West to Colorado!

I left you in the NE corner of Oklahoma.  We have been steadily moving west since that time to be in place in Eugene, Oregon on Saturday.  We first went to Salina, KS on a hot, hot day, touching 100df every so often, short night then on to Goodland, KS on the western edge of Kansas, it's a very big state!  But we found a really nice spot in a KOA there.

Nice!

We left pretty early the next morning as the forecast was for strong winds.  We thought for a little while that we had beat it, but no, when we turned directly west for Fort Collins with at least a 100 miles to go, the winds were gusty directly from the south at 30-40mph, made for a long trip being constantly buffeted.  But as we neared FoCo, things moderated some.

We were visiting our daughter, Kelly there and she came over soon after we arrived to the very nice Fort Collins Lakeside KOA, although they are some sticklers about visitors.  It's their business and their rules but a $10 charge per person even for a 10 minute visit seems a bit much.  They must have been burned in the past somehow.  Other than that nice wide sites, plenty long, fishing lakes, very clean and well kept.  We will definitely go back.

Our site

One of the fishing lakes

Jan and Kelly, yes, except for this pose we distanced

We even decided the next day to do something Jan and I hadn't done yet, go out to lunch.  Kelly suggested a taco place that had a big patio, big tables, and lots of distancing, so we gave it a go.  Turned out excellent, we felt safe and comfortable and the tacos were good too.

Our first lunch out

After a very nice visit, a bit short we were on our way next to Yampa River State Park west of Steamboat Springs.  

We had a choice on how to go, on what looked like a very windy and narrow Rte 14 that would be fairly direct or way around up to Laramie and down.  After a bit of research, we opted for the narrow road along the Cache La Poudre river, and man we were glad.  It turned out to one of the most awesome roads we've been on, and might be our favorite right now.  And believe me, that says a lot, as Jan and I have been on a LOT of roads over all these years:-)  

As soon as we got on the road and saw the river we had high hopes.  There was almost no traffic so we were able to just mosey along and enjoy the awesome views and scenery.  The river was raging pretty good with the runoff.

Our first glimpse of the river

We stopped here and there, pull offs are abundant, fishing access is abundant as well, future plans......

A cool tunnel

Pulled off by a raging waterfall

It got very narrow in places with jagged rock walls, we were thankful for no traffic.

We started looking a spot for lunch and found a humdinger!  Lots of room to pull off, a beautiful perch to sit above the water on an absolutely gorgeous day!

Our lunch spot

Our real lunch spot!

It was fantastic, we continued and climbed over Cameron Pass at 10,276' up to where we could see snow on the mountains.  We even saw a moose.

The mountains got a little more jagged as we went until we broke out into meadows.

Wow, right?

Up on the high meadows before Steamboat Springs

Then up and over Rabbit Ears Pass at 9426', and down, down into and through Steamboat Springs to Yampa River State Park, a very nice park along the river with only electric.  By cocktail hour the temp was down into the high 40's, and we woke to 36df!  Wow, from the hundreds to 30's in a few days.  One delightful, slow day here and then off to OR.

Our very nice site at Yampa

Westward bound

The skies finally cleared for the last couple days in north Georgia, so we took advantage of it.  We had to make an unexpected run back to the vet's office to pick up a prescription for Bert, new food, he's lost a bit of weight, hopefully nothing serious, then made a big loop back through the beautiful countryside.  We decided to go grocery shopping and have  lunch out on the way back.  Although the restaurants are open for inside dining, I am still just a little reluctant so we got some awesome take out BBQ and ate in the truck.

What a spread, no, that's not just for lunch
we ate it the next day as well:-)

Then all stocked up for our run west,

All stocked and ready:-)

we took our last day and went back up to the Nantahala for a picnic, and to see how the fishing looked.  Lots of fishermen, but we didn't see many results.  Wished we had more time to fish, except for..........

A gorgeous section of water!

Except for?  Well, I came down with gout.  I had it one time 7 years ago and thought it was a long since forgotten memory.  Turns out no.  If you aren't familiar with this wonderful affliction, good.  It is extremely painful, and at least for me, centers in the joint behind my big toe, walking is more like limping slowly all the while grimacing, and even the weight of a bedsheet is excruciating.  So I got an opportunity to try all sorts of new things in this corona age.  My regular Doc wasn't available but I was able to Teledoc on FaceTime with another that gave me a prescription, all while in north GA, pretty cool. Unfortunately for whatever reason, the meds didn't seem to work, and by the time I knew I was in trouble we had moved on to Arkansas.  By this time I basically could hardly move.  But thankfully I was able to get in touch with my Doc, and he gave me another prescription.  This time only into the second day of it I am experiencing sweet relief!  Yeah, you probably didn't need to hear any of that:-)

Anyway we left GA and went to AL for our first night, then over to western MS to position ourselves for our window appointment the next morning.

Our nice spot in AL at Quail Creek RV Resort

A baby Preying Mantis in MS

And we even ended the evening with a pretty sunset

RVFogDr is where we had our appointment in the morning.  They are located in Searcy, AR west of Memphis and north of Little Rock, our appt was at noon and we arrived about 10:30am.  I hobbled in and they showed me where to turn around, park, offered us full hook ups with 50 amp, asked which windows we wanted to repair, and then said they'd be with us after lunch.  We got situated, had lunch, and at 1pm they arrived.  They removed the 3 windows in what seemed to be mere moments, and covered the openings with plastic.

Driver's side 3 piece window out and plastic installed

And then in an hour, they came back and replaced the door window with a bright clean repaired window!

Door window going in

I do apologize for the fairly poor photo representation of this operation, but I just couldn't get up and down to do it.

We had planned to spend the night anyway, and thought they would need the next day to get it all done, especially with the other motorhomes already there and the two more that arrived in the afternoon, but by 4:30pm, our 3 windows, all shiny and clear had been reinstalled, all caulked, and we were done.  We opted to stay the night anyway as it was too late to go on down the road.  All was professional, friendly, quick, with a very fair price.  We highly recommend this place for your window needs.

Last bedroom window going in

We are in NE Oklahoma now at a very cool spot.  Cabin Diesel Services in Big Cabin, OK has added a small full hookup campground on the back of his property with 10 sites for overnights.  Long pull-throughs and very reasonable, excellent!