could send it in 2 days!  So we are waiting on the valve and will install it here in Durango.

One other project has been waiting on us all summer long.  That is the slide seal on the bottom of our rear passenger side slide.  To review, we had that seal replaced in 2016 in Oregon.  The place we had it done said they had an improved method, that instead of pushing on another bulb seal that had metal teeth to hold it in, they used a flexible rubber flap that had its own adhesive.  Unfortunately, that repair didn't last, the rubber used cracked with use and finally started to fall off in chunks, so in early 2018, with the help of our friend Harold, we replaced the seal again with a rubber material that was supposed to be much more flexible and able to withstand the in and out of the slide.  And I have to say, Harold and I really thought we had solved the seal problem with all our attention to detail.

Harold and I getting the jack in place with Scott's supervision

We even screwed it in

If I do say so, we did a great job

BUT, it didn't work, by May of this year, it had broken and split in many places.  By late summer 75% of it was missing, we had to do something about it, and when the 20df weather moved in to Durango, and that cold air was blowing right in under our slide, the time had come.  So Jan, the diesel mechanic and I replaced what was left with an original push on metal teethed bulb seal.

Getting ready to jack up the slide 

A few pieces of the old seal:-)

Pushing it on

We didn't feel it was secure enough so we decided to
caulk it in several places both inside and outside

As we were working on the seal from inside, I noticed the roller mounts were tilted.  How I never saw this before when I broke one off and had our good friend Jack reweld it, I don't know.  But the whole reason I broke it was trying to raise the slide up a bit and didn't realize the roller was as high as it would go.  There is a lip of steel at the top edge of the opening where the roller assembly mounts, and the way it was done the assembly actually was tilting out causing the roller to be lower than its should be.  So off to the hardware store we went to find some kind of metal shim.  Sure enough we found some metal plates that after a bit of modification looked like they would work.

It's not easy to see in this picture, but you can just make out
the black piece of steel edging right at the top of the bracket
that is tilting the whole thing toward me,
lowering the effective height of the roller

Our modified shims

Installed making the bracket perpendicular as it should have been
Raising the roller

Now I have to admit we haven't moved the slide yet.  We wanted the caulking to dry completely and I want to lubricate the seal with a lot of silicone spray to try to keep the seal from rolling when moving it.  We'll see, but we both think it will work way better than the other attempts at repair.

A great time getting to Durango

We left you with a picture of our view at our campsite in Colorado and were being intentionally cagey about where we were as we wanted to surprise Jan's sister Karen and Tom.  We originally were planning to go back to our "secret" Clear Creek parking area north of Creede for a few days, but with weather cooling way down, we decided that a few days at over 10,000' might be mighty cold.  So instead we decided to go to Montrose first and when we found out Karen and Tom who we were planning to see for a week in Durango changed their plans to be in Montrose before Durango, we figured we'd surprise them and we sure did!

But before they arrived we wanted to do a favorite loop of ours, down into Ouray to walk around and then back to Ridgway for a nice lunch and then up past Ralph Lauren's ranch to the Last Dollar Road which cuts up through beautiful meadows, gleaming stands of bright yellow aspens, past amazing overlooks and finally ends up just outside of Telluride. It was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed it immensely.

Yes, fall is here with its amazing colors!

Rugged mountains in the distance

A tangle of aspens

Beautiful road

The overlooks are phenomenal

What views

Awesome!

Another day we drove down into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison to where there is river access for fishing.  We had been down there before, but hadn't been aware of the access point.  A work camper at the campground told us about it and although we didn't have time to fish we wanted to check it out.  This canyon absolutely scares the crap out of me, it is so steep, so deep, so sheer, for someone who hates heights this is the worst in my opinion.  So it is hard to fathom that I can drive down the switchback, 12% grade, descent, 2000' to the river, but the road is aligned just perfectly so the sheer drop offs aren't apparent.  

You can't see it in this picture, but it goes way, way down

The Gunnison River

We tried our best to get a few pictures to show the road, but it is so twisty, you can only see a tiny bit of it at any time.  We decided when we come back to Montrose, we will definitely fish it.

When we got back to the campground we noticed that at least Karen had arrived as her motorhome was in a site, but no truck, and just like that Tom drove by us with the truck, of course, didn't see us, and then went to park at their motorhome and caught a glimpse of us and came over to ask WTH?  We then walked over and surprised Karen as well.  Their son Walker and Mirasol live in Montrose, so we joined them for a delightful dinner and visit.

The next day we caravanned to Durango which was absolutely fantastic, the weather was stellar and the views fabulous.  We had our lunch at the top of Lizard Head Pass at 10,246'.  

One of our views along the way

The time went by quickly with drinks, lunches, and dinners together with lots of enjoyable visiting.  We even got to do the Spud Lake hike together, one of our favorites.

Along the trail

A view of Purgatory Ski Area

A beaver pond on the way

Beautiful Spud (Potato) Lake

Gathered around the fire for happy hour, yes it's nippy

Our flag and the moon

We grabbed some sandwiches and had a picnic way up behind Purgatory near Hermosa Creek.

Another nice day

The view coming back

We had to say good bye as they needed to leave a bit early to try to get some issues with their motorhome attended to, but we plan to join back up in Taos in 3 weeks before we head east again.  Wow, our travel time is coming to an end, Florida in just 2 more months.