Darby Canyon

Hi everyone, or anyone anyway.
I haven't posted for a while cause Carol's been doing a fine jobe, but yesterday she stayed back nursing a cold while the rest of us drove / hiked up Darby Canyon.
We drove north toward driggs, idaho, and mark spotted this turnoff. 4 miles later the pavement ended. 5 more miles on a good gravel road to the turn around at the end of the road. From there we hilked up the canyon along the stream. After awhile everything got narrower and steeper and we were climbing rather than walking. Eventually we ran out of room and couldn't get any higher.

Here's some pictures of Darby Canyon.

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Riverview RV

This morning it was time to pack it up and move on up the road. After 3 nights and 2 days, it was time to head north. For those of you who haven't "camped" in a class A mortorhome, the drill goes like this:
Clean everything, put everything away, lock everything down so iy won't fly about the bus if I should happen to hit a bump.
Dump. Pull the drain valves for the "black" and "Gray" tanks.
Stow the "patio." Put away the lawn chairs and side table, sweep off and fold up the 9x12 mats, and stow them in "the basement"
Stow the awning. (loosen the side rails, hold the tube while flipping the release lever, gently feed in the lanyard while the tune and awning roll up. Secure the anti-blowout clips and put away the stick.)
Disconnect. Shut the vlaves. Disconnect the sewage hoase, wind it up, and stow it. Disconnect the fresh water hose and filter, wind it up, stop it somewhere else (we don't stow our water hose and our sewer hose in the same basement compartment!) disconnect roll up and stow the cable TV cable and electrical cord.
Finally, start the engine, bring in the slide, and dump the jacks.
Pull her out, and bring the jeep around for "mating"
Hook up the towbar,  safety cables, electrical cord, and breakaway cable.
Put the transfer case in neutral, turn on the braking system, turn off the brake light switch.

and finally do a full walk around, make sure nothing is hanging or falling off, everything is stowed, check the jeeps lights, pull the breakaway and make sure the compressor runs. check the air pressure in all 6 motorhome tires, 115 psi, end of discussion. Check em EVERY time. Blowouts are cuased by low pressure and blowouts suck. Oh yea, blowouts are someimes caused by curbs, but I'm getting better at that.

So, we motor on north on I25, an easy 120 mile run today. Did have to stop for gas, only needed a hundred and seventy dollars worth.

And here we are at Riverview RV. Site 40, end of the riverside row. This place is fantastic. Many RV parks pack em in so tight you can't breath. Many have next to no green, just gravel. This place has big sites. Grass, trees, nice. Very very nice. Here's some pics:

Riverview rv even had a dog excercise area, where we could let him loose and play some. Here's Riley platyingwith his new friend

And finally, business must be taken care of. This speaks for itself.

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Last morning in Colorado springs

After a restless night with a sick puppy, we'll be breaking camp and rolling north in a few hours for the next phase of ""Our Great Adventure 2010"

Read about sick puppy's here: http://firstgens.com/forum/22/1035.html?start=30

After five days of Carol having blog nightmares, I'm gonna put some pics up here and on firstgens, what's a vacation saga without pics?

The Turd, hooked up and ready to roll on out of here.

Night one's campsite, Lake Anita State Park in western Iowa.

Garden of the Gods Campground in Colorado Springs. Commercial campground, packed us in kinda tight, but a nice facity, good water, even cable TV.

We saw this lil fella yesterday, while cruising out toward the gold rush town of cripple creek. We stopped at a pullout along the road and he came right up to the car, begging for handouts. he showed no fear, and hung around for quite a while. I'd call this a learned behavior for sure.

Main Street Cripple Creek Colorado. This was a huge part of the gold rush days, old abandoned mines all around the town. Kinda sad today, mostly seedy lil casinos and old folks killing what time they have left feeding one armed bandits.

spotted this herd of deer on a ridge, siloetted by the setting sun, on the way back from cripple creek.

Same spot, facing the other direction.

Just a cool lil shot while hiking in the woods.

A small waterfall along the same trail.

Garden of the Gods State Park

It was hotter than hades the day we went into Garden of the Gods. Here's Riley, he found some shade and decided he was gonna take it easy for a while.

So now you're all caught up to date. It's Tuesday morning, we're gonna get some pancakes and sausage going for breakfast, get showered and dressed, clean up the campsite and the bus, and break camp and roll north. I'll check in with you'all later!

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Colorado Springs!

Here it is the third day of our great adventure 2010, and we're settling down inside the bus at 9:30 pm local after a very busy day.

Let's see... last night we w ere on the shore os Lake Ogallala, somewhere west of north butt nebraska. Now nebraska is interesting... not. flat as a board and road straight as an arrow, endlessly. 460 miles from one end to the other. The east side, omaha / lincoln, where the highway follows the river, is a lil interesting. West of where we stayed the night the land dries out, farms give way to grass and sage, and it looks more western.
In between, it is an endless flat wasteland of corn on the left beans on the right.

So we got up this morning, made blueberry muffins for breakfast, showered in a nice facility provided by the state of nebraska, and broke camp early and hit t he road. A lil delay when I decided to bring the air pressure up in the bus. I'd been running a hundred pounds looking for a better ride, but the steering had not been nice to me, wandering all over and very slow to respond to corrections. So we stopped at a truckstop and brought all six up to max, 120 psi, actually i went to 125 since the tires were warm.

By 10 am we were in colorado on I76, and on the outskirts of denver by 1. We tried to find something called red rock ampatheature to stop for lunch, but between Carol's map reading skills and "bitchin betty's" not showing me every interstate (doncha think at "the right" zoom, if it showed some it swhould show them all?) well, we failed... ended up stopping for lunch in some big office complex parking lot (empty on a saturday) and picknicking in a shady spot on the shore of the retention pond.

Was great to finally see the rocky mountains again. As I said at the beginning of this blog, that's why we're here, cause I'm sick to death of the flatlands. Heading south on I25, we had a couple steep climbs, and drove through a bitchin thunderstorm that we watched come down out of the mountains.

Finally around 4 we hit colorado springs, and found "Garden of the Gods" campground. This is a commercial facility on colorado ave at maybe 36th or so? very close to the state park of the same name. So we're packed in here like sardines, but the facilities are nice, the place seems quiet enough, and of course you can't beat the location.

After a great dinner of steak fajitas cooked outside, we went and found red rock canyon open space, a fairly new huge park / hiking place that turned out to be right across the street. We hiked the canyons for a mile and a half or so, and riley got some much needed excersize. And now it's time to give the pup one last walk before bed, and find someplace to get rid of our garbage bag. g'night all.
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nebraska

see my post on firstgens.com, as my connection sucks to badly to go thru another post/.
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Today is the day, The Great Rolling turd will roll!

Riley let us sleep in today, to a little after six am can ya believe it? I went back to bed after taking him out, and me and the missus pretended to sleep for another hour. It's still a max humidity steambath outside, rained during the night but that did not kill the humidity.

Shower, breakfast, load a few other items, hook up the jeep and we're ready to roll.

I'm gonna go get some blueberry muffins in the oven and head up to the shower.
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24 hours!

It's wednesday mornig, and in 24 hours we'll be saddling up and hitting the road.
Got lots of packing done yesterday, mine and carol's clothes, and most of the rest of the food.

If I go to work early, do I get to leave early?
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3 more daze...

spent this morning washing and waxing the bus, gawd that thing is big. Used the spray and wipe quik wax for most of it, but the front clip got mcguires paste wax, dayum that was a job.
Then we went to CostCo for some meat. Scored some good steaks, some lunchmeat, and 3 rack of fabulous baby back ribs for just a schosh over 10 bucks a peice! Love Costco meat.
also cleaned and checked out our bicycles, so they are ready to go.

Left to do:
Load clothes
fishing stuff.
rest of the food.
toolkit.
one more shopiing trip.

I'm ready, let's just do it all ready.
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five days from now

I'll be relaxing under my awning, in my camping world recliner, sipping a cold margarita on the shore of Lake Anita in Western Iowa, our first day of traveling will be at an end.

finished getting the jeep ready. tow lighting is all set. Tow bar, emergency cables. Aux braking system with breakaway finished today. Washed her and waxed her.

tomorrow the bus comes home. The bus stays in the driveway now until we leave.

Almost time.
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Wow, less than a week?

guess I skipped a few days? SIX days now until we leave. Today, a Friday workday, a long weekend, and 2 workdays next week, then we's rolling west.
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