We Had To Say Goodbye To The Mountains😭

As we enjoy our travels, we both know there finally comes a time when we have to turn and head east, and that time came yesterday.  I left you in Durango where we really enjoyed Karen and Tom's company, then did a few more things before we left for Colorado Springs.

Sunset skies from our site

Cold, wet rainy weather moving in

As I have said, this year's travel was affected by the Covid, we made more changes and cancellations than ever before.  Initially we had planned about 4 weeks or so on the front range of the Rockies, from Fort Collins down to Colorado Springs, but instead we ended up cancelling all of it even after changing it a few times first.  We have heard many incredible reviews on Cheyenne Mountain State Park near Colorado Springs and decided when we cancelled our Thanksgiving plans in Taos, we might as well stop in there and check it out.  We wanted 4 nights but could only get 2, yes even in late October the place stays full, and it is open year round.  So with that locked down we headed east from Durango.  I should mention just before we left a major storm and cold front was forecast, the highs went overnight from the 70's to the 30's, and the lows got into the low 20's, and even though snow was forecast we never got anything more than flurries, well not so to our south and east.  Karen and Tom got over 24 inches of snow in Taos!  That got us worried about Wolf Creek Pass and La Veta Pass and hoped they were open.  We checked and sure enough they were clear.

Our route took us through Pagosa Springs, one of our favorites with many memories of Harvey and Jan.  More evidence of snow on the mountains, but still none on the ground.

Coming into Pagosa Springs, awesome mountains!

Looking east, still not too much snow

Getting closer to Wolf Creek Pass

Wolf Creek Pass is a 10,857' pass with huge drop offs that eats several vehicles, usually trucks, each year, it is to taken seriously, especially in the snow.  Thankfully the road was clear all the way up and over, but the snow was getting deeper.  We decided to stop and have lunch at the top of the pass.  There were lots of people, cars, RV's, and trailers with snowmobiles that were running around on the deep snow, probably more than 2-3 feet.

Just starting down, you can see how deep the snow was

There were signs of more and more snow as we continued east.  It made for a very beautiful drive, and the icing on the cake was the fact the roads were clear.

We still had La Veta Pass to go over, only 9,413', but it was clear as well.  We started to wonder if the state park would be full of snow as well.

Starting up La Veta

Jan got this stellar shot on the way down the pass!

We got some fuel in Walsenburg, CO just before we joined I-25 north, and now the roads were getting slushy and wet and dirty, our clean motorhome and truck were now disgusting.  Still lots of snow on the ground as we headed north towards the Springs.  But, it seemed all of a sudden, the snow wasn't there anymore, up through Pueblo and the snow was gone!  We didn't need to worry about snow in the campground, and also we got another gift the temps were up to 70!  We made our way to the entrance of Cheyenne Mountain and after negotiating the tightest of rotaries, we entered the state park and climbed, climbed, climbed up to our campsite.  Absolutely fantastic!  The entire campground is paved, the sites are paved, full hook ups, lots of privacy and dark, excellent.  When we made our reservation there was literally one single campsite left that would fit us and man, did we luck out.  Huge site, incredible view to the east.

So just a bit of Murphy's Law struck us, our entry steps quit working, thankfully retracted.  The fuse kept blowing, I worked and worked on them while here, cleaning, lubricating, and actually got them to work, so I thought that was behind us.  We spent a quiet day here, walking around looking at the views, thinking this truly was one of the nicest campgrounds we have stayed in.

The sky glowing with the sunset behind us

The lights of the city and the moon

Followed by a beautiful sunrise 

This guy visited us in the morning

And this guy along with about 10 does, obviously they know where to go
during hunting season:-)

A quick 2 nights, and we were off further east to Dodge City, just an arbitrary spot to stop since we couldn't get two more nights in Cheyenne Mountain.  It was an incredibly clear day, in fact we finally pulled off the road long enough for Jan to snap a fast picture of Pike's Peak, and what is amazing is it is 65 miles away in this picture, talk about clear!

So after 330 miles we pulled into Dodge City, and the first thing I did was get the truck to a car wash, it was hard to tell what color it was, the motorhome will have to wait, but it is truly disgusting, you can't wash here at the KOA in Dodge City.  One of the challenges of full timing is trying to find campgrounds that allow washing, and there aren't that many.  And just to top it off, the steps are dead again and this time it blows the fuse the second I insert it.  We are going to have live with it and a small ladder to get in and out until we get to Atlanta where I can take the time to really tear into it and find out what's wrong. So here we are, having said goodbye to our wonderful mountains and now plan to visit our daughter Kelly and her husband in Fort Worth in a couple days, then off east again, eventually to Atlanta, then Florida for the winter.😭😭😭

Winding Down

We've settled in now that we got everything rearranged and fixed with our site here in Durango. As soon as we could, we rushed up the mountain to see if any color was still here and unfortunately, all the leaves have fallen, still pretty, but not the intense beauty that is usually here this time of year.  I think we missed it by a week or so.  And the brutal winds that are badgering us didn't help either.  On the way back, we stopped in at Havilland Lake.  We had heard they were going to do some work on it and wow, were we amazed, it was empty!

Before

Now, very disheartening

We did find out to our surprise, they had drained the lake to work on the spillway, but we thought it would be back up by now, turns out they don't expect it to fill until spring after the snows.

A day after we arrived, Jan's sister Karen and Tom arrived to also have a fiasco concerning their site, something sure is amiss with their reservation system.  We had planned to do Thanksgiving at their place in Taos this year, but like so many others we felt it was prudent to postpone.  We had a real routine every year, Tom's lasagna, followed by a soup night, then sausage gravy breakfast, and then the big T-day dinner, so Karen suggested we sort of duplicate it and have a pseudo Thanksgiving celebration.  It was an excellent idea!

We were able to have drinks together outside every night, dinner together numerous times, thanks to the weather cooperating and us moving around to stay mostly out of the wind.  It was really great.

We didn't realize it was balloon weekend so each morning for 3 mornings we were able to see a bunch of balloons nearby the campground.  Unfortunately, the wind would come up and cut their flights short each morning and even cancelled some of their evening festivities.

It would warm up each day to the mid 70's, so if we waited a bit, it was wonderful outside, and since we had already determined our visit had to be entirely outside it worked out.  We ran up to James Ranch for a delicious lunch and a nice laid back visit.  You knew I would have to get food in here, right?

Beautiful grounds on a beautiful day!

Everything they serve is either grown on the farm or locally sourced, all the meat is raised organically and truly is delicious.

Jan's BLT

Karen's green chili cheeseburger

Tom's mushroom cheeseburger

And my delicious patty melt

Now, those who know us and have gotten to know us, realize food makes up a lot of our doings, whether it is going out or dining in, we all enjoy food, me too much unfortunately.  Well we aren;'t alone in our family, so whenever we get together we're going to share a bunch of meals:-)  With the virus, our eating out habits have changed drastically, instead of going out perhaps 4 times a week for lunch, now we try to get take out once a week or so, but when family comes to visit, you gotta take advantage.

So the next day we enjoyed excellent pizza take out from Fired Up!

Jan and I decided to run up to Andrew's Lake near Molas Pass to hike around the lake, Karen and Tom were off doing something else.  It was one of those absolutely clear days you get out here.  We started around the lake and about halfway we looked up to see a single column of smoke, in only 15 minutes it had doubled or tripled in size!

A gorgeous day!

You can see the smoke on the left side, it is near Silverton

This is literally 3 minutes later

It is so dry here this year, it only takes a spark and it's a huge fire.  This fire now is over 600 acres and only 30% contained, the awful winds each day make it almost impossible to deal with. The firefighters here are exhausted, it has been a horrible fire season.  There is a fire to the west of Fort Collins that is the biggest fire Colorado has ever had.  And the Animas River that runs through Durango has never historically been lower.  They are forecasting a significant winter weather event Sun evening through Tuesday that is supposed to drop 8-12 inches of snow in the mountains and even here in town we are supposed to get 1-4 inches.  This time we are rooting for the storm to be a big one so it might just manage to extinguish the fires.  Fingers crossed.

So we had our T-day lasagna dinner, followed by a day off, then I made sausage gravy and scrambled eggs for our requisite breakfast, enjoyed by all.  Much later Jan and I took off for a late lunch bite and headed up to the overlook above town.  We picked up our sushi at Rice Monkeys, one of our favorite restaurants here, and drove up the road.  The road was so bad with washboarding, we didn't think we'd have any kidneys left if we continued so we found another spot, pretty nice, well short of the overlook.

Our two rolls and some squid salad, yummy!

Not the overlook, but not too shabby

So just together for drinks that night.

Me describing something, Tom, and Karen

That brought us up to our "Thanksgiving dinner".  It was really nice to salvage some of this season together.

Getting ready to dig into the feast.

Had to get this picture in here to prove Jan is actually around:-)

We sat around the fire as long as we could,
but the cold finally chased us away

That left us with one more day together, so we decided on a picnic up in the mountains.  We picked up some sandwiches at Hermosa Grill, and drove up behind the Purgatory Ski Resort, back past Harris Ranch, and found a nice spot out of the wind on Hermosa Creek.

Getting lunch doled out

Then after a long and enjoyable picnic, K&T took off and Jan and I decided to take a hike nearby.

It is hunting season so we didn't go too far, only a few miles.

Jan leaving me in the dust:-)

A cute little remote cabin

So we had our last night together with drinks as they were leaving in the morning.  We will see Tom in Florida in December and will see Karen depending on when she is coming to visit in Florida this winter.  The virus has really killed things.  We have a few more days here before we reluctantly make our way back east.  Durango, and especially this year as we aren't stopping in Taos, is the turn around point for our time of travel.  It feels like the end although we still won't get back to Florida until December, but we will be making our way that direction.  Even though we aren't looking forward to the cold coming we are rooting for the snow, both for our visual enjoyment, but mostly hoping it puts all these fires out.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of Spud Lake trail that Jan hiked before the weather turns cold and wet.

Durango Now, But Not With the Excitement We Usually Feel

We arrived in Montrose, CO to the Centennial RV Park, about 10 miles south of town,  with long pull through sites and a killer view.  It was a fairly long, but uneventful trip down from Heber City, UT.  We got into our site along with the smoke that had accompanied us the whole way.

We had initially planned to stay at Ridgway State Park just down the road, but at the last minute, we decided to cancel that and stay at Centennial.  Since the next day was still smoky, we drove down to the park to check out the fishing area in the tailwaters under the dam on the Umcompahgre River.  Unfortunately the water was extremely low, but they have done a fabulous job making a stellar trout habitat.  We talked to several fishermen and they all said the fishing was nonexistent, so we decided to put it off for another time.

A good example of proper trout stream management
And if you look at the mountain in the back, that hazy stuff is smoke

So back we went and got excellent take out pizza for lunch, and lunch the next day:-)  We woke up the next morning to clear skies, so we decided if it held until afternoon we would grab some coffee and do the Last Dollar Road, basically from Ridgway to Telluride, one of our absolute favorite scenic roads, especially in the fall with the aspens turning.

No smoke from our site!

We were a little behind the aspens, but there were still pockets of beauty

Yellow carpeting

What a terrific road

Nearing Telluride

Near Telluride, in fact if you look carefully on the right side,
you can see some of the ski area

Then the smoke came back along with hellacious winds, so we hunkered down, made soup, Jan played Mahjong online with some friends, and then smashed me in Scrabble again and again, in fact I have only won 1 game in 15!  I am an idiot, evidently:-(

But the wind eased, and the smoke went away again, so back in the truck for an awesome loop beginning in Cimarron up to Silver Jack reservoir, then up and over the 10,114' Owl Creek Pass, back down into Ridgway for our last day in Montrose.  And it worked out perfectly.  This time we packed a picnic lunch.

The beginning of the road near Cimarron

Bold scenery

A hawk looking for lunch

Our lunch spot from a distance

Our view while eating

And the other way

Most of the leaves were gone on this ride

Chimney Rock

High on the mountain making our way down towards Ridgway

Rugged with most of the leaves gone

So that was it for Montrose and we were going to Durango in the morning.  It is real different this year, we have been going to Durango every year for almost 10 years, and for a month at a time, and we've always looked forward to it, but we almost cancelled this year.  Hard to explain.  We have run out of patience with the constant wind this year, the constant dust and smoke, hard to believe as we really love the West, but this year, I don't know.  Part of it was we had a terrible experience last year, the regular managers weren't there, and the owners brought in a couple to manage the place.  It was apparent they had a lot to learn, they set rules and did things that were just whims to them and it was easy to see they were real neophytes.  The last straw was we were informed 10 days before our departure that we would have to move sites, away from a site we had reserved a year out.  At first it was just an order, not a request, needless to say I asked to speak with the manager, in fact set up a meeting to speak to her, and she never even came!  Then with steam coming out my ears, I told her husband I wanted to know the why behind our order to move.  When she did decide to talk to us, she hemmed and hawed and finally said they had to winterize the park, understand this was 10 days before the park was closing, also they were turning away people left and right and were telling them they couldn't stay even though the park was almost empty, some managers, huh?  We went back and forth and it turned out they were not familiar with this park and had never winterized before, so wanted us out of the way.  Suddenly she relented and said we could stay where we were.  At the same time we made a month long reservation for this year on a specific site and received confirmation of it both in a receipt and email.  But the situation put a bad taste in our mouth.

Now as everyone knows this year has been a challenge, Covid rules are different everywhere we go, we are not comfortable eating inside, although we try to use take out at least once a week, and we had read about happenings in downtown we weren't too keen on, so we decided initially we would just cancel Durango........  Then we waffled, and changed it to two weeks, and in reality, just before we left Montrose almost cancelled again, but we told ourselves, it's only for two weeks, we were meeting Karen and Tom there for a week, and we'd be on the site we wanted.  So off we went, had a lovely drive, and pulled into the park and what do we see, somebody parked in OUR site!  I almost turned around right then, but, we have packages and mail being delivered.  We get in a big back and forth, and the poor work camper is caught in the middle, the same manager that wouldn't talk to us the previous year says too bad, after it was her who guaranteed our site.  This time it wasn't just me steaming, Jan was upset as well.  Just as the situation is coming to a head, up comes a golf cart with work camper friend's Lori and Brian who welcomed us, that we hadn't seen for 2 years, since they weren't here last year, and then found themselves in the middle of this as well.  Now Lori is a go-getter, efficient, and incredibly competent, she said get parked and let me see what I can do.  So we did.  Sure enough in a few minutes Brian comes down to ask us if another site would be acceptable?  It was essentially the same site as we had reserved but on the other side, so we said, of course.  We move Friday.  Lori and Brian saved the day!

This year for us has been a story of change, we have lengthened, shortened and even cancelled out in many places, instead of the front range of the Rockies in CO, we opted to stay in Montana. So many things were affected by the virus, or at least our reaction to it, we took no float trips at all, haven't dined in anywhere, in fact except for a few exceptions we haven't eaten out or even outside at a restaurant.  We've grocery shopped, and picked up a few things here and there, but no other shopping, in fact, we never even went into a fly shop!  Sure hope next season is completely different.