But what a journey it has been. We left Mesa, AZ on March 31st after having our flat tire diagnosed and fixed…or so we thought. Our destination is Winslow, AZ. We spend a few days there revisiting some sites and finding some new places to explore. In one day we did downtown Winslow, the 911 Memorial, Meteor Crater and Little Painted desert. The next day we drove to Holbrook, AZ and revisited the Petrified Forest. What a beautiful place.
Next stop is Gallup, NM for the night. Rob checked the tires and the same rear inside dully tire shows flat so Rob puts air in it and realize we need to have it looked at when we get to Cortez, CO. All is well and travel and weather is great. We have to keep a close eye on the weather as there is a big storm front moving across the northern states, right where we are headed.
We stayed in Delores, CO for 3 nights. We have lots of time to spare since our campsite will not be available until May 1 in Spearfish, SD. While in Delores we decide to visit Durango. That never happened. What a disappointment. Expecting to find a great western town with all the illustrations of the great west, what we found was a disappointment because it was all typical tourist hype. Instead we drove a little further to the Pinkerton Hot Springs. It is a very cool roadside attraction of what is left of days gone by.
Time to move on. Rob checks the tire before we go and preforms his duty of late and fills the tire up. We make it to Cortez, CO and contact the Goodyear Tire dealer and they can see us in the morning. We promptly go over in the morning and find out it is a bad valve stem. Whew, that was good news. They replace it and we are happy campers on our way to Blanding, UT. The winds have been horrific and causes us to stay put sometimes longer than we want. Here we were worried about the snow forecast and in reality it’s the wind that is our nemesis. We make it to The Dinosaur Museum, Harvest Host, for the night. In the morning we have an appointment at Bradford tire, hoping, once again, they can find the cause of this tire leak. While they do their detective work, we take a ride into the mountains and Canyonland NP for a revisit
We drove as far as we could…didn’t want to get stuck!
We were greeted by a flock of wild turkeys crossing
the road.
We stopped by the Newspaper Rock
in the Canyonlands.
The many petroglyphs on this mammoth Newspaper rock.
We decide to head back and check on the motorhome and get a text that they finally figured it out. Sounds like something we’ve heard before. Now mind you, this is an old, small family run business in the small town of Blanding , UT so we weren’t sure what to expect. But believe it or not, they fixed it! Yep, it was a bad valve extension that no one had been checking. Seems it was blocked so when air was put in, it registered the air pressure but when it was rechecked it wouldn’t register any pressure. That problem was resolved really easy. They took it off and threw it away. $30 later and we were, once again, on the road headed north. Oh yeah, and by the way, that really was the problem.
We travel a whole 30 miles down the road to an RV resort where we plan on spending 2 nights, hoping the wind subsides enough to travel in. There is dirt and dust everywhere. This stay turned out to be a real surprise because 2 couples from Canada that we spent the winter with in Mesa (our neighbors) and had become good friends with, were already staying at the same place. We had ourselves a mini reunion. Many stories told, drinks consumed, snacks eaten and laughs galore. Oh what a great time. We will miss them dearly.
It’s now April 10 and we have traveled 777 miles and seems like 1500! Rob has put on him Mr Weatherman cap and has determined that the cold front moving across the north is going to be an issue so we best hole up someplace for awhile that is warmer and calmer. We decide that along the Colorado river would be good because it is in the valley and has warmer temps. After all, it’s wine country. We end up in Grand Junction, CO near the UT border and make reservations for a week, that soon became 2 weeks, at this new, modern resort. We chose it because of the great reviews. It is a very well thought out campground with just about everything you need as a guest here. It even has some sites with outdoor dog kennels. The wind came up pretty strong so the first night here so we brought in our slide for the night. It started raining and sometime during the night, started snowing. We got maybe 1-2” of snow and was gone by noon. It actually was a beautiful day.
There is a lot to see around here, unfortunately because of the windy conditions, it limited us to what we wanted to do. We did a lot of relaxing and indoor stuff. We did go to the Colorado National Monument. I highly recommend it to anyone who has not been there. It is one of my favorite stops we have made, There are many pull offs for viewing and we stopped at most of them, of course. As I looked into the canyon, I felt like I was a part of it, in it, as in many you are just there, viewing it. Here’s just a small sample of what we saw.
We did get out and about, besides doing the mundane things of shopping, laundry, and of course, keeping up on our housekeeping chores. We walked along the Colorado river where we observed a couple eagles on their nest with eaglets, many songbirds and ducks, and great art work along the bridges. Baxter and I ventured out to a couple different parks for a change of scenery. All in all, it was a very good two week stay, but it is now time to move on.
We have a 2 night stay reservation in Rawlins, WY so we are not sure what we are in for. I will leave you for now but hope as your winter weathers leave you, it will give you opportunities to do some more exploring. I know we are ready, willing and able. Let’s see what Mother Nature has in store for us. Remember to look up when out there, it’s amazing.
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