Tuesday, April 13, 2021

We wake up in the parking lot of Breckinridge Brewery and the winds have blown strong all night. Luckily, we have managed to sleep through the night. It is so cold that we have kept the generator running all night to keep warm. We wake to a somewhat comfortable space and I arise early and shower in the modest, yet useable shower.

While we get ready for our day, Elee heats up Breakfast Burritos left over from yesterday’s restaurant breakfast. They are almost as tasty as the were fresh and we enjoy them!

We drive away from beautiful Breckenridge and go west long the 70 Highway. The scenery of Colorado’s mountains is breathtaking! After only a couple hours, and many tunnels later, we arrive in Grand Junction, CO. It is time for a break and lunch. So we leave the highway and look up a winery that we spotted. Hermosa Vineyards Winery. We pull up and I turn the RV around which has become easier. We walk up to the winery and all of a sudden the doors slide apart magically. The winemaker meets us personally and we partake of a wine tasting of his 7 featured wines.

We like his white, one of his reds (a Malbec) and his dessert wine, a Cherry Wine! We don’t normally like sweet dessert wines but this was very good! We end up walking out with a Malbec and his White Blend and a recommendation for a lunch restaurant. We look it up and end up having lunch at Rockslide Brewery where we kibitz with the waiter and have fun. We both order Bison Burgers and I order mine with jalapenos. Wonderful lunch!

Then we gas up the RV ($150) and get sundries in Paradise, Co (near Grand Junction) and shopped for a few incidentals that we need. We then head along and find our way onto the 70 Hwy and head towards Moab, Utah. Have you ever heard of a place with no name? How about a place named, “No Name”? We find route 128 off the 70 and it drives along the Colorado River. It is a very scenic view! Fun ride and the RV handles it very well!

We finally arrive in Arches National Park and we drive into the park and found several Arches to shoot near Sunset. Too bad for us that sunset is much less than great as a lot of cloud cover abounds! But we plan to spend the next 36 hours here and hope to find some fun stuff!

We never tried to book campsites in advance here. Who wants to come to this area in April? Well, we found out the hard way that hundreds of people come here this time of year! All the campsites are full to overflowing! So with several phone calls, we found a campsite a few miles north of Arches for the night. We are settled in and we’ll see you tomorrow!

Monday, April 12, 2021

Waking up in Strasburg, CO this morning, a suburb to the east of Denver. It has been a long cold night. Lucky for us we have somewhat mastered the heater in the RV. The heater blows very dry hot air into the rig much to the dislike of our sinuses. But at least it’s warm inside. Because outside it is at freezing or below.

This morning we have decided we’ll hit the road by 7AM and get up to Estes National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. But we have been receiving messages from an online friend that is part of our GuruShots.com photography game and have known him online for going on a year. He is a top notch photographer and it turns out he is also driving across country after picking up a van of his own from Pennsylvania!

So our friend, we’ll call him “Joe”, because that is his real name, LOL, has been making quite the good travel time across country and has caught up with us in Denver. We have exchanged phone numbers and text each other. Turns out that while we sleep in a KOA Kampground outside of Denver, (we had given him our location and sent a photo of our RV) he finds our Kampground and actually drives in and finds our RV and parks in front of it. I step out of the RV and there he is! The temps are way down in the 30’s and Joe is wearing a t-shirt and shorts!

So Joe and his wife Karla are right there in our Kampground. There is a breakfast restaurant right across the street and we treat them to breakfast. Joe insists on chipping in and we make it the tip for the waitress! We visit (I would like to say, ‘catch up’, but we chat online every day or two and seem to know each other well. His company for anyone who is interested in printing their photos on metal sheets, is HotShotExposures on FaceBook or ReecePhotoArt.com ). Joe is a master craftsman!

But it is time to hit the road and Joe agrees. He is headed the same basic direction that we are but has different photo plans. We pull out of the Kampground and go over the checklist at the exit to make sure we are set to go!

We head north to Estes Park and Joe heads west towards Moab, Utah. (We are heading there tomorrow). We arrive in Estes Park around 11AM and tour the small area. Our cameras are thrilled to be challenged again and produce some good results!

We then venture on up into Rocky Mountain National Park and get about 7 miles in and the roads are closed. It is still winter here even though it is almost mid April. But we are satisfied and it is time to head back down to Breckenridge where we plan to spend the night. We will need internet tonight and signals are sparse up here.

We stop for an overview of Horseshoe Park and take a few photos.

We drive the “Peak to Peak” highway and make a couple stops to keep our driving sanity intact. First stop was in the small town of Saratoga to stretch our legs.

Next stop was in Nederland because I feel the need to stretch my legs again as the mountain roads are brutal. Here, Elee opts to stay in the RV because of the temperature outside! 33 degrees! Or for my friends around the globe, that’s 1 degree C!

Cameras satiated, we head south and travel along the “Peak to Peak” Highway. Winds have been very light today which is a welcome relief because the RV is much easier to handle. We pass through Central City and pull into Breckenridge with plenty of time to spare. We check into our Harvest Host which turns out to be ‘Broken Compass Brewery’ and they instruct us where to park.

They don’t seem to offer a food menu so we take a walk along the road and come across the ‘Breckenridge Distillery’. This is a very high end distillery that has a food menu and it seems they are so much in demand that, even on a Monday night, you need reservations. Bummer. So Elee and I turn on the charm (it doesn’t hurt to mention that we write travel blogs) and the Hostess tells us to wait a few minutes. Sure enough, she finds us a couple stools at the bar and seats us. All is good!

We look at the menu and it ranges from $31 for a chicken dinner to $180 for a Wagyu Beef Tomahawk Steak. Wow! We are not on a high budget this trip (one day I’d really like to taste Wagyu Beef) so we stayed on the low end and had a chicken cassoulet and a beef tips wrap that was to die for delicious! We also ordered a couple of custom drinks that they make from their own distilled spirits. I had a smoked Whiskey drink smoked with apple wood in a Rum Cask! It was called, “May The Orchard Be With You! Elee had a Genever Juice! The meals and drinks were top notch and delicious! The bartenders that served us, Eric and Griffon, were personable and knowledgeable and a delight to chat with! Turns our they were also originally from the northeast and we all had things in common!

We bid our adieus to the staff and walk back to our RV, about a mile. Here starts our highlight of our evening, the Orange County Wine Society’s (OCWS.org) Monday Night Varietal Happy Hour! Tonight Elee and I are Hosting! And we Host it from a parking lot in Breckenridge, Co! Thus the reason for needing internet! So the Happy Hour starts up and we have around 14-15 people. The Varietal this week is Pinot Grigio (or Pinot Gris). The Happy Hour is a grand success and a good time is had by all attendees!

Here’s my plug for our Wine Society! Please feel free to look up Orange County Wine Society at OCWS.org and enjoy all they have to offer! https://ocws.org/

It is time to call it a night as tomorrow we will get up and head towards Moab, Utah and attempt to visit Arches National Park where I hope to photograph Sunset, The Milky Way (middle of the night) and Sunrise. A tall order!

Goodnight and see you tomorrow!

Sunday, April 11, 2021

We wake up in Wakeeney, Kansas today in a KOA Kampground (correct spelling). We had full Hook Ups last night so we are able to refill our water tank and dump our black and grey tanks. We pack up and find a good breakfast restaurant down the street at “Jack & Chet’s” and we get our morning meal. We stop at the Dollar Store on the way to the Highway onramp and pick up a couple sundries. Like a corkscrew. LOL

It’s a windy morning. VERY windy! We fill up the gas tank to the tune of $100, seems to be the days rations. Then we hit the road and I cut my speed to 55 for the first hour to adjust to the wind. Driving The Beast today is a job. We can’t believe how many Semi’s are passing us at 75mph, the Speed Limit. After an hour, I feel comfortable kicking the speed up to 60. Semi’s keep passing us at 75. I fight the wheel and it fights back. We manage to trudge along at 60. I see a sign for “Goodland, KS”. I pull off for a break and we find the world’s largest Van Gogh Painting on the world’s largest easel. The easel is easily 60 feet tall and the painting is about 25 feet tall!

Okay, so I was able to relieve my driving concentration for 10-15 minutes. A welcome break. Back on the highway and there is about an hour and a half to our Kampground (correct spelling) and I hang onto the wheel and weather the traffic. I feel driving fatigue coming on again and I pull off the highway in Stanton, KS and tell Elee I need to stop. We are in a very tiny town and I pull off into a “Claremont Winery” parking lot. I guess I’m attracted to wineries? Who knew? The winery is closed for tasting but open for purchases! Elee finds a bottle of Pinot Grigio that we want for our Wine Varietal Happy Hour tomorrow night to happen online! I eat a sandwich (Elee makes great on the road sandwiches!) and take a catnap for a half hour. Then we get going again and make it easily to our Strasburg KOA (just east of Denver, CO) and set up the Hook Ups.

There is a BBQ Restaurant next door but Elee is tired of BBQ (Really??? I could never tire of BBQ) So we walk across the street to what appears to be a diner of sorts, named ‘Rookies’, and they offer Strip Steak and Rib Eye. Elee opts for chicken and reports it is very good. My Rib Eye is more like a very tough and flavorless strip steak and we mention it to the waitress. She tells the cook and the word comes back that the cook says it’s a Rib Eye. It seems we have insulted him. Oh well, Say La Vie!

It is approaching sunset and we spotted some fun photo subjects including “Covered wagons” that you can stay in at our little park along with some old abandoned railroad cars on abandoned sidings next to our campground and we get out the cameras that have been sorely neglected all day for the most part and we put them to work. They smile at us and purr and click. But it is quite cold. I have donned the hoodie to my sweatshirt. Our hands are in our pockets to stay warm. We walk back to the Kampgrounds and get in the RV for the evening.

I get my Blog notes together for the day and it is time to turn in. Our plan is to get up early in the morning and head up towards Estes National Park.

See you tomorrow!

Saturday, April 10, 2021

So we wake up after sleeping restlessly in steady rain all night in Kansas City, MO. We have managed to figure out the heating system so we’re not freezing and can turn on the heat! Showers and hot coffee and hot breakfast heated up on the stove ensue. The Microwave seems to be dead and off our list of usable appliances for the duration of the trip. Bummer but we will survive because we have a gas stove.

So here we are, ready to leave on our day’s journey and I get in the drivers seat and start the engine. I look around at the gauges and controls and see the 4 way flashers are on (emergency flashers). This is strange because we never turned them on intentionally. Okay, so turn them off. Wait, where is the switch? Can’t find it. Search and search to no avail, it’s not here. The back up dash cam is also on. Even driving forward. This is all strange. We search and search and can’t figure it out. So we call our contact at the dealer where we picked the RV up. He has today off but he is such a nice guy that he takes on our dilemma. He searches records and I send him photos of all parts of the dashboard and we can’t figure this out. So he promises to keep trying. We drive away with our Flashers on and find a Dealership for RV’s and they seem baffled also. Until the technician inadvertently moves a plug on the dashboard and voila! There is the switch! Problem solved! Even the back up camera is corrected!

So we drive on and I even get some photos of Water Towers which I have quite a collection of!

Now we have lost almost 3 hours that we thought we’d be driving but we try to keep to our plan. We have spotted a place called “Truckhenge” that has peaked our interest and it is just over an hour from us in Topeka. We arrive there and we have to drive by car and truck junkyards and construction sites. Wow, this is becoming comical! But we come across this derelict property but recognize this must be the place as we see trucks sticking out of the ground!

So we manage to turn the RV around at the end of a narrow dirt path and park outside of Truckhenge as the driveway appears to be too narrow to navigate our Beast into. We walk into the property and don’t see anyone. So we browse around and don’t make any effort to hide our presence. Sure enough, after 5 minutes, and older man with a full scraggly beard comes out and makes his presence known as the owner. He is pleasant and jovial and begins regaling us with stories of his past and how he came about creating his art, which includes chain saw carvings, junk turned into art, exhibits named “Boathenge, Truckhenge, Carhenge”, etc. I dub some of his displays, “Bottlehenge”, “Bicycle Tree”, among others including a “Shoe Fence”. This man talks 3-5 times faster than normal. The words fly out of his mouth! I can only understand a little of what he says but Elee understands most of it, LOL. She says it’s because she is from New York! He invites us to return with our own spray paint cans and to decorate his displays any way we like! Reminds us totally of “Cadillac Ranch” in Texas that we visited a few years back. We even spot 3 beautiful Peacocks wandering the property and one of them even preens its feathers for me!

I think the important part of his friendliness here is when I ask him his admission price and he says he only asks for a donation. I give him a $20 bill and he seems quite pleased.

Then, when we are finished visiting his outdoor displays, he invites us inside to see his “Gallery”. This consists of bedsheets painted with amazingly good portraits and other eclectic images! He even shows us his working elevator made out of a forklift rig. I look around and also see an elaborate array of wire cabling that looks like computer connections and CCV camera wiring! This guy is as eclectic as they come (some might call him “Crazy as a Loon”!), but it is clear that he has made his own way of living! A lot of the property looked like a junkyard, but there was evidence of talent everywhere!

We take a few more photos of his “Bottle Walls” and bid him adieu. He lastly shows us a beat up rail car that is literally full of bones. Bones from ancient animals and not so ancient animals. We drive away and gas up the RV to the tune of $125 for 46 gallons of gas. We were at 1/4 tank so I guess it is a 60 gallon tank (225 Liters for my friends across the pond!) Bank account appropriately drained, we drive on west through Kansas.

As we drive, we keep seeing billboards for “OZ Winery” in “Wamego”, Kansas. Since the Wizard of Oz had a basis in Kansas, we are intrigued and turn off the highway to find this magical place! It turns out to be a 20 minute drive off the highway which we almost turn back around because it seems to be taking too much time out of our abbreviated allotment for the day. But we keep on and find the little magical town of Wamego and quickly spot the Oz Winery.

We go in and the place is very charming. All of their wine labels make reference to the Wizard of Oz in some way! We order a Wine Flight of 3 whites and one red. The Red is named humorously as “O.E.O.” (Sing those letters with the movie! Oh-EE-Oh, Oh-E-Oh) It stands for “Oenological Experts of Oz (OEO). Had to laugh! Back out on the streets, we see the town has a collection of “Toto’s”, the little dog of Dorothy’s in the movie!

We then head back on the road and go west again. An hour later we come across Abilene, Kansas. Making fun of the name, we sing, “mAbilene, why can’t you be true?” But to be honest, we are intrigued at what Abilene has to offer so we pull off the highway and check it out. We discover this is the place where Dwight D Eisenhower grew up. His Presidential Library and Boyhood Home is here. Too bad it is closed today. But we drive around it and take some photos.

We drive on towards Wakeeney, Kansas, out destination for the night. We arrive at sunset and check into our spot in a KOA Campground. Then we head out to find dinner at a restaurant Elee found earlier, named, “Western Kansas Saloon & Grill”. What an appropriate name for a steak house in Western Kansas! Turns out we are waited on by the owner herself! What a sweet lady, Jacinda! (I apologize for the horrible lighting on your face Jacinda!) She is old enough to easily be our daughter! We converse and kibitz with her and she serves us a marvelous dinner of Kansas Strip Steak and Prime Rib! Life is good! They tell a story of olden days where gambling was done in the basement! There was a small hole in the floor where someone would drop a walnut into the basement whenever the Law walked in as a reminder to pack up the gambling! If you ever make it to Wakeeney, Kansas, this should be the top of your list for dinner!

We get The Beast back to our Campground and set up the RV, getting the water and electrics connected. We kick back and I have time to get my thoughts typed into this blog. So goodnight for now and we’ll see you all in the morning!

Friday, April 9

So we wake today in the winery’s parking lot to a beautiful day! We are 90 minutes from St Louis. We find a Cracker Barrel Restaurant for breakfast and pig out on an ungodly amount of food including eggs and bacon, hash brown casserole, biscuits and gravy and even Catfish and Grits! I should be walking this off, but instead we will ‘drive’ it off, LOL

As we drive towards St Louis, Elee researches some locations to photograph the Gateway Arch from. Because we’re driving a behemoth RV, we can’t just go in blind. So we find a fun park that looks across the river at the arch and our cameras snuggle up to us and start purring! We even ham it up for an online camera mounted there and take note of the website to look these pics up on later!

Then we drive out and find our way across the mighty Mississippi River to the side the Arch is on. An interesting note here, all my life I always thought the Arch spanned the river. I find out that it doesn’t. But we manage to find a place near it to park and we wander about the area and make our cameras extremely happy!

There is an elevator Tram that takes you to the top of the Arch, but sadly we find out you have to book it in advance and more so now because of Covid. So we check but it is sold out. We enjoy the area and take lots of photos and then we get back into the RV and head west. We drive across the State of Missouri in about 4 hours. We don’t look for much to do in Missouri because we want to get back on our time schedule and have extra time to spend in Colorado and Utah.

About halfway across Missouri, I need a break from concentrating on the diving and Elee finds me a winery to stop at. So at Les Beaujolais Winery and Vineyard, we each get a tasting flight of 4 wines each. The total consumption is about one glass of wine each. I also get a squeegee out and scrub the bugs off the huge windshield! Several patrons on the patio of the winery watch me, and as we pass by them, I tell one of them, “I feel like a kid again playing with my bug collection!” So we enjoy our Wine Flights and kibitz with a friendly local couple and their dog!

We have a book at home entitled, “1000 Places to Visit Before You Die”. In it, there is a BBQ joint, Arthur Bryant’s, in Kansas City that is one of the places. So, of course we have to go there! It turns out to be in Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas. But that’s ok, it’s still Kansas City! who would have thought that a City would span into two states? Same with St Louis, by the way, it is in both Illinois and Missouri. The restaurant is kind of a dive in a not so good part of town. You get in line and order the food in the back by the kitchens. Then you can sit at flimsy card tables with rickety chairs and eat. The place is one that we normally would not eat at when you see the place.

Arthur Bryant’s, everyone should look it up if you’re ever in Kansas City! It turns out to be is a very seedy part of the city but we stop anyways! The food is some of the best BBQ we have ever had and we get loads of Baby Back Ribs and a pound of Brisket which turns out to be 2 pounds because it is the end of their night and the food must go! We have a fridge in the RV and we take the rest to go!

Leaving the restaurant, we find a gas station and I partially fill the RV’s tank. The attendant wishes me a safe journey and tells me not to get robbed. Wow, that was his nice way of telling me we don’t belong in this part of town! So I get rolling and set the navigation to our destination for the night, a Church parking lot 25 miles away. We get there and set up the RV on our own power (No hook ups here). It seems to be a quiet neighborhood and the reviews on the place are good (Harvest Hosts).

After driving all day, I settle down with a glass of wine to write this post. We hear the pitter patter of rain on the roof and the RV will get washed once again.

Good night and see you in the morning!