Monday, April 5, 2010

8:39 we left the one-horse town called Creede where we stayed the night at the "Liquid Ambitions Liquor Store". Can you believe people are showing up at the liquor store at 8:30 AM?
We are driving inside the mountains of southcentral Colorado! All around us are mountains! We seem to be swallowed up by them. We passed a man driving a caterpillar with a plow on the front! The Rio Grande Campground is so covered with snow you can't even see the electric hook-ups. Snowmobile trails are carved right alongside both sides of the road. The houses are mainly log cabins with red or green roofs. This landscape is what Christmas cards are made of! Rio Grande Reservoir is frozen over with snow! We are passing snow plows; but the roads are really clean.
9818 elevation- passing Silver Thread National Park and Bristol Mountain Morgans, a farm that raises Morgan horses. The RV campground is undisturbed snow all over. The RV is seeming to have some problems with either the bad fuel or the elevation! Snow is blowing all over the road. We jsut drove over the Continental Divide; where all of the streams and rivers on the west side flow to California. We will cross over it several more times according to the map. The elevation is 10,911 ft. The turns are all switchbacks with 15 mph signs!
13,303 elevation- several frost heaves in the road. The road is just cut out of an evergreen and aspen forest and there is nobody on the road but us. 11,548-Slugmullion- a 7% grade for 5 miles. They don't just have snow plows; they also are snowblowers for the roads! We finally see some people! They are at a snowmobile parking lot to access the snowmobile trails. We also passed Vickers Ranch- Vacationers Paradise- a dude ranch when it's warmer weather. The Rio Grande River is called Henson Creek here.
8216 elevation- the snow is melting somewhat. We stopped at Mesa RV Park to stop for the day. Canadian geese are all around. It actually feels warm outside. We gathered up the dirty clothes and stripped the beds; then found out the laundry here is not open yet because of the chance of pipes freezing. Now we had to go into the town to find a laundromat. Daddy washed the car while I did the laundry. We found the smallest Walmart ever seen! Daddy bought 2 different chemicals for the diesel fuel.
We ate dinner in Gunnison at Gunnisacks Bar and Grill. Everytime we have eaten out here in the west, it has been really good! Maybe we need to move out here. Sure is better than the 85 degrees you"re having at home. It's very windy tonight; it is shaking the RV. And for the first time I was chilly overnight. Maybe that's because Daddy is a blanket stealer!