We're Home!

Aug. 6th, 2011
Keith and I rolled into Central Texas mid Saturday morning.  We left Pagosa Springs, Colorado around 5 p.m. after spending most of the day fishing.  Keith caught 100% more fish than I did. 

Many thanks go to my wife, who helped us find some places to stay at along the way.  Also for putting up with all my dropped cell phone calls.  For future reference, AT&T is really inadequate when driving through the western states.  I did manage to call her just about every day though.  Ronda Rocks! 

Even though we had lots of fun, I think I can speak for both of us that we were glad to be home.

Georgetown is really hot, but I guess you already know that. I spent some time this morning cleaning out junk from the truck and cleaning the inside. By noon I was done. Not done, but done because of the heat.  I've got the rest of the week to get things back in order so I'm just going to take it slow.

We traveled over 7,500 miles and visited New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming.

Of all the places we saw, we were least impressed with Yellowstone and most impressed with the Going to the Sun highway in Glacier National Park.

The best RV Park was the Durango Resort in Red Bluff, CA.  The worst RV Park was in Vaugh, NM.  The cheapest gas was found in New Mexico ($3.29).  The most expensive gas was on I-15 just inside the California State line ($4.30).
The worst breakdown was nothing more than a blown fuse for the trailer brakes.  My F-150 did a good job of pulling Pancho around but a 3/4 ton diesel would have done the job a lot easier.  Diesel was typically $4/gal., so I don't think I would have saved any fuel costs if I did have a diesel.
The stitching was starting to come apart on both of the camper's bed pullouts.  I sewed up one side with fishing line but still have to fix the other side.  The threading starts to rot over time due to moisture from the mornings.

 Here's one of the first pictures we took.  I know Keith had no idea, all the stuff I was going to fill his ears with along the trip.  
Keith, thanks for driving all those miles you did and for for putting up with so many ham sandwiches on the road.  Adios Folks!



Mount Democrat

Aug. 03, 2011

Woke up this morning and headed for Alma, Colorado where we would take a dirt road up to Kite Lake. From Kite Lake you can hike/climb to four different peaks over 14,000 feet in one day but you have to start early.

Keith and I didn't get started until around 11 a.m.  After we were maybe 20% of the way up, Keith decided it was nearly as much fun and I had made it out to be.  We started at about 12,000' and as you might expect, air is pretty thin up there.  He decided I could have enough fun for both of us, so I went on and he went back down.

I was really impressed with the people I saw on the trail coming down from the peak.  Many were overweight and older than I was, so that kind of kept pushing me.  I wish I could say it was easy, but it wasn't but it was easier than the hikes I take with a full pack hunting elk.  I know Alton can recall a few exceptional moments (i.e.Carbondale).

The view from the top is AMAZING! The road we drove in on is at the bottom of the valley.  To think that during the Great Flood all of this was under water, is just really beyond comprehension.  From the peak you can see 360 degrees and the view is great in every direction.

My exertion on the hike was keeping me just above being cold. The sweat was really cold on my back.

The trail to the top looked like this in a lot of places, actually too many places.

It took 2 hours to climb up and 1.5 hours to climb down.  It was sleeting part of the way down.  You can see storms building in the background.

I met this little fella on the way down.  I'm not sure what it's called. I think I'd like to tackle all four mountains someday before I get too old.

Rocky Mountain National Park

This picture was taken on Mount Evan's Highway in Rocky Mountain National Park. When it's sunny it's about 70 degrees, then it turns cloudy and the temp drops 20 degrees. 

A little bit later down the road we saw a bunch of cars park along the side.  There were a bunch of elk in the distance; maybe 100 or so.  There were also two smaller bulls alot closer to the road.  Keith and I walked over a little closer and took this pic. I've got some HD video of the heard but I can't post that here.  It's way to large of a file.

Here's another picture of the elk. If you click on these pictures you can see them full size.  You can then see the elk herd in the background.

Typical scenery in Rocky Mountain National Park

We finished touring the park and headed south to find an RV park.  We stopped in a convenience store and asked the local help.  This woman said there was a USFS campground just before Kenshoshee Pass.  About 30 minutes away.  Well it was more like 1 hour away.  As I said earlier, we were the only visitors in that campground.  That was a first.

Camped at a usfs campground last nite. No one else was there. It was up at 10,100'. On the way up to Kite Lake. Will try hiking to top of a 14k mountain.

Spending the night in Craig, Colorado.

Left Yellowstone National Park this morning.  Forgot to try jumping that fence again.  Darn.
We got here (Craig) late, but never the less we're here.  Will head for Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow.  Will drive the U.S.'s highest highway up to Mount Evans.
Currently the plan is to be back in Georgetown late Sunday night.
We're hoping to get some good leads on where to try our luck fishing in Colorado.  So that's probably on the schedule for Friday.
This next pic is from Yellowstone. This bull started walking across a field about 100 yds away and it walked right behind the truck.  Keith took a pretty good shot!

Grand Teton National Park

Fishing on the Flathead River (Glacier Natl Park). 

Didn't know how to catch BIG ONES. I'll have to learn fly fishing.

Excuse me. Thats actually 6,000.

Just completed our 5,000th mile. Getting close to Colorado.

Bison/Bacon/Cheeseburger 4 lunch @ Tetons natl park. Yum!

57 Degrees and drizzling in Yellowstone.

This will make you laugh!

7/31/2011
It's important to keep ourselves humble so we don't start thinking too much of ourselves.  Keith and I arrived in Yellowstone today and parked Pancho at a nearby RV park.  Keith and I were going to walk over to a nearby lake and we need to climb over a little fence.

Keith decided to climb over, while I quickly evaluated the situation and decided that it would be a lot easier to just jump over it.  Keith didn't think I'd make it and he had his camera so he took this short video.

So do you think I made it or not?  Either way, even I laughed myself to tears.  I'll try it again tomorrow.

Glacier National Park

7/29/2011
Last minute changes took us to Glacier National Park instead of Banf in Canada. 

On our first night we camped at Bowman Lake.  This pic was taken the next morning.

We later went on the Road to the Sun drive.  These are a few of those pics.
4,760 Miles and counting. You can see cars going up the road in the background.

This is how close you could get to a mountain goat.

At the Road to the Sun Visitor Center.

At the Road to the Sun Visitor Center.

This shows evidence of an old forest fire.

Keith and I were driving into town to get gas and eat and the traffic started slowing down but I couldn't see why.  Eventually, I realized something was running down the road.  Apparently this got away from its owner who was following it in his pickup, trying to catch it.
Keith took this "drive by shooting" shot.

Glacier National Park-River Rafting

Oscar with the black ball cap, Keith is behind the blonde girl.  Click pic for full size.

This was pretty fun for our first rafting experience.  I think we're ready for a little bit harder stuff.  Water was 48 degrees warm.

Almost to Canada.

July 28th, 2011


It is now almost 11:30 p.m. and we finally got settled.  Not sure how many miles we drove today, but it was quite a bit. Just as it was getting dark tonite, Keith noticed the trailer lights weren't working.  After a little bit of troubleshooting he discovered we had a 20 amp fuse that had blown in the truck.  Had to get a replacement at Walmart.  Then we continued to drive north hoping to find an RV park  before we hit Canada.


We found Blue Lake RV Resort.  This resort does not appear to be of the same caliber as the Durango resort. Anyway, we're here and ready to go to bed.  They have WIFI so I thought I'd post a quick update.
Should be in  Banff National Park tomorrow.


No pictures to post today.

15.34 MPG avg. so far, over the last 4,000 miles.

New Pics on Photobucket.

July 26, 2011

Sorry for not posting any pics or updates lately.  We've been in locations where WIFI was not available.  I hope you can acess the link below where I have posted some of the many pics from the last several days.  They are not necessarily in the order we took them.

http://s292.photobucket.com/albums/mm19/oscaraldapeleal/Western%20US%20Parks/

But he only caught one fish. -Keith

I caught 100% more fish than Keith yesterday! -Oscar

Heading to Oregon's pacific coast highway

Heading to Oregon's pacific coast highway

Snow along road to Crater Lake. 71 Degrees. NICE!

Woke up to 36 degrees in Lapine, Oregon. Keith turned on the heater last night.

Goin fishin

Hello Oregon!

Bumpy, not very interesting drive to Redwoods.

7/23/2011 Saturday


Writing this update on the drive to Redwood National Forest.


Left Sequoia National Park today and headed for Redwood National Park. It’s over 400 miles so I decided we wouldn’t take the longer more scenic route. Ronda did some travel consulting today and found out no campsites were available in the vicinity of the park. I guess it would have been just as bad in Yosemite, so I’ll take that as a good call. We’re staying in Red Bluff at an RV Park Resort. RV Park and Resort should be anonyms. I guess we’ll find out when we get there. I’ve been really surprised by how much agriculture there is. In Texas most of the agriculture you see along the road is stuff cows eat. We must have passed by millions of orange trees and at least that many grape orchards. Actually I don’t have a clue when you call something an orchard or a grove. Someone please comment. Every one of these is drip irrigated. Sometimes the orchards are on both sides of the road. You can see this requires a major investment.

California really likes to line their roadways with oleanders. They grow to be like giant hedges. I guess that’s better than the concrete barriers we like to use.

We passed by a ship channel that really seemed out of place. Huge ships parked (moored?) there. I figured that’s how we get California fruit to other countries.  Didn't get a picture of that.


An irritating law here in California is that all vehicles towing trailers and truck have a speed limit of 55 MPH. That’s even if the speed limit for all others is 70 MPH. So we crawled all day today. What’s even more irritating is that we only passed up only two vehicles all day. So I guess it’s a speed limit in theory but not in practice. Never saw a highway patrol either. For a state that’s broke, they sure could get a lot of revenue from speeding tickets.


Looks like the resort really is a resort!

This is a really nice place. Swimming pool, hot tub, showers, tv sitting area with leather couches, two laundromats.  When you check in, they escort you to your site. This will probably be the nicest RV park of the whole trip.

Sequoia National Park

7/22/2011 Friday

This morning when we woke up and headed up to see the General Sherman Sequoia tree, it marked our first week of travel. Sitting here at night in the Potwisha USFS campground, and typing out the update for today. There are a lot of families that camp out and I think the kids have the most fun considering they appear to be laughing most of the time. Some adults are hanging out fixing supper. The Hispanic family across from us was playing Mexican Bingo last night. Brought back memories of when I used to do the same, except not at a campground.


There’s a roaring river that runs through the campground and at our distance, it’s just a constant white noise. Went down to the river and took some pics and video. Met some kids coming up from the river and talked to them a bit. They said it was cold, but it got warmer the longer you were in it. Not sure exactly where they were getting in because there didn’t appear to be a safe place anywhere. The river is working like a Maytag washing machine. A sign by the river says someone drowns in this river every year.

We left Pancho at the campground for one more day because we weren’t allowed to take him with us. Vehicles were restricted to an overall length of 22’. The roads are really windy and I can see how long vehicles would make it dangerous for everyone. Our plan was to camp at one of the other campgrounds higher up. We were looking for a campground that had cooler night temps. We gathered up our gear and took off. We bought our tickets for the Crystal Cave tour then drove over to the cave.  It was at a lower elevation than the forest, so the mosquitos were pretty bad.  It was not a very big cave, but still neat and the temp was a cool 50 degrees.

General Sherman is quite a spectacle. I wish cameras did a better job of capturing its size. Our sight is some much better than a camera for things like this. I learned that when the Sequoia gets old, the top of the tree quits growing so it doesn’t get any taller. At that point the trunk starts getting thicker. The thicker the tree the older it is.

The largest tree has a trunk 30’ across. After they get so big, you can’t really tell which one is bigger unless they were next to each other. The Grant tree looks as big as the Sherman tree.

THE SHERMAN TREE

K

GRANT TREE: Keith is standing about 50' in front of the tree so he would look even smaller if he was right next to it.

After checking out the trees we went to find a campsite at the upper campgrounds. There was not one site available anywhere. On the way back to the Potwisha campground we took a wrong turn and lost some travel time but saw more of the Kings Canyon National Park. We finally got back to camp by dark and ate some venison sausage, took showers, etc.  Oh yea, and we saw this bear along the way to the Crystal Cave tour.

BEAR

Tomorrow we head for the Redwood National Forest to see the Redwoods. I originally planned to go to Yosemite but it being a Saturday tomorrow, I figured the park would be really packed. Will update with more pictures soon.

Guitar Hero?

Ronda got us booked at the Durango RV Resort in Red Bluff, CA.  The Lodge room had a Wii and Keith is having a therapy session with his left arm.  I was busy updating the blog and washing clothes. Guess who was having more fun?

No campsites avail. In redwood forest. Staying in town of red bluff. Will update blog tonite with pics from Sequioa.

Interstate 5 in CA is terrible! Shoulder looks better than the slow lane.

We have seen over 100 miles of all sorts of orchards and groves. Oranges, lemons, grapes, corn, pecans, alfalfa, plums, and peaches. Lots of dairy farms too.

Skipping Yosemite headed to Redwood National Park

Just coasted 15 miles downhill in the Mojave Desert!

Hello California!

Las Vegas, NV

Keith had only been to the airport in Las Vegas, so although it was late we drove down the strip so he could see all the casinos.  I hadn't been here in about 14 years.  Things look different.  Anyway we were really tired last night but we managed to take a shower before going to bed and Keith washed some clothes.  Las Vegas didn't take any of our quarters or dollar bills, except for RV park, ice, gas, and washateria.

Zion National Park

Click on the picture. Can you see Keith?
I'd post more pics but we have to get rolling to Sequioa Natl Park.  It's 410 miles away.

2,000 Miles.

We were in Hurricane, Arizona when we hit 2,000 miles, so we pulled over and took a picture.  This is on the way to Las Vegas from Zion National Park.

Bryce Canyon National Park

106 Degrees 70 miles from Vegas in the shade at sundown.

Living on the Edge.

It's scarier than it looks.  I hope he has a parachute in that backpack!  Don't do it Keith, things aren't that bad!

Going to Bryce and Zion National Park today.  Will try to drive to Las Vegas afterwards instead of trying to get there tomorrow.  That would save us about 200 miles of driving.

Grand Canyon Pics, 1,553 miles.

133 Miles

 JULY 15, 2010




This was our first stop on the trip.  Hard to see, but that's 133 on the sign.

This was our first stop in Santa Anna, Texas.  I thought I had lost these pics but found them on my camcorder.

 

Paul and Tammy, Keith's parents.
They received Paul's Grandmother's garden plow.  This thing is really old.



Out of Sequence.

JULY 19, 2011
The Blog postings won't necessarily be in the chronological order they occurred because sometimes we don't have WIFI access and I will post when I can.  I will start each post though, with the date it's related to.

Arizona, hotter than Colorado.



You can't tell, but Keith had a headache.

 JULY 19, 2011

We found a nice RV park with showers last night.  I'll have to check the sign but I think I know what the word "Hot" is not in front of the word Shower. The showers were hot inside, I guess because the water only changes from cold to cool.  The valve is very touchy and since you're kind of expecting hot water, you get a surprise when you turn on the water.  I thought Keith Polar Bear Reese would have enjoyed it, since he likes sleeping with the air conditioner down to 68 degrees.  He thought it was not warm. I think we'll be taking showers in the camper. 

We'll be leaving Pancho at the park to fend for himself while we go to the Grand Canyon.  There's another pop-up next to us so maybe they'll share some stories while we're out.  

I had more of Dwight's fish (three times now) last night.  Keith tried the Boudin sausage but thought it didn't taste right grilled on propane.  I tasted it and could tell it had onion in it, that's as far as that went.  Anyway, the fish is gone.  After three nights, I won't each fish for awhile.  For me, the Tony's Cajun Seasoning style tasted better than the butter and garlic style.  However, Dwight texted me and told me I just didn't do it right.  Next time I ask Dwight for some fish, I'll have to ask for smaller portions :)
O.K. we're out to G.C., later.

Keith was excited to know he still had 6,500 pictures left he could take.  He was afraid he'd fill up the camera, so I think he was holding back.

We learned that while traveling some places look like your on a level road, though if you're driving you can tell the truck is pulling up hill.  Kind of deceiving.