Author: danleeth

Some camping trips are truly memorable.  This looks to be one of them, but for all the wrong reasons.

While the name may sound exotic, Robb State Park Island Acres section lies sandwiched between the cliffs, about 18 miles east of Grand Junction.  There’s no island.  On one side of the campground lies the Colorado River and the Union Pacific railroad tracks.  On the other lies Interstate 70, a major transcontinental truck route.  Even though we’re about as far away from the interstate as we can get, it’s still noisy.

The sites are nicely spaced with grassy lawn between them, but shade is at a premium.  Our site does have a canopy over the picnic table.  We have full hookups (electricity, water and sewer), which means we can use as much water and power as we want.  That’s handy because with temperatures only a shade under 100, we’ll be showering frequently and will have the air conditioner running pretty much all afternoon.

Then there’s the smoke.  Another major wildfire, the fourth largest in Colorado history at last count, is burning north of Grand Junction.  Smoke from that conflagration blankets the area, making distant views appear as if we’re seeing them through waxed paper.  The air smells of burning wood and ash settles on everything overnight.

The one saving grace is that Grand Mesa lies about a half-hour drive away.  At 10,000 feet, world’s largest flat-topped mountain offers a cool, relatively smoke-free place to escape for hiking.  The first day, we did a short, six-mile hike through glades of aspen and spruce to a series of small lakes and creek-fed reservoirs. 

Yesterday we hiked eight miles from a set of roadside fishing lakes near the campground where we stayed three nights last July.  I think we each lost over a liter of blood to the ravenous mosquitoes back then.  We saw nary a mosquito on this trip. 

After four miles of relatively flat walking, we reached the top of a chairlift at the Powderhorn Ski Area.  The steep, black-diamond ski trails look far more frightening when they don’t have snow on them.  If we can do it in Covid-free conditions, we may come back this winter on a ski vacation.

Dianne is still having issues with her replaced knee, so we’re limiting hikes to every second day.  On off days when the air is good, we’ll do some more biking.  On the bad days, we’ll probably hang out in our trailer’s air-conditioned luxury and catch up on reading.  There are some definite advantages to “camping” in our summer cabin on wheels (SCOW).

The Pine Gulch fire, now the second largest wildfire in Colorado history, burns out of control about 20 miles to the north. Winds shifted in our direction this afternoon.

We don’t have to have a campfire (now illegal) to make our clothes smell like smoke.

This is what the view down the valley looked like from the road up Grand Mesa.

Today, the smoke finally cleared and we could see out to the Book Cliffs and beyond!

Back in camp, we can finally see the buttes in all their finery…

…, breathe clean air and enjoy the sunsets!

We just completed our last active day at Island Acres with a 40-mile bike ride on the Riverfront Trail.  From Las Colonias park in Grand Junction, we pedaled 14 miles out to the Robb State Park in Fruita.  From there we continued nearly to the Kokopelli Trailhead in Loma.  At the 20-mile point, we turned back.

Heading downriver, the first half of the trip was predominantly downhill, and we had a nice tailwind.  Going back was uphill, pedaling into a stiff breeze.  At Dianne’s insistence, we ensured success by stocking up on calories at Enstrom’s with triple-scoop ice cream sundaes before facing the final 14 miles of trail.

This was our fourth day of bicycling over our 14-night stay at Island Acres.  We also enjoyed five days of hiking up on Grand Mesa.  In all, we covered nearly 94 miles on bikes and over 32 miles on hiking trails.  Monday was a shopping and laundry day, and tomorrow will be the same as we prepare for departure.  We also had two photo days up on the Mesa (not retired yet) and a stay-in-the-trailer day when the smoke from the Pine Gulch fire blanketed the valley and beyond.

Saturday, we begin the second leg of our Covid-escaping, getaway trifecta.  After enjoying full-hookup “camping” here at Island Acres, we will be staying at Mancos State Park near Mesa Verde where water fill-ups will have to be carted in jerry cans, the battery will be recharged with solar panels and the gray- and black-water tank contents will be hauled to the dump station using Bob, our 25-gallon, Barker four-wheel sewer tote. 

At Mancos, we’ll be boondock camping in the whispering pines.  No din of the interstate.  No freight trains rumbling by.  I’m really looking forward to spending the next two weeks ensconced in rustic quiet.

We left Island Acres and arrived at Mancos State Park on Saturday afternoon.  The route from Grand Junction to Mancos took us over two mountain passes (Dallas Divide and Lizard Head), most of which was done with a fierce headwind.  We arrived at Mancos in calmer conditions, set up camp and kicked back beneath the ponderosa pines and enjoyed the sounds of silence.

Sunday was flake-out day with just a 3.6-mile hike around Jackson Gulch Reservoir, the park’s central feature.  The water provides a great backdrop for savoring the sunset.

Yesterday, we hiked a beautiful trail in the national forest that is on neither the Trails Illustrated nor San Juan National Forest maps.  We had no idea where it was taking us, which was exciting.  We ended up in a familiar canyon and followed a trail we took last June back to camp.  

Today, Tuesday, is flush and fill day – the day that we drain the gray- and blackwater holding tanks and top up the freshwater tank.  The “used water” I tote to the dump station in Bob, our 25-gallon Barker tote tank.  It’s a two-trip operation – one for the black followed by another for the gray.  While I can tote the tote from the hitch of the truck, I’ve just been hand-pulling it here because the dump station is only a couple hundred yards away.  Hand-pulling gallons of sewage to the sewer builds character.

Dianne carts the freshwater in five-gallon jerry cans from the drinking water spigot about 25 yards away.  By carrying a pair of jerry cans with us, she can be refilling one while I’m using a portable water pump to load the water from the other.  It took five jerry trips today to replace the liquid we’d used since our arrival on Saturday.

We’ve got a nice long hike planned for tomorrow followed by maybe a bike ride past some nearby summer homes on Thursday.  Friday will be flush and fill day.  Once again I’ll be dragging Bob up the road to the dump station.  I can’t wait.

It’s Monday, Labor Day, and our old friend, the smoke, has returned with a vengeance.  It’s been nearly crystal clear around here until today.  I’m wondering if we’re going to have enough solar power penetrating this cloud of smoke to charge the battery.

Apparently, smoke from the California fires combined with smoke from the Grand Junction area has arrived here in southwestern Colorado.  AccuWeater says it’s sunny outside, but we can’t even see Ol’ Sol through the thick, foggy cloud of smoke.  Cold temperatures combined with rain and/or snow is predicted for tomorrow and Wednesday, which hopefully will clear the air.

We really love Mancos State Park.  Even over the three-day weekend, it’s been relatively quiet and peaceful.  We’re now watching everybody departing.  By midweek, the campground should be virtually empty.  We’ll love it even more then.

Since leaving home, we’ve pedaled over 100 miles and hiked over 60.  Yesterday we did a 12¼-mile hike out of the park with 1,600+ feet of vertical.  Thirty years ago, we would have done that with 40- and 50-pound packs on our backs and declared it to be an easy day.  Returning to camp yesterday, just climbing the steps into the trailer to fetch the beers took an effort.  This getting old sucks.

Fall color is just beginning to hit the mountains.  Scrub oak leaves are turning a rusty orange and the golden finger of Midas has begun to touch the aspen.  We’re hoping for spectacular color when we hit Ridgway next week.  We’re also hoping the smoke will be gone so we can see (and photograph) that color.

Thanks to Covid, we’re setting a record on this trip.  We’ve now been camping for 23 consecutive nights and have not once dined in a Mexican restaurant.  We haven’t gone that long without a burrito and margarita since we spent three months camping across Canada. 

Yes, we all have to make sacrifices during this pandemic, but this is truly roughing it.

We’re on the last day of our 14-day retreat at Mancos State Park.  Our longest stay at a campground with no hookups, it has proven to be an excellent experiment in water, sewer and electrical usage.

As for water, we’ve used a bit over 100 gallons, all of which was hand carted in five-gallon jerry cans from a spigot located about 25 yards away.  We fully filled the trailer’s 50-gallon freshwater on our arrival and topped it up twice more.

As for the “used” water, I’ve made four roundtrips pulling our sewer tote to the dump station – two carrying black water and two with gray.  We’ll dump all our tanks directly into the dump station drain when we leave the campground tomorrow morning. 

Last time we were at Mancos (a 13-day stay) we had the pair of anemic, lead-acid batteries that came with the trailer.  Each was rated for 75 AH (amp hours).  The general rule with batteries like these is to never let them go below 50% of capacity.  With lights, water pump, furnace fan, computers and camera charging, we found that we were using over 40 AH daily. 

That meant we had to fully recharge the batteries daily.  We spent every second day stuck in camp moving solar panels around to keep the batteries happy.  We even pulled out our generator (I hate generators) and ran that for a few hours one day trying to recharge the batteries.

Immediately after that trip, I installed a 200-AH lithium iron phosphate RV battery, a converter/charger specifically designed for lithium batteries and reset our solar controller for lithium charging.  What a difference.  A few hours of direct sunlight and our new battery was charged to 100% capacity.

Of course, that requires the sun to be out, which it was for the first 10 days of our stay.  Then the rains came and for three solid days, we didn’t see the sun.  Instead of kicking in 225+ watts of power into the solar controller, our combined trio of panels sucked in less than 10 watts from the leaden sky. 

On the middle of the third day, our battery monitor indicated we had used over 140 AH of battery power.   Our former batteries would have been virtually dead.  The new lithium battery was still kicking out a comfortable 13 volts of power.  We didn’t need to worry about dipping below the 50% threshold because that restriction doesn’t apply to lithium RV batteries.

Tomorrow morning, we move to Ridgway State Park where we will have an electrical hookup.  With a nearby water spigot, we should be able to refill our freshwater tank with a hose.  There’s no sewer, so we’ll still have to tote our “used” water down a long hill to the dump station.  But with thirty-amps of 120-volt power feeding in, we won’t have to worry about battery charging and solar panel placement.

The skies cleared and on our last night at Mancos, the moon hadn’t yet come up and we were treated to a black velvet sky diamond-dusted with shimmering stars.  From our campsite, we could see the Milky Way streaking between the towering Ponderosa pines.  It’s nice staying in a campground with fewer sites and with no electric hookups feeding bulbs, emblazoning the sky with artificial light.

The view looking toward the dam from the north end of the reservoir was equally appealing.

On our way from Mancos to Ridgway State Parks, we stopped for a lunch of cheese and crackers on the Dallas Divide, which lies between Telluride and Ridgway.

The high peak is Mt. Sneffels, which Dianne and I climbed from the other side a few years ago. The fence belongs to my old buddy, Ralph Lauren. The chairs are ours.

For the third stop on our triple-header camping trip, we headed to Ridgway State Park for a two-week stay.  Our campsite is two spots down from where we camped last year and three down from our 2018 site.  I guess we’re fond of this loop.

Located just off the San Juan Skyway, about a dozen miles north of Ouray, the park attracts a lot of visitors from the Lone Star State (and elsewhere) who arrive in their gargantuan motor homes and fifth-wheel trailers.  So long was our current neighbor’s trailer, he couldn’t pull it through the curving pull-through site and had to back in.  It makes us happy we bought small.

Ridgway State Park surrounds Ridgway Reservoir, a good-sized pond behind a dam on the Uncompahgre River.  When we were here last July, the reservoir was full.  Kids frolicked at the swim beach and folks fished from a shoreline gazebo.  Not now.  There’s no water at the now closed swim beach and the shoreline gazebo now towers high on the slope, far from the water.  A ranger lady says it’s like this every year.

When we arrived here a week ago, the air was clear and the scenery spectacular.  Our first hike was to Lower Blue Lake at the base of Mt. Sneffels.  Dianne and I looked down on Lower Blue Lake and its upper sibling from the top of 14,157-foot summit of Mt. Sneffels a few years ago.  This time, we gazed up at the far away summit from the pond below.  Sensing movement atop the mountain, I pulled out the binoculars and saw at least two climbers looking down.  I waved.

A few camo-clad hunters parked in the Blue Lakes Trailhead parking lot reminded us that it’s bow and muzzle loader hunting for elk and bear.  Bow hunters need to get close to their targets before firing, we were assured, so they would know we weren’t prey.  Still, we decided to take no chances.  We drove 20 miles into Montrose and bought flame-orange caps and vests to wear on our next hike into the woods. 

After two days of clear skies, the California smoke discovered our new location and blew in to obscure the landscape.  Distant views looked like they were wrapped in waxed paper and the sun set as a ball that was more glowing orange than our don’t-shoot-me caps and vests.  The smoke has been constantly fogging the views since then.

Our next hike took us up the Dexter Creek Trail, a long, continuous ascent up a valley northeast of Ouray.  The scenic views were hazy, but we did encounter some early fall color and passed by a pair of old mines holding the rusting remains of abandoned machinery.  We wore our vivid orange vests, but only saw one hunter on his way out.  He didn’t shoot.

Today, we drove into Ridgway on a goose chase.  Galloping Goose #4 has been moved from Telluride, where it wastes away on a downtown street, to the Ridgway Railroad Museum where it will spend the winter under cover.  Before heading back, we stopped at the market for a few emergency supplies, such as more microwave popcorn packets. 

While Dianne was shopping, I photographed a street-side Trump rally.  There was nary a face covering to be seen.