Made it to Colorado!

We left our lovely, shaded rest area spot and made a line straight for Longmont.  We made it to St. Vrains State Park, located in Longmont. This is home for the next 9 days while we visit with daughters and grandchildren.

Here is a nice shot of our site, a little tree that hasn't grown enough yet, blue blue sky, and white puffy clouds.

Here we are with our neigbors...

Unfortunately, there are no mature trees here, just a lot of dust and open sites.  That's ok, though.  I think we'll see a lot more stark rv parks as we  visit some of the high desert parks.

Luke found a new toy - fortunately, it's actually son-in-law Mat's new toy.  Don't think we'll be dragging one of these behind the rv.

Showers this evening, lowering temperatures.  Last night was wonderful, cool enough for us to sleep with the windows open.  The young campers beside us are playing football in the rain, complete with a campfire going.  I'm not that young...

99 degrees and 8% humidity… must be the western US

But that wind  is still hot!  I will take dry heat over high humidity, though.

Through Kansas for 2 days.  It is flat, flat, flat… Eastern Kansas is pretty interesting.

 www.kansasflinthills.travel 

We learned that only 4% of the tall grass prairie remains, in the “Flint Hills”.  The tall grass (up to 6 ft tall by fall) prairie used to extend from Indiana to Eastern Kansas, Manitoba to Texas.  Most of it is now converted to agricultural use.  

As we “breezed” (if that term applies to pushing an RV - it doesn't....) west through Kansas, we paralleled many of the famous pioneer trails west: Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, Lewis & Clark Trail,  Chisholm Trail, Pony Express Route (1860 – 61!) etc.

Perry State Park was a nice over-nighter for us.  A nice park,15,000 acre Corps of Engineers lake, 300 campsites, and certainly geared for water sports such as fishing.  The Corps of Engineers lake is beautiful and apparently well stocked, based on the fish cleaning we saw this morning.

Last night it was COOL ENOUGH to open the windows in the wee hours.  Cayotes, very close, barked and called.   

A car wash (boy, does she get dirty, tagging along behind the rv..), cleaning of the air conditioning filter, dumping black and gray waters (guess which is which…..), and we left for further west. But we constantly and slowly motored uphill for 8 hours, from an elevation of about 1300 ft to over 3000 ft here, near Colby.  

Past the beginnings of the huge wind turbines.

Past the mamouth  grain silos/elevators.  Those are regular power lines in front of the silos.  They won’t be putting anything from this field in front into those silos, unfortunately.

We did pass several fields of sunflowers.  Apparently THEY like dry weather!

We had planned to stay at ---gasp --- the hot parking lot in Wal-Mart for the night, as there are no convenient RV parks close by. Well, except those that cost in excess of $50/night.  So, here is our campsite for tonight…beautiful and shady, huh!!!???

The State of Kansas provides RV parking, water, and sewage dump in many of its Rest Areas.  We are in a rest area just west of Colby, KS, cooling off in our air conditioned RV, and settled in for the night.  Tomorrow,  RV willing, we’ll be at St. Vrains State Park in Longmont, our home for 10 days while we visit Luke’s daughters and our grandbabies.

By the way, the past 2 blogs have been brought to you courtesy of my Mobile Hotspot from my phone ---- gotta love technology!

yeah, it's still hot but we did some sight-seeing

Catching up a bit here ---

Here I am, driving the rv.  Probably looks more scary to the folks trying to pass me...

And Smokey looks like this --- flat as she can get on her daddy's lap, head hanging over his legs, catching all of the air conditioning she can get.

 As before mentioned, it's so dry here.  The cornfields are half brown, not a good color for corn...

The generator "went out" yesterday.  sigh.  It isn't urgent now, but we depend on that for air conditioning ---- very important!!! --- when we don't have a campsite with electricity.  The guest host at the campground recommended an RV/generator shop a few miles away.  They worked us in today and worked miracles!  Their bill was a miracle, too.  Love small town middle America.  We are up and running.  While they worked on the RV, we visited the little town they are in, Greenville, IL.  Such a beautiful small town.  Look at the bank... cute, huh?  Especially for a painting instead of real folks.

This is one of the main streets, as seen from the county courthouse.

Can't say it wasn't hot.  This is before noon (yes, I've got on that damned boot). I saw 108 indicated on the car thermometer on our way back from picking up the rv.

Later in the afternoon, after the temperature dropped to only 102, we explored (by car) more of the park.  There is a nice marina here for sailboats.  It seems that Carlyle Lake is popular with the sailors due to a combination of wide open water, low surrounding terrain, and strong winds.  The lakes touts itself as one of the Midwest's most popular sailing lakes, home of regional and national regattas.  It was nice to see sailboats again.

Here is the shallow dam that created the lake.  Lots of fishing going on here!

Last but not least, we couldn't leave out the local wildlife.

We plan to leave tomorrow for 400 miles and an overnight in Perry State Park in Kansas.  Plodding ever onward!

Pictures from Grayson

Here are a few shots from Grayson, also a Corps of Engineers park --

The building controlling the dam water flow

The dam itself

There is a large marina on the lake, almost completely house boats, pontoon boats, and fishing boats.  If I can't have a sailboat here, how about this one with the slide down to the water???

Our generator has quit working so I guess we'll be taking the RV into town for a repair.  I sure HOPE they can repair it today, as our schedule has us leaving tomorrow.  More later...

107 degrees, yep, roger that...

Not today.  Today was only 105 degrees.  The Weatherbug says it's still 102 at 8:45...we show 93. The A/C in our rv has it down - finally - to 84. Tomorow is 107.  We're in flat, hot Illinois.  The crops here really show the drought - corn that should be 8 ft high now is only 4 ft and brown.  Fields are brown. The campground is green and lush with tall trees and a Corps of Engineers lake.  We're just thankful for "full hoop-ups", meaning electricity, running water, and a direct sewage dump from the rv.  Ahhhh, the little things in life aren't so little after all.
When we left KY this morning, we decided to have the RV weighed so we can be sure the tire pressures are right.  Would you believe that our entire "rig" (rv & car) weigh over 19,000 pounds!??  No wonder we don't get 40 mpg.  We DID average around the same 7.4-ish mpg today and our mph average went up to 50 mph.  Flatter roads and more confidence in our handling of the rv.
Smoke did finally settle in. Sleep in the lap of  her non-driving human makes a lot of things better.  She was still smart enough to hang her head in front of one of the air conditioning vents.
No pictures for this blog. Luke will download the few we took and I'll post them then.  I'm still recovering from the heat during setting up the rv in the heat (that happens as you hit middle age...)

A journey of 4000 miles starts with a 300 mile day (ancient Chinese proverb, per Luke)

(written on Sunday, published on Monday, after we found wifi…gotta love McDonalds!)

300 miles, 40 mph average, 7.4 mpg average, and we made it!

Too late this morning, around 9:45-ish, we finally left for the Big Adventure.  In the misty fog, Luke pulled the RV out of the driveway. Around 3 a.m, had  begun to wonder if the car would trail properly behind the RV or if we would have to unhook it and begin all over after the RV left the driveway.  No worries, the car followed the RV perfectly.

Next, our first RV-in-the-Rest-Area shot!  Here we are, snuggled in with the big rigs and other RV’s, a hundred miles or so out of Roanoke.

It wasn’t easy, but we both managed to control the RV as we pulled up the WV mountains --- 7.4 mph worth!  So, gas mileage isn’t so great.  But, we weren’t the slowest thing on the road!  Well, not all of the time, anyway.

Smoke howled a good bit of the first couple of hours, then found comfort in our laps, helped by the air conditioner blowing on her face and sweaty paws.  She really didn’t settle down until long after we finalized our stop at our campsite for the night.  Then all was good – snacks, play, love, and sleeping on the bed with us.  Oh, and the window, of course….

Here we are, nestled in the woods at the Graystone State Park, Graystone, KY, for 2 nights.  We figured that we better take a day to recover from the first day’s trip.  Tomorrow we’ll explore the area, go back into town, and have an earlier dinner here at the RV!  But for now, all is good, we are safe and sound and tired/elated.

Almost ready for our big RV trip!

It's taken a lot of doing, but we are finally almost ready to embark on our first long RV trip.  We are all 3 leaving on Sunday, July 22.  The RV and car have the appropriate hitch components, miscellaneous repairs/custom tweaking is hopefully finished, clothes/tools/lawn chairs/maps/etc are packed, and the trip is planned, complete with all of our campground reservations.  I never dreamed that it would be so much work.  Neither did Luke, but he made the best of it....

The components to ready the RV and car for towing were new to me.  Of course, I had never had hands-on with a hitch system, either....  In addition to the hitch, all states also require an auxiliary braking system in the towed vehicle.  This gizmo physically pushes the brake pedal when it senses a decrease in speed.  A little remote box on the dash tells you if it's braking or not (hopefully...)

Making reservations was amazing.  Who knew Yellowstone campgrounds would be booked up months in advance????  But we muddled through all of them and found acceptable campsites for each location.  Well, except for one place in Kansas where we'll be spending the night "boon docking" in a Wal-Mart parking lot.  All part of the adventure.

Lots of food is packed; the rest goes in tomorrow. Setting up the RV was like moving in to a new place - just where does everything FIT!?!!

Friends Yvonne and Charlie had a grand Bon Voyage party for us the other night.  It was great fun, great friends, and great food and margaritas.  Three of the couples are experienced RV'ers, so they are a great source of help and encouragement.  Best of all was the cake ---- RV cake!  Yvonne got the RV perfectly!  Here we are in the front...not sure who is driving and who is the passenger, as Luke and I both have short gray hair now...

Yvonne even got the Winnebago paint swirls correct on the side of the RV.  And Charlie's wood shop rigged up our air conditioning unit on the top!

Of course, Smokey will be traveling with us.  That is her, in the window, howling.

She likes the RV, just not while it's moving.  Oh, it'll be a long first few days for her.  Look at the back of the cake - ladder, brake lights, and all!  What a great job and surprise that was!

Our trip is to CO to visit Luke's daughters and the grandkids.  We'll spend a week with daughter Erin and family in Longmont.  After that, we meet up with daughter Lisa and family in their camping trailer in Yellowstone for a week.  Then we are off to the SW, exploring the great National Parks such as Arches, the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Capital Reef, and Canyon de Chelly.  During that time, my daughter Nikki will be joining us for a week in Las Vegas!  Viva Las Vegas, my first trip there!  After all of that, we'll be making our way home, hopefully by Oct 1-ish.

Much more posting to come now that we should have some beautiful sights to share.  Oh, the ankle is better, but I have a possible stress fracture on the top of my foot, so I'm back in the air cast for a month.  Not perfect timing, but we'll have a grand time!