Category: Traveling the hiways and byways

We drove up from Buffalo, WY, and got to the 7 Ranch Campground around 1 pm.   They weren’t kidding about not using a GPS to get there.  Google Maps directions wanted to take me the wrong way twice after I got off the freeway.  The first one was down a long paved road along the eastern side of the freeway that I had noticed had ended at the Little Bighorn River prior to where the campground road was.   We followed the signs to the park and about half way there along the road on the west side of the freeway it kept wanting me to make a right turn down a couple of dirt roads.  Geez, the campground folks were right.  If I had followed either of those routes provided, I would have been a really unhappy person as we cannot back up with the car in tow.

We headed over to the Little Big Horn national monument early this morning, not long after it opened at 8 am.   It’s kind of an eerie place, vast hills and ravines for as far as you can see.   This would have been a really awful place to fight a battle in June, although the tops of the ridges and hills should have been pretty good vantage points if you still had ammo.

All along the ridges and hills were small groups of two or three white grave stones with the inscription, 7th Calvary solder fell here.   A few places there were many in the groupings.   The pictures of the landscape don’t show how steep the ground was.

We drove down to Reno’s battlefield and realized that was a long way south of where Custer’s men were.   And about halfway between there was a marker for an Indian settlement.   Not sure how he could have fought his way to Custer with the mule train of ammo as he was under attack the whole time too.

The park appears to have private land right in the middle between the two largest battlegrounds.  Along that way we came upon a herd of horses.  As they appeared to be on the private land area, I was guessing they weren’t wild.  They appeared to be fenced in as there were fences along that stretch of roadway.   But all along that part of the road were piles of horse dung.  It seemed odd the horses would walk along that roadway, and how did they get past the fence?

Short Horse video.

There is a national cemetery there where I presume all the 7th Calvary men were buried, although there appeared to be many more than 270 graves, but nowhere near as large as other national cemeteries we have seen.  The one my Dad and Mom are buried in is huge in comparison.

We arrived in Buffalo Wy around 1 in the afternoon, checked in and drove over to our very shady campsite.   Trees are not normal in the high plains, so this is  a really great campsite as the whole campground was full of very large trees.  Now this might not of been a great place to be if the Gale from the prior night had come thru here.  But my neighbor said the night prior had been totally calm winds.

We had been to Buffalo 5 years ago but when I drove off to buy groceries it didn’t look at all familiar to me.  We are still recovering from our Covid 19 bout so we haven’t been doing much at all.

We headed west from Denver toward Idaho Springs, then up the highest pass we had ever traversed at 11,307 feet, Berthoud Pass, with the Bus pulling the car!

We arrived at the campground and it took a while to find the entrance.   It is a HUGE place and there appeared to be hundreds of small, very new cabins that could be rented.   The campground was so large that each time we drove back in the car, I had a hard time finding our spot.  I actually had to look for our uniquely painted bus to find it.  That was a first!  And it happened each time we came back from somewhere.   No wonder they do a brisk business renting golf carts so people can get to the front where all the facilities are!  The down side of that is kids are frequently allowed to drive, and we have seen some bad outcomes from that!

That campground was very nice, and I personally think it qualifies to have Resort in the name.   Very few, in my opinion, of the parks with resort in their name are.

We drove up to the western entrance to the RMNP before 9 am so we wouldn’t need another reservation, and then drove up to the Continental Divide to a lake I thought was really the headwaters of the Colorado River.   It wasn’t.  It was actually just on the other side of the Divide that would drain toward the Atlantic Ocean.

The next day we headed to Grand Lake in the morning to hopefully beat the crowds, and it worked.  It’s a tourist town, zillions of shops selling trinkets or food.   The lake front was very nice.   The city had spent its money well.  It was much smaller than expected with the name Grand Lake.  There were a couple of much larger manmade lakes just south of this one.

We spent the morning walking around and eventually had lunch there on an outside patio with Dusty in tow.   We headed back to the Bus, having felt we saw all of Grand Lake, except from the water.  And it was odd, there were a lot of boats on the water, but I didn’t see any place to rent one.  Busiest lake we have seen while traveling:  boats, paddle boards, canoes, kayaks, jet skis, sail boats, pontoon boats (which Kathy would love to try!).  By noon it was packed!  I think it was worse than San Diego Bay in the summer.

We couldn’t any campgrounds with vacancy so we left early from our Royal Gorge campground to see if we could get a FCFS campsite at the Colorado Springs Elks lodge.   We lucked out, there were two spaces unoccupied.   We had a base camp for the area now!   We had tickets for the next morning on the Cog Railway to the Pikes Peak summit.   Then we wanted to check out the Garden of the Gods and the Air Force Academy Chapel.

I was also trying to get someone to replace the Intake and Exhaust Camshaft Solenoids on the car.  I purchased an ODB2 Code Reader and figured out the issue was with the those two solenoids.  For a while now, everywhere I called was too busy for many weeks before they could work on it.  I really didn’t want to do the work myself, but I was thinking I might have to.  I drove over to the local Chevy dealer in the north end of CS and they were able to do the work in about an hour.

One afternoon driving around the city on the freeway I saw an object that made me think we would find Richard Dean Anderson, AKA Jack O’Neill.  We had to drive over and get a closer look.  From the distance it really looked like the SG, but not once we got there.

July 13th thru the 17th.

I was hoping to find a place near Pagosa Springs, but there was nothing available that we could fit into; so I kept looking further and further and found a place with a spot for us in South Fork.

The drive there was interesting. Once we got to the grade for Wolf Creek Pass, it got steeper than any of the grades we had done since starting this adventure in 2017.   I was literally in second gear going up that hill.  That had never happened before.  I was talking to a buddy that grew up in Colorado, and he asked me if I had ever heard the song about Wolf Creek Pass.  I hadn’t and then found it on Spotify and listened in.  It was by that trucker guy,  CW McCall, from way back.   It was a long, steep climb to the top.  Seemed to take forever.

There was an interesting structure along the highway.  We only got a picture of it from inside it, but I found a Gmaps Street View.  It was a cover of concrete angled at about 25 degrees to allow the rock slides to go over the road instead of on to it.  Never seen one of these before.  Seems like a great idea and could be used in many other places.

We made it to South Fork and of course Larry wasn’t anywhere to be found.  It was a very small town, with a grocery store and hardware store above the grocery!  Not sure I had seen that before.

The campground was called Grand View Cabins and RV Resort.  (Way too many places use the “Resort” moniker in their name, and they do not in any way resemble a resort)   It was a nice place to get hailed on though.  That seems to be a Colorado staple… hail.  And thunderstorms every afternoon.

While checking out the place, 98% of all license plates in the park were from Texas.   I asked my neighbor if there was a direct freeway from Texas to here.  He laughed and said no, but it sure looks like there must be one.

The weather there was nice and cool being at a high elevation.  Most of the folks here were staying all summer.   Since Haviland Lake was electric only, we used this place to refill the water tank.   Our next stop was just outside of Salida where we would dump and refill again so we could dry camp for 8 nights with the Xscapers group rally.

June 29th thru July 1st

The drive from Silverton to here was beautiful, no worries during the ride on the MDH to here at all.

When we arrived at the campground, it was very interesting.   There was a small earthen dam we had to drive over, one very narrow lane with an angled curve halfway across.  As I got to that, I wished I had unhooked the car, but it was too late to do that at the time.

The lake was beautiful with all the trees and a few folks fishing from the banks.  We drove a ways into the park and found the camp host who told us how to get to our site.   We arrived unscathed, dodging the tree branches as best I could, and our site was very nice and turned out to be a double-wide site, even two electrical pedestals.  This was dry camping, no water or sewer here.  And lots of room to park the car!

This had to be the most peaceful park we’ve been in.  Cool breezes and just a bit of background tree rustling noise from that.  Otherwise extremely quiet.

I was talking to a friend while there and he mentioned a great Mexican place down in Durango, about a 20-minute drive from where we were, so I added that to our to-do list for one of the days coming up.

The next morning our coffee pot died on us, so I got the brand new one, still in the box, out from under the bed storage and set it up.  Low and behold a part was missing.  And of course it was the part required to use the K Cups we use while traveling.   I had bought it at Walmart while in SLC as that coffee maker was exhibiting some unreliability when we were there.  Having a backup seemed like a good idea.  I bought a cheap Farberware model for about $40.

Now that I found it was missing a critical part, I started searching for the receipt to bring it back to a store in Durango.   It was not to be found anywhere.  Apparently it had been put in the trash.   So I called the support number on the instruction booklet and Walmart answered the phone.  A sinking feeling was observed right then.  But I told the person on the phone what the problem was and about the missing receipt.  She said she could help!  That was a bit shocking.  She said she needed the date of the purchase, the store zip code, and the last 4 digits of the card I used.

I looked up the zip code on Google, logged into my CC Card website and retrieved the date, and then gave her the digits, date and zip code.  She then said she found it  (Really, they keep all that?)  and asked for my email address so she could send me the receipt.  Wow, it worked!  I returned the one with the missing part and bought another one, and checked it first to make sure all the parts were in it this time.

The best part of all this is this is the best K Cup coffee maker we have used!  And it was less than half the price of the broken Keurig maker.  It immediately starts brewing and is done before any other of the prior coffee makers even started pouring into the cup.  A lot earlier!  It also has a water tank, so there was less work to do for each cup.   And as a bonus, it holds taller cups than any prior models we have owned in the last 5 years.   (Travel Mugs!)  We don’t use the  K cups when home, but I will never buy another Keurig again after using this Farberware model.

Here is a link to the old model:  Keurig K Cup.

Here is a link to our new one so you can see it.  Farberware K Cup Brewer.

I called the Mexican place to see if we could bring Dusty and they said sure.  We drove down and saw a small outdoor covered patio.  I went inside to let them know we were here and that we had our pup with us.  There was no issue.  It wasn’t till after we ordered lunch that I noticed that there was a sign on a tree just outside the patio saying No Dogs on Patio. ??   After a while longer two more small groups of diners came in there with their dogs.  The food was excellent!  It’s difficult to get decent Mexican food outside of SoCal, but this was an exception.

On the way back we decided to stop at a hot water vent right on the side of the road I had seen on the way down.   It was very interesting, not something you see on the side of the road often, and in my case, never before.   Pretty cool.  (or actually warm)

The next day we were off to traverse Wolf Creek Pass and onward to South Fork, Colorado.  (No, not the one where JR lived.)

Just outside this campground was another group campground.

June 27th thru 29th