We drove to Estes Park , CO A beautiful town about an hour southwest of Ft. Collins and a stones throw from Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP).   As you can see every turn was a postcard picture of the still snowy mtns.  The temps were in the 60s, low humidity with a very cold wind. I should have been dressed more like Eileen. I needed long pants and a sweatshirt. You can always left click to enlarge photo.

They were having a Scandinavian Festival and the place was packed with tourists (including the three of us).  

We took the River Walk into town from the Visitor’s Center.

As you can see from the above picture Max took time out of his day to count the sandbags lining one of the businesses along the River Walk. Due to the river over flowing at times many establishments have sandbags in reserve for emergency use. The river was moving very fast, so we were surprised to see a man throwing a stick in the river for his Lab to retrieve. He did this countless times and the Lab never got tired. He would jump in retrieve the stick, then swim down stream maybe 25 yards before being able to reach the shore and climb out.

We saw the The Stanley Hotel where the movie The Shining with Jack Nicholson was filmed.

Spent the rest of the afternoon going in and out of the tourist shops that lined main street.

Max kept staring at this sign. I wonder why? Max was a hit with everybody we met. If we have time we would like to go back to Estes Park during the week when it’s less crowded.

Went to brunch with Eileen and Mark at the Cafe Vino I had a great meal of Huevos Rancheros, Mark had Eggs Benedict and Eileen had the best meal Stuffed French Toast.

  Spent the rest of the afternoon wishing I hadn’t eaten sooo much. Took a bike ride with Mark on the Cashe La Poudre bike trail (pronounced pooder)  bike path towards downtown Ft. Collins. It’s only 2.5 miles each way. Or at least it should have been. Eileen gave me her wallet and iPhone to carry for her and I dropped them in the RV Park. So we had to go back and look for them which probably added another 10 miles to our ride (OK maybe 2), but all’swell that ends well I found the wallet and phone. (Eileen asked “does this bike seat make my ass look fat?”)  Mark came back and had dinner with us, then we took him and his bike back to his place. It’s against the law in Ft. Collins to ride at night without a light on your bike.

We’re having trouble with our HWH Levelers. The levelers or jack stands automatically level and stabilize the house. I searched around for the problem and found that I had a weak chassis battery. It wasn’t dead, but on it’s way out. So picked up a new battery from Mr Mechanic compliments of Mark. Installed the new battery and that didn’t fix the problem! I next checked the voltages at the two solenoids and pump motor. All had 12 volts but the motor wasn’t running. A mechanic is coming out Friday to look at it.

Oh and we’re also on a eat healthier kick. Including Max. We shared a large fries with him. Max is addicted to french fries.

One of the problems in Ft Collins is the Cottonwood Tree. The seeds are on a cotton like structure and it blows all over Ft Collins. It looks like you’re in a snow storm.

We drove to Horse Tooth Mountain and went on a hike with Max.

This is the view looking down from the top of the previous image.  Do you believe people bicycle up and down these mountain!

We would really like to camp on the Horsetooth River, but it’s very popular and booked most of the time.

We drove to Boulder to see a festival on Pearl Street.

Hmmm!

After walking through most of the festival we were told “No Dogs Allowed”!, by a very friendly police officer.  Since we’d seen most of the festival we picked up Max and headed back to Ft. Collins. The 60’s are alive and well in Boulder!

Sunday June 8th. Today started out great I-80 through Nebraska is a dream to drive on. Nice and smooth and straight and level. That’s me taken by Eileen in the Fit.

But not so much when the wind starts blowing. By mid afternoon we were in a full blown storm with rain, hail (or snow) and wind gusts of 40+ mph.  We stopped several times to wait out the winds, but to no avail. We decided to stop for dinner in Cheyenne WY and then spend the night at a rest area.  After dinner I missed the exit for the rest area and we continued on to Fort Collins CO. The trip from Cheyenne to Ft. Collins was uneventful-the storm had moved on.  We spent the night camped at a Walmart right off I-25.

The storm made a beautiful sunset. We were not alone. The lot was full of RVs and 18 wheelers. So full that one had to park across the street in a grass lot.  We’ve been doing a lot of shopping there that we could start a Wallmartian’s Club, but you can’t beat the overnight stay.  Just wish they all had a Starbucks!

Sunday June 9th

We made it to our campground Ft. Collins  KOA   http://koa.com/campgrounds/fort-collins-lakeside/  It’s a bit pricey for us, but there are a lot of amenities and they seem to have a good internet connection…and a lot of rules and regulations about visitors, even family!  We won’t stay here again but everything in the area is booked.  It’s such a beautiful area.  We finally had a bike rack and hitch put on the back of the Fit so we can take the bikes with us sightseeing.  We hope to travel the trails through Ft. Collins tomorrow.

Monday June 9th. On the weekend of October 19th Eileen is walking 40 miles for breast cancer.  We started preparing for that walk today.  We are walking 2 miles a day shooting for 5 miles a day while here.

This is the view from one side (not wide angle) and this is the view from the other side.

Tuesday June 11th. I found Mecca today! (if you know me, you know what this means)!

Thursday June 12th.

We met  friends for dinner that are from NJ, Kathy and Dave Staveley.  Eileen worked with Kathy years ago at the Pharmaceutical AD agency  which is now Ogilvy Worldwide/CommonHealth and they had moved out here a few years ago.  Great dinner at the Blind Pig.  It was really nice to catch up.  They love it here.

Friday June 13th.

Mark came over for dinner last night and we had a great time.  One of the KOA rules is visitors need to be escorted to your site, so it was pretty funny  when Mark arrived in his truck preceded by a elderly gentleman in a golf cart.  We had a great dinner and sat around the fire watching  the last game of the Stanley Cup.

Saturday June 14th.

We picked up a few things we needed to organize the food shelves and then visited Mark at work at Rocky Mountain Westy where he is the Product Manager.  The shop and work they do there is incredible to see. They take Vanagon’s and and replace the 90 hp engine with a Subaru 170 hp engine. They also completely refurbish the inside and outside. Most everything is done in house. They fabricate most of the parts they replace.   They also have a regular car service shop connected to it which is part of the same owners.  So if you see a VW van that looks like a camper, wave.  Most likely they’ve visited RMW at some point.

June 2, 2014

This blog started out as a way to keep family and friends in touch with us and follow us on our journey in the RV.  But it is turning out to be a way for us to remember actually what day it is.  We constantly lose track of time and day.  Some would say that’s a plus of being retired.  Gene also made a rule of not wearing the same clothes for more than three days. Did I have this T-shirt on yesterday? Sniff, sniff, does this T-shirt smell funny?  We also have what they call a Truckers Tan.  Only my arms are tan from shirt sleeve down from driving.

When I setup our new Garmin for RVers I chose avoid tolls in the tools section. This was a mistake. We avoided about $70 in tolls by avoiding I-76 and I-80, but managed to hit every mountain in West Virginia, and Pennsylvania on I-70. Up one mountain and down the next. Then going through Indiana and Illinois the I-74 pavement was like an obstacle course.

Saturday night we spent at Spring Valley RV Park in Cambridge Ohio.

Sunday night we “Wallydocked” at a Walmart in Urbana Illinois. The deal with staying overnight at a Walmart is they allow you to park in their parking lot over night for free, and hope you will spend some money in their store while you are there. It’s a win-win for everybody. We spent $78 on groceries that we would have needed to purchase somewhere. We also bought gas while we were there. Not all Walmarts allow overnight parking. You need to call ahead and get permission, and when you get there, go in to the customer service desk and ask where to park. There are no hook-ups, so you should have water on board and your house batteries charged. The Walmarts we have stopped at have been beautiful.  We parked away from the building along a beautiful grass line, almost like a park setting.  Plenty of room to play ball with Max on the grass and just a few trucks.  We rented a movie from Redbox there, put the bedroom slide out and had a good night’s sleep.

Tuesday, June 3

Some people when going through IL stop to visit Abe Lincoln, but we kept going and went straight through to Iowa and came upon “The World’s Largest Truck Stop”.

We saw the longest 18 wheeler transporting a blade for a Wind Turbine.

And Gene tried on a couple of hats.

Besides being huge, their gas was $3.29 per gallon and since we are getting 45 miles to the gallon with the Honda Fit, I filled up for $23.  We won’t discuss the motor home gas mileage. The Fit was getting such great gas mileage that we decided to tow the motor home!

Anyway, it was a lot of fun walking around looking at all the shops there.

On to the next campground.  We pulled into another KOA.  They are usually really nice campgrounds with a lot of amenities but a little on the pricey side.  We do get a discount for being members, but they are a treat.  When we pulled in, the woman at the office assigned us a site and we noticed that all the other rigs were being situated next to each other in a pretty large campground.  She told Gene that if you hear a siren go off to immediately head for the pool house.  They had tornado warnings for that night.  Turned out the wind and rain were heavy, but no siren!  We stayed there for two nights  waiting for our mail to catch up with us and to take a break from moving every day.

Thursday, June 5

Driving through Nebraska. The road was the smoothest we’ve been so far.

If I weren’t driving a 20,000 lb vehicle I might take advantage of this:

We were going to stay at another very nice Walmart and actually pulled in when we started talking about how it was going.  I was feeling a little cabin fever, not because of any small space but just needed to go to a movie or something, like get my nails done.  Gene started looking for a movie on the internet when he came across a casino 10 miles back.  You can stay at Casinos for free also and for $30 you can get hookups. So, we went to Horseshoe Casino.   Since we are self contained we stayed for free.

Just as we were getting ready to walk to the casino it starts to hail.  Gene said “hurry up and take the car in the garage”.  I ran out and thought I was getting bombarded with golf balls.  Driving to the parking garage was like riding over rocks.  We were afraid we would wind up with dents in the car or RV.  I found a spot to park and waited for it to stop and for Gene, who waited for it to stop.  He said “the RV was a rockin and a rollin” and the hail sounded like gun shots going off in the RV.  Very scary for the second night in the midwest.  I don’t know about these folks out here.  I don’t think I could live with the uncertainty of the season.  It has also rained about every other night.  Which was OK, because we didn’t have to clean bugs off the windshield. Once we got into the casino we checked out the poker room (of course) and it was full also discovered they had grayhound racing, which he has been looking forward to, but missed…again…because of weather.  The night was a success though.  I won a pretty penny at the slots and managed to walk away with it too! Richard said to Gene “good thing you married her, now you get half!

When we left the casino the first city we drove through was Omaha NE home of Omaha Steaks. My mother’s favorite.

Friday and Saturday, June 6 & 7.

Well, we finally found a KOA that has absolutely NO amenities, but the best WiFi internet service so far.

A little less pricey too, but the site is level and we are taking a breather.  So I thought.  More heavy rain and high wind warnings.  And it came!  I was afraid of the double slide being out with the wind but I finally just went to bed and tried to sleep.  Tried being the operative word.  Woke up to 50 degree weather.  Seriously?  I wanted to dig out my down jacket from the RV basement.  It was windy but the sun finally came out and the temp went up to 60.  Since we were literally in the middle of the country in Nebraska, we went to see the Great Platte River Road Archway.

The Great Plains Cultural Learning Trail takes you back to the time when Native Americans and the great buffalo herds mapped the Road that others would follow.  It takes you back in time where the Wagon Trains started out from Oregon, Mormon and California Trails.  Where the Pony Express started giving way to the Iron Horse and first Transcontinental highway – The Lincoln Highway.

Escalator to the beginning of the self tour.

The end of the tour was moving into the 20th century.

View of the Lincoln Highway (I-80) from inside the Archway.

This Archway spans across I-80 and was the dream of the Governor of Nebraska.  We also took a walk around some Indian gardens and an earth hut they lived in with numerous families.

Inside the hut.

We also saw a Sod House. This what the early settlers lived in.

Very educational and felt good to be finally seeing some sights of this great Heartland.  During the day while driving the skies have been just beautiful.  No smog out here!

We also went by The Nebraska Fire Fighter’s Museum.

Tomorrow will be a traveling day and can probably make Ft. Collins which is our destination for two weeks, or we may stop at a State or National Park and enjoy the area before getting to the campground we have booked for Monday near Mark.