Bill & Jan's Excellent Adventure: 2020

I indicated we changed our mind several more times, and it's true. For some reason I decided we would detour down through Salt Lake City to go to Speedco and have our oil service completed, so we made a reservation at Pony Express, a campground that put us in position to get that done and after we wanted to try out Mountain Valley RV Resort in Heber City. We had heard many great things about Mt Valley and wanted to see for ourselves. In the upcoming days, I found more and more reports making me a bit queasy about going to Speedco. I should explain, we have been using them for many years, but about 3 years ago Love's bought them and has decided to cater to semis, and put motorhomes on the second burner, so even after we arrived in Salt Lake, I opted not to go there the next morning, how fickle is that? So no big deal we just made our way over to Mountain Valley instead, we did have to stop for awhile and cool our heels on the way so we didn't get there ahead of our check in time.

Like idiots we didn't take any pictures of Mountain Valley, so I will describe a few things, first of all it is all paved with huge pull through sites, all concrete, at least 22' wide and about 80' long with a privacy hedge between. Pools, club houses, spas, etc, with a special section which we were in that was adult only. Which meant the pool, spa, laundry, etc in that section had no kids allowed, but all that was available in another section of the resort. Immaculate grounds, gorgeous views, dark at night, wonderful place, no wonder it books up way in advance.

We took several rides around while there and we also had a jones up to go back to Oh Mai, an excellent Vietnamese restaurant with awesome Banh Mi sandwiches, and actually ended up going there twice they were so, so good!

Got some fall color here

These sandwiches are fabulous!

We tried to extend a day or so, but there was no room at the inn:-( So off to Montrose, CO we went for a few days before we went on to Durango. Also with all our wavering we settled on Durango for 2 weeks instead of a month. While in Montrose, we wanted to drive an incredible scenic road there called Last Dollar Road. It is a mostly rough dirt road with awesome views that goes roughly from just south of Ridgway to Telluride. We picked a nice clear day, the smoke was still wafting in and out even down this way.

Just a taste of the beauty

We also went back into the Uncompahgre National Forest area near Silver Jack Lake for a nice picnic.

Picnicing on the tailgate

Then we were off to Durango for 2 weeks and a visit from Karen and Tom!

Unbeknownst to us we arrived just as they were having a balloon fest

Since Karen and Tom enjoy food as much as we do, and we wanted to stay outside, we ran up the road to James Ranch, a place that raises their own food and serves it up fresh and delicious.

Outside at James Ranch with great views and nice visit waiting for our food

Everything was awesome

Jan and I took several hikes, one of our favorites is a short one around Andrews Lake high up near Molas Pass on the way to Silverton.

Karen and Tom were busy the next day so Jan and I picked up some great sushi from Rice Monkeys in town and drove up the mountain for our picnic.

In the past we spent many Thanksgivings together and this year was planned to be our first back together in several years, but because of my feelings about the virus, Jan and I cancelled our joining everyone in Taos. So instead we four recreated some of our traditions and had an early and outside Thanksgiving in Durango.

Each evening we'd gather for drinks and the fire, it was a bit chilly now and then

Our Thanksgiving dinner with Tom and Karen

And finally a picture of Jan.

We had one more picnic together before they had to leave along a stream way up behind Pugatory Ski area on a beautiful day. And then after, Jan and I went on a hike along Hermosa Creek.

Jan leaving me in the dust

Jan wanted to take one more hike an absolute favorite to Spud Lake, I passed and she went by herself and enjoyed her solitude and scenery along the way.

Spud Lake

Then after one more sunset we were off to Cheyenne Mountain State Park near Colorado Springs. We had tried to get in there numerous times, but it was always booked. We were only able to get 2 days, so we grabbed it. Now the day before we left Durango, a big snowstorm was forecast that actually mostly missed us thankfully, but K&T in Taos got 2 feet! Which made us wonder about the road from Durango, through Pagosa Springs and up and over Wolf Creek Pass.

As it turned out the roads were clear, but you could sure see that a lot of snow had fallen in the storm.

And then just as we were leaving, I started the engine, and when I do, our entry step goes in, and then when you open the entry door it is supposed to go out, but it didn't. I checked the fuse, and it was blown so I replaced it and it immediately blew again. Since we were leaving and it was thankfully in, not out, we proceeded, but it sure made getting in and out a bear, it is a BIG step down. We pulled into our beautiful site at Cheyenne Mountain, and I tried to play with the steps a bit, but the wind was blowing, it was cold, and it was cocktail hour, so I put it off for the next day:-)

Our awesome site at Cheyenne Mt SP, steps out:-)

And it even came with visitors

I worked on the step for more than an hour, but access was tough in our site, but I had some luck, got it to go in and out, but when we went to leave, it blew the fuse again. So we decided we would put it off until Atlanta where we knew we would have great access on our site. From here we were headed to Fort Worth to see our daughter, Kelly and her husband Brian. We had to stop somewhere in between so we visited Dodge City, KS, and were a bit underwhelmed, it would probably be a lot better if you could walk around more and visit the historical area, maybe next time. We pulled into our reserved site outside of Fort Worth in a beautiful park on Grapevine Lake, another of our favorite, parks, The Vineyards, but initially we made a mistake choosing our site. It was right across from the huge playground, and like my rant in a previous post, the combination of kids everywhere, no etiquette in the campgrounds often, kids and parents walking right through our site continually, and shrieks starting at 7am from the playground, we went looking for another site, and found one, nice and secluded, quiet, dark, right along the lake, and no neighbors walking through:-) We had a wonderful visit, of course, lots of good food, and it was so nice to see the kids. I should mention we had another little problem on the drive there, our alternator quit. We were able to limp along with our generator running and providing electric to our chassis batteries as well as the house batteries. We found an exact replacement, ordered it, and had it sent to Kelly.

Kelly and Brian arriving in her slightly modded Jeep:-)

All four of us love sushi, and since there is an excellent sushi restaurant nearby, we obviously took advantage.

Brain and Kelly at our very nice site

We enjoyed our visit, but time ran out so we had a last evening of drinks and dinner and said our goodbyes.

Drinks on a perfect evening

And our last supper:-)

So what to do with our alternator, since we now had it in hand, should we limp the rest of the way to Atlanta with the generator or should we just replace it? Well, replacing it won, we decided we had a little time, and to absolutely depend on the generator all the way really didn't make sense. It looked pretty straightforward and it turned out to be so, with one little glitch. The new alternator doesn't come with a pulley so you need to take the pulley off the bad one and put it on the new one. And no amount of straining, pounding, using levers 5 feet long, even jumping on it would budge it, so luckily I found an alternator shop that removed the old pulley for me in less than 5 minutes, and then we got it all done, and working perfectly!

The bad one, pretty good access

Exact duplicate

New one in and working well

We got to Atlanta and Jan was able to get her dental implant, I postponed mine, we did several errands, had lots of takeout, saw some friends from afar, and Jan got the entry steps working, 6 cans of brake cleaner, tons of scraping and cleaning and it looks like they were not working because they were totally gummed up with dirt and oil.

We heard about a brand new KOA opening up in north Georgia in Blue Ridge so we ran up there for a couple days, very nice, we will go back, right on the Toccoa River.

Since my waffling in Salt Lake with not going to Speedco, I decided to have our oil change, chassis service done in Ocala at Detroit Diesel and when I found in my records it was also time to have our transmission filters changed it worked out perfectly. We were able to pull in Sunday night, plug into their power, then they took care of us first thing Monday. Another bonus was there is a favorite restaurant of ours there in Ocala, Yummy House, excellent Chinese, so we also had a takeout dinner, and enough for lunch the next day:-)

Pulling in for the night and service

Amazing chicken wings!

Yummy from Yummy House

So with that chore all done, all that remained was to get to our winter digs in Florida, and take the several days necessary to make it home. Tom was already here and of course we met for happy hour as we do almost every night for the winter, although we will be missing our other regulars and good friends, Deb and Harold as they are stuck in Canada.

The before: