2021 Road Trip – Buena Vista, CO

June 17, 2021 – Last Visit with the Kids

Today we headed back into Denver for the last time to visit the kids. We took I-285 into Denver since we had taken I-70 and CO-91 on the way out. This was another very scenic drive with very wide high elevation valleys surrounded by snow capped mountains. We liked the drive so much we took the same route back to the campground.

Since we left (just a week ago) the kids became a two German Shepherd puppy family. The new puppy is a beautiful black German Shepherd (named Luna). We had told the kids to choose a restaurant for lunch. After we met the puppies our Granddaughters informed us that they had chosen The O ld Spaghetti Factory for our dining pleasure. What an excellent choice. Everyone sat up and ate their vittles (because ice cream comes with your entree, but you don’t get any if you don’t eat everything). Beth and I both had spaghetti and it was delicious. Also, I ate well enough to get approved for ice cream which was also delicious.

After lunch we all went back to the apartment and I played the memory game with the girls while Beth and Alysa got Chuckie ready for his nap (which he was already quite late for). The girls kicked my buns in the memory game just (like their Dad did). I dug up the video of he and I playing the memory game at the timeshare in Tarpon Springs (circa 1991) and the girls enjoyed watching it with their Dad (including his, “I won because I have big muscles” pronouncement).

We left around 3PM to avoid rush hour. It was 99 degrees in Denver, but a lovely 75 when we got back to our campsite. Many drawings/colorings were generated for us from the time we left babysitting them. They were presented to us today and Beth hung as many as she could in the camper and sent a back photo. The girls were thrilled to see them mounted in the kitchen.

June 16, 2021 – Visited Salida, CO

We haven’t had very good luck trying to live off of Verizon’s Visible cell phone data plan. It’s truly unlimited (they don’t lower your bandwidth to some useless speed based on usage), but they do reserve the right to “de-prioritize” you if the cell tower you are connected to is busy. Apparently all cell towers are now busy because most of the places we go (especially in towns and cities) we are not able to use the data on Beth’s iPhone (which is on the Visible plan). I’m experiencing similar issues on my Tracfone now that Verizon owns Tracfone. So, after doing some research I discovered that AT&T now has a PrePaid data plan for HotSpots and Tablets that provides 100GB per month for just $55. All I needed was a HotSpot and Walmart sells a low end AT&T LTE HotSpot for $49. We found one available at the Walmart in Salida, CO (about 30 miles away) and we had Salida on our must visit list, so off we went. So far, the HotSpot and AT&T Prepaid Data Plan have worked out well.

The drive from Buena Vista down the Arkansas River Valley to Salida on US-285 was very scenic and Salida was another nice town situated along the Arkansas River. There were lots of bars and restaurants situated near the river. We had a nice lunch at Wallbangers which is a local sports bar a bit further from the river. We had excellent pulled pork and brisket quesadillas along with their signature smoked wings tossed in buffalo sauce for several meals (Note: their “hot” buffalo sauce is truly HOT).

June 10, 2021 – Toured Independence Pass

Today we decided to give Independence Pass a try. Based on my previous attempt to cross Cumberland Pass (an unpaved road), my passenger was a bit nervous and needed some convincing today to try another pass. The original plan was to cross the pass and head on down into Aspen, CO. I’m not sure why I felt the need to visit Aspen, but I had always heard of it and thought it would be a neat place to visit. So, worst case, I thought we could find a place to eat lunch and then head back to the campground. The more we researched online, the more we realized we weren’t interested in eating at any of their dining establishments. Most have words like “Bistro” in the title which is an instant indication that I’m not interested. They also appear to be very expensive. The more research we did, the more Aspen appeared to be a tourist trap (unless it’s February and you love skiing). So we decided to pack a lunch and ascend Independence pass (I promised to turn around the second my passenger got nervous). Even though there were numerous signs restricting vehicles to less than 35′ and attempting to scare one away by noting the $1,100 fine if you were longer than 35′, we proceeded forward (at 17′ in length). The drive turned out to be one of our favorites. The scenery was incredible (as usual) and on the return down, Beth let me pull off at a very small pull-out that was right in the heart of what is referred to as the narrows so that I could take some pictures. While I was taking pictures of the switchbacks ahead, I could hear the sound of high performance engines below. I asked Beth to get out her iPhone (the latest model which takes high quality video) and start videoing the road. Sure enough, within a minute we were entertained by a group of seriously high dollar super cars ascending the mountain. We saw a Lamborghini, McLaren’s, a Koenigsegg (which I had never heard of), an Astin Martin, and who knows what else (most worth well over $200K used). We stopped for lunch back down at the base altitude of 9,150′ along the Twin Lakes (just west of US-24). After lunch we headed back to the campground.

June 9, 2021 – Toured Leadville, CO

Leadville, CO is a former silver mining town located at 10,152′ in elevation. The Arkansas River originates just west of town. We noticed an old saloon and some stores we wanted to checkout when we passed through the previous week, so today we headed back up there for a visit.

We ate lunch at The Legendary Silver Dollar Saloon. The saloon still looks like it would have back in the 1880’s and was frequented by notables such as Doc Holiday, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Oscar Wilde. The booth we sat in was taken from the train that delivered the bars, saloon doors, and mirrors from St Louis. The lunch menu is fairly limited, but the food was very good. We ordered a pulled pork sandwich, a brisket sandwich, an order of onion rings, and split all three.

After lunch we moved further up the main street and checked out a couple of the local stores. We then drove by the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum (neither of us was interested enough in mining to pay the $12 entry fee) and cruised up and down a bunch of the hilly side streets before heading back to the campground.

June 7, 2021 – Toured Cottonwood Pass, Taylor Park Reservoir, Tincup, and Cumberland Pass

We started the day out heading west out of Buena Vista, CO on CO-306. This road is now paved on both sides of Cottonwood Pass and crosses the Continental Divide at 12, 126′. The ascent from the east side includes a section with a 10% grade for over a mile. We stopped at the top and took a number of pictures. Beth touched the snow to make sure it wasn’t fake. We continued west from the top and arrived at the Taylor Park Reservoir at the bottom. We stopped in at the Taylor Park Trading Post and picked up a couple of sodas and some chips to enjoy with the sandwiches that Beth packed for lunch.

We left the trading post and headed southeast for the former mining town of Tincup, CO on unpaved CO-765. Tincup is tiny and filled with summer cabins, one Cafe, and a guy selling smoked BBQ along the road. We passed on through Tincup and continued up the unpaved road towards 12,015′ Cumberland Pass. The state does not grade the road as regularly once you pass Tincup and it also becomes quite rocky (small rocks), so the going was a bit slow. Once we cleared the tree line, we started encountering snow. The road was very narrow with no guardrails or shoulder. We had to pass through a section with the driver side tires in the snow (inside of the mountain) and it was a bit unnerving. We reached another section where the snow was much deeper (probably 3′) and covered more than half the road. I stopped at that point and my passenger was so uncomfortable she bailed out of the Tahoe to recover. We were less than 1/2 mile from the pass, but neither of us wanted to venture any further. All I could think was, “what am I going to do if I encounter another vehicle coming from the other direction?” I also didn’t want to turn around on that narrow strip of road, but with her feet firmly on the ground, Beth guided me through a 27 point turnaround and we headed back down to Tincup.

When we got down near the bottom again, we encountered a group of three moose grazing in a meadow along a creek. We stopped to take pictures and decided it would be a good spot to eat our lunch and let Beth vent about how I had tried to kill us both climbing that mountain.

June 4, 2021 – Travel to Mt Princeton RV Park in Buena Vista, CO

Today we departed from Dakota Ridge RV Park at 11AM MDT and backtracked a few miles in order to stop at the TA Truck Stop in Wheat Ridge, CO for fuel. Then we headed west on I-70 for our climb into the Rockies. The climb up I-70 to the Eisenhower Tunnel is pretty famous in the towing world for being the one exception the federal Department of Transportation made to the “no grades over 6%” rule (because they couldn’t find a way to pull it off even with digging the tunnel). It really made our Caterpillar engine snort. We spent a lot of time in 2nd gear at 25MPH with our flashers on watching our engine temperature climb. We got within a few degrees of overheating a couple of times, but made the climb to 11,000′ successfully (more than once).

As is often the case on these trips out West, the scenery was incredible and pictures don’t do it justice. About 10 miles after the Eisenhower Tunnel we pulled into a Scenic Pullout near the Dillon Reservoir and ate lunch. This was probably one of the most beautiful places we have ever stopped to eat along an interstate.

Near Copper Mountain we exited onto CO-91 and took it down to Leadville, CO. The Colorado Department of Transportation says the steepest grade on CO-91 is 5.7%, I beg to differ. Either way, we made another slow ascent up and over Fremont Pass at 11,318′. The scenery all along this 22 mile long highway was breathtaking and well worth taking.

Leadville, CO is a neat looking little mountain town with a beautiful backdrop of snow covered mountains. There was a group of high school graduates dressed in cap and gown outside the county courthouse so we gave them a couple of toots with our extremely loud air horn and they went nuts. They were definitely ready to celebrate. It made us think of our young friend Makenna who officially graduated on Tuesday (6/1/2021).

We arrived at Mt Princeton RV Park in Buena Vista, CO at 3PM MDT. This is a very nice campground. There’s not a lot of grass. It’s difficult to grow at elevations over 8,000′, but they make a serious effort to have a nice patch of grass between sites. There aren’t a lot of trees either, so accessing the DISH Network with the roof mounted antenna was no problem. We are getting some of the best Visible data download speeds we’ve seen on this trip (22Mbps) and the campground Wi-Fi is very good as well during the day. Both methods of accessing the internet dropped to unusable from about 6PM to 11PM daily. The laundry room has 6 washers ($2.00/load), 8 dryers (6 machines at $0.25 for 7 mins and 2 machines at $1.50 for roughly 45 minutes). Also, they have a $1/$5 change machine.

To our West is a series of 14,000′ peaks. We have great views in all directions.