Just the Facts Maam! A 5 month trip around the western USA

[SargeW]

Thanks Jackie, she loves hearing the comments. She is also a great story teller and puts a lot of thought into her entries.

 

[Tom and Margi]

I really enjoy reading Diane's blog posts and look forward to each and every one.  Pictures are great, too.  Margi

 

[jackiemac]

Thanks Jackie, she loves hearing the comments. She is also a great story teller and puts a lot of thought into her entries.

That's obvious Marty, I know its tough to think about what to write as it's easy to ramble on. Her content is spot on.

Thank you both for doing these as it gives folk a good idea of what to expect.

 

[jymbee]

Thanks jymbee! Diane takes most of the pics, and I fill in the gaps.  She writes well, and takes great photos.

I can testify to the effort it takes to put down in writing & images what you're experiencing on the road.

I made an attempt to maintain a travel blog with comments, photos, maps, etc during our trip last winter. Main purpose at the time was simply to keep friends & family up to date as to our adventures along the way. In the end, guess who appreciated the blog most-- by far? WE did! I'm always thinking back and trying to remember where we were when such & such happened, or what this or that park looked like, or where were we when something happened? Hey, no problem. Just bring up our blog. 

Kind of like old family slides I expect where long after the others have tired of yet another "family slide session" the picture takes still get the most enjoyment out of viewing them.

This was my effort last year, hopefully to be resurrected if/when we hit the road again:

http://www.meekerhollow.net/mhblog/

 

[SargeW]

Good job Tim!  I often look back at my blogs and entries as well.  Helps to jog my memory on places that I want to go back to and spend more time.

 

[SargeW]

Sky Mountain Resort RV Park
Chama, NM​

The little town of Chama has several RV parks, but this one is the nicest, IMHO.  The park has 46 RV sites, 8 of them pull up to within feet of the Chama River flowing past your site. We stayed in site #3 for three days.  The park has all gravel roads and sites, and the gravel is thick and firmly compacted. The owner is on site, takes great care of the park keeping everything neat and trimmed. Our river front site was $46 a night for our 3 night stay. Chama is over 7700' elevation, so summer temps are 70's to mid 80's. 

Our site pulled right up to a short pole fence that separated us from the river. A gate in the middle of the fence allows easy access to the river for walking, fishing, or playing in the river itself. In a motor home this is a great view out of your front window.  The sites are plenty wide, but pulling into the river view sites can be tight.  The owner did a great job though directing me into the site around several trees and past other RV's.  Usually I don't follow directions from anyone else except Diane, as she is the only other person that has a keen interest in the safety of our RV.  But the owner gave clear easy to follow hand signals and set me up properly in the site.  One issue with our 40' Bus is that we needed to pull far enough forward to allow room for others to drive past the back of the RV.  This set me up about 25' from the sewer hook up which is in the back of the site. Although I carry plenty of sewer hose, be aware if you come here to bring enough.

All of the utilities worked well, and the park offers free Wifi. As with some other more rural locations in NM, cellular signal and cell towers are not plentiful. I was able to use our on board Wifi after raising the mast on the antenna, but connectivity was sketchy and slow.  The park Wifi worked OK, but I did experience frequent disconnects, most likely to the amount of other RV'ers probably trying to use it as well.  We were able to stream video in the evening from our on board Wifi, with occasional buffering. You may want to bring along some DVD's to watch though, as there were only 6 OTA channels available.  Three of those were PBS, and one was Spanish. There is no cable offered.

The restrooms looked to be handicapped accessible, but they were closed due to Covid. The laundry room was available but had a sign up sheet on the door. There are 2 fenced dog areas separated by a fence. Waste bags are provided by the park.  One notable issue is that there is only one trash dumpster and it is up by the office. So taking out the daily trash is a good little walk, slightly up hill. The riverfront sites, 1 ? 8 are the furthest from the dumpster.

There is a Lowes grocery store/hardware store in town (yep, like the big box building supply store) . It's adequate for basic food supplies, but don't expect a lot of choices in the food or the hardware portion. Due to Covid, a lot of the town was still closed down, including a nearby train station that normally provides scenic train rides of the area.

We followed Google maps to get to the park, but for some reason Google came up about a mile short of where the park actually is.  There is a RV park nearby the location Google gave us, just not the right one.  Sky Mountain is slightly up hill from the main road to pull into the parking area.

We were here during Monsoon season, and in the afternoons a Monsoon can blow in fast and hard, and bring heavy short periods of rain and hail. We experienced that our second day. So I advise against leaving the RV with a patio awing out. You may not have one when you get back.  Usually within an hour the sun is out and shining again. 

Pic 1) Set up in the site
Pic 2) The view out of the front
Pic 3) Out the back of the site
Pic 4) The sites in back of us

 

[jackiemac]

Looks really nice, great spot!

 

[Boat Addict]

We stayed at the same park in Chama. The abundance of rain during that week had the river overflowing its banks.  So we stayed one row in. And the train goes by there twice a day. There is a small eatery in town called Fina's Grill. Breakfast is great. But by all means if you get a chance go get their cinnamon bun if nothing else. One bun will feed four folks and its as big as a regular dinner plate.

 

[noappendix]

Looks like an amazing trip!!

 

[SargeW]

Wolf Creek Run RV Resort
Pagosa Springs, CO
​

We stepped up a bit this week and stayed at a Class A RV resort for the first stop in Colorado. I don't much care that it was Class A only, but I did enjoy the paved roads, concrete wide spacious RV pads, and lots of manicured trees and grass.  Some of the spots in the park are sold, but the owner isn't really trying to sell the rest.  He lives on site in the office/clubhouse, and is usually around doing little chores around the park. There is only 27 sites in the park, so it's not real big. 

The Corona virus is not much of a topic here, or in town for that matter. Dane, the owner explained that they have only had 8 cases in the county, and none were hospitalized.  Masks are still required in most stores, but lots of folks can be seen strolling the streets sans mask.  The second night we were here the park had a pot luck with the main course supplied by the owner, and he hired a bluegrass band to provide some entertainment.  Even the afternoon monsoon rains couldn't dampen the spirits of the attendee's.

We paid $79 a night for our stay, and about half of the park residents were seasonal, but the park does close in the winter months. All of the sites are back in or a few pull ins, but all have great space in the lots. As a result of the original owner planning to sell the lots, each one has a stick built storage shed on  the back of the pad. They have electric service and a hasp on the door if you want to lock anything up while you were here. We did use it for some workout equipment during the stay. We were in site #7, sites 1-8 do back up to the road, but I do admit at night the road noise was not an issue.

For amenities here there is the clubhouse/rec room, and restrooms and showers as well that are beautifully modern and handicapped accessible. There is also an enclosed dog park, and a path that you can get down to the San Juan river that runs in back of the property. The center point of the park is a large stone fountain in that runs during the daylight hours. They offer free Wifi and cable Tv, which is good as we got zero channels with our over the air antenna. Our on board Cell antenna and booster worked great here, and signal was strong and constant using the T-Mobile sim card. Cell signal around  the town however was spotty depending on where you were.

We did lots of sight seeing here and traveled in all directions to see new places.  Diane just went live with her blog that has lots of info and pics of where we went and can be seen here:  http://www.mytripjournal.com/rvnchick2020

A few other interesting observations. For the last few stops in New Mexico and now Colorado, there has been a lack of DEF at the local Walmarts. Usually when we are not on an Interstate with a truck stop available, I get DEF by the jug at Walmart. But the last 3-4 Walmart's have been cleaned out for DEF, and most other camping supplies. I did find some at an O'Rileys auto supply in town though. The other notable thing was that while traveling n/b Piedra Road up into the local mountains, we came across several other RV campgrounds. Some were huge, 100-200 campsites, and they were PACKED. RV's so tightly spaced that they looked like a rally parking area.  Folks are definitely tired of ?sheltering at home?.

This is a nice place, albeit a bit pricey to do everyday. The town of Pagosa Springs has some interesting shops and downtown area. We went out to dinner one night for Diane's ?pre-Birthday celebration? to the ?Alley House Grill?.  The food and service were great, and I can highly recommend it.

From here we head to Ouray, Co. which will require some mountain driving and twisty's with no guardrail on some of it.  Oh well, it's no big deal, it's all part of the adventure!

Pic 1) Site 7 at Wolf Creek
Pic 2) The fountain in the center of the park
Pic 3) The road in back of our site
Pic 4) It's wine time under the canopy of the on site patio

 

[SargeW]

Ouray RV Park and Cabins
Ouray, CO​

For this stop this week we left Pagosa Springs and drove up the mountain to Ouray. This was our first trip to Ouray and it was interesting. Our route was Highway 160 to Highway 550.  It's 550 that takes off up the mountains. We knew that 550 was going to have some challenges, with steep grades up and down, and sheer drop offs in some areas with no guardrails.  About 5 minutes after turning onto 550, we were climbing steadily on two lane roads, with occasional passing lanes built in.  I was cruising about 60 mph with the cruise control set.  Up ahead as we rounded a curve there was a series of vehicles heading down the grade. The furthest one was a bright red semi pulling a loaded flat bed trailer. As soon as it came into view I could see smoke coming from the wheels. There was a Jeep pulling a travel trailer and a motor cycle driving in front of the semi. I opined that the smoke was the trucks brakes and that he was in trouble. He was gaining fast on the vehicles in front of him. As he got closer the smoke from the wheels was clearer, and as he passed me his electronic horn was blaring. Not his air horn.  The group disappeared around the curve I just came around and out of view. Last I saw of him he was straddling the middle of the road trying to avoid several vehicles in front of him. I don't know how it resolved, but we pray no one was hurt.  That part of the 550 grade we were on was about 8 miles long, and there were no runaway truck ramps on it.  It kinda made for a spooky ride the rest of the way to Ouray.  The distance from Durango to Ouray is about 70 miles, but it's nearly a 2 hour drive in the RV.

This park was the best rated park in the area and is right on the edge of town. The upsides about the park are that the surrounding views are spectacular, vertical cliffs and trees on the north side of the park, and the Umcompahgre River to the south, right behind some of the RV sites. A 1.8 mile river walk runs along the edge of the river and is easy access. The staff is very friendly and helpful, and they keep the park neat and clean.  There is the Ouray Cafe on site and it's open and serving food. There is a game room which is closed, and a laundry is available with Covid restrictions.  The bathrooms are open and available with restrictions, but are not handicapped accessible due to small doors on the stalls, and raised steps on the narrow shower stalls. They did appear clean and serviceable.

The downside to the park is that it is basically a gravel parking lot with hook ups. Our riverfront site was very narrow, and the rig next door was within 10' of our slide. That meant that you heard all of your neighbors conversations, sometimes sounding like they were inside with you. One day our drivers side neighbor decided to ?smoke? his dinner for several hours. The smoker was right under our window, so we had to close up and run the AC all day, or get smoked out.

We paid $60 a night for our site #41, but was really too much considering the close quarters. There were some wider sites to our right, #30 ? #36, but the price jumped to $80 a night, but they looked exactly the same. At least the whole park was heavily graveled so dust was kept to a minimum. Our last 2 nights they rented the site on our passenger side to a guy in a SUV pulling a Razor. No living quarters. So that meant that when him and his buddy were not sleeping in the back, they were leaning on the car, looking at our rig 6' away.  Not great.

The park offered Wifi, but it was fairly slow and crowded. I did manage to get signal from town on our router, but the only carrier that would work was Verizon, and it was equally slow. I exhausted my GB total in my plan the last day and got throttled to .6 MB.  Barely able to check email.  The park was always nearly full though, as it is better than the others nearby. There were 3 OTA channels available, 2 PBS and a kids channel.  Bring DVD's if you don't have satellite TV!

There is a lot to see and do in the area, and we toured quite a bit. Diane's blog is up and has lots of pics of the places we went. http://www.mytripjournal.com/travel-908383

From here we head into Utah for some different scenery.  It's going to be warmer though!

Pic 1) Looking up at the cliffs from our site across from the RV park.
Pic 2) The neighbor is really close though. Could almost touch his slide out while touching mine!
Pic 3) Yep, it's gravel parking lot.
Pic 4) And then they moved this guy in next door.
Pic 5) The river is up and over the berm about 30' away.

 

[X-Roughneck]

Marty,

Catching up on the Forum Activity from Beautiful Estes Park, Co. 

Followed your Lake Havisu AZ escape theory and we also got out of the HOT weather too.  Our dusty slice of the chihuahuan desert was getting too Hot.  Our 32 ft class C is not quite as homely as your Class A so living 5 months for me in our rig is not a option.  The slides start closing in after about 3 weeks max I have found from my limited RVn X-periences. Looks like we are going to rack up 10,000 miles on our First year of Part timing.  Getting away from the Jul-Aug heat will be factored in during the coming years for us.

When we were in Durango back in June of this year I drove one day on 160 to Pagosa Springs to visit a old child hood friend stricken with cancer.  Highway 160 has alot of wood line close to the road as does 550 also.  Some poor sap with UTAH plates on his Lexus wiped out his front end and radiator on that car with a direct hit on a rather Large, once healthy looking deer.  I could only imagine the mental pain people must live having accident that puts your transportation out of commission miles from home.

Adding to your detailed observations, Lots of wildlife activity too on 160 and 550 in addition to RUN AWAY 18 wheelers... Yikes!  I bet that Motorcyclist got a Pucker Factor of 10, Code Brown, Triple Shot alert when he saw that 18 wheeler with Smoke Billowing on his Brakes closing in on the rear view.  That is the time as a motor cyclist you want to riding the old 1000 CC crotch Rocket Kawasaki, Pin your ears back,hit the throttle and Hang on and Pray you will be alive later.  Not a good time to be riding a 250 CC with 18 wheeler closing in barrelling down on you.  :-[

Enjoy your trip, and BTW thanks for your X-cellent reviews.

John



               

 

[Joezeppy]

Marty, ... Our 32 ft class C is not quite as homely as your Class A ... John

I think both of your rigs are quite pretty, actually. LOL  ;D

 

[Rob&Deryl]

Marty,

Catching up on the Forum Activity from Beautiful Estes Park, Co. 

Followed your Lake Havisu AZ escape theory and we also got out of the HOT weather too.  Our dusty slice of the chihuahuan desert was getting too Hot.  Our 32 ft class C is not quite as homely as your Class A so living 5 months for me in our rig is not a option.  The slides start closing in after about 3 weeks max I have found from my limited RVn X-periences. Looks like we are going to rack up 10,000 miles on our First year of Part timing.  Getting away from the Jul-Aug heat will be factored in during the coming years for us.

When we were in Durango back in June of this year I drove one day on 160 to Pagosa Springs to visit a old child hood friend stricken with cancer.  Highway 160 has alot of wood line close to the road as does 550 also.  Some poor sap with UTAH plates on his Lexus wiped out his front end and radiator on that car with a direct hit on a rather Large, once healthy looking deer.  I could only imagine the mental pain people must live having accident that puts your transportation out of commission miles from home.

Adding to your detailed observations, Lots of wildlife activity too on 160 and 550 in addition to RUN AWAY 18 wheelers... Yikes!  I bet that Motorcyclist got a Pucker Factor of 10, Code Brown, Triple Shot alert when he saw that 18 wheeler with Smoke Billowing on his Brakes closing in on the rear view.  That is the time as a motor cyclist you want to riding the old 1000 CC crotch Rocket Kawasaki, Pin your ears back,hit the throttle and Hang on and Pray you will be alive later.  Not a good time to be riding a 250 CC with 18 wheeler closing in barrelling down on you.  :-[

Enjoy your trip, and BTW thanks for your X-cellent reviews.

John



             

I had some pretty hairy rides on my old ?77 KZ1000 - lol

 

[Lou Schneider]

Marty, in the past the RV Forum Ouray rally stayed at the Ouray KOA a bit further north.  Not so much like a parking lot, especially if you have a smaller rig that can fit into one of their smaller, irregularly laid out spaces.  They also have a big rig section.

I'm not a big fan of KOA but this one is nice.

 

[SargeW]

We went by and looked at it Lou. It would work, but like many KOA's, it was pretty dusty and barren. But thanks for the suggestion.

 

[WILDEBILL308]

Good report on your trip. It is fun to see others perspective of areas we have traveled.
Last year was much better than this year.
Bill

 

[SargeW]

Thanks Bill. I think last year was better too!

 

[SargeW]

Mountain Valley RV Resort
Heber City, UT
​

This is one of those parks that really lives up to the name of an ?RV Resort? IMHO.  It has about all of the features that I look for in a ?resort?.  Paved roads throughout the park, concrete pads, reasonable space between sites, most sites are pull through, and plenty of grass, landscaping and trees to add to the aesthetics. The park is split into 2 sides. The front section (phase 1) of the park is family friendly and has a large pool and spa, playground, basketball and pickleball courts, and a clubhouse. 

The back section has most of the same amenities as the front, sans the basketball court and playground.  The back section (phase 2) is the ?adults only? section, and a privacy fence separates the two halves. One of the advantages of the adult only area is that the cement pads are about 6' wider and 10' longer than the pads in the front section. We really appreciated having the extra outside space to lounge around and hang out. A clubhouse and laundry room are also provided and open for use.

The park accepts all type of rigs, but rigs older than 2000 model year require approval for entry. There are gates with electronic key pads for entry, and that was the only real odd part. The placement of the key pad is such that you really can't use it from your vehicle, and that means getting out each time you enter the park. 

Our site was in the adult section, site S-6, and we paid a weekly rate of $58 per night, not counting taxes. The park doesn't allow washing a vehicle at your site, but there is a large wash pad in the park that you buy tokens from to use the pad. The tokens are $10 each, and each one turns on the pressure wash/soap wand for 10 minutes. I did use it to finally wash the RV after all the dust bowl places we had been in lately. I checked the bathrooms and they looked like they could have been in a 5 star hotel, and were handicapped accessible. The park offers free Wifi, but I was able to use our on board router, but the signal from the tower was a bit sketchy. We were able to stream video at night though. Digital Cable is also included at each site along with the usual FHU utilities. There are two grassy dog parks as well, one in each section. It looks like the park has broken ground on what will eventually be phase 3 of the park. 

I did get some time to do a few maintenance items on the RV that I have been putting off. I replaced the motor in the over the door awning that failed a fed months back, and replaced the piano hinge on the cooktop with a stainless steel version, hoping that this one won't rust up like the other one did.

The Covid restrictions in the park, and in Utah for that matter have been pretty minimal. Masks are requested inside stores, and in restaurants before you are seated. The town itself is fairly modern and well equipped, and there are a lot of outdoor activities available in the area. I don't rate many RV parks as a ?10? but this one hits the mark in my book. From here we head into Idaho to continue the adventure.

Pic 1) Our site in the adult section. 
Pic 2) A site on in Phase 1. Note the picnic table on the grass as the cement is narrower.
Pic 3) The restrooms were top notch.
Pic 4) Pool, spa, and fire pit area.
Pic 5) Adults only in this area.
Pic 6) Finishing up the adjustments on the awning motor.
Pic 7) New stainless hinge on the stove top.

 

[Laura & Charles]

The word ?Resort? is ill-defined and loosely used.  We?ve stayed at that place twice and I have to agree that it does hit the mark of being an RV Resort. It?s the first private park we ever stayed at more than once and, if ever in need in that area, would definitely try to get in there again.