Onward Towards Yellowstone

It is Monday, June 15th and we have been on the road 4 weeks now. We are really enjoying this trip- even when I can't breathe, or I get some stomach thing, etc. Thought i would start this with the one real picture i got of Pike's Peak - from The Beast as we drove past on our way to Loveland/Ft. Collins. look at all that snow still there- good reason we did not take the cog railway up this time- but definitely next time - hopefully this fall.

We are in Wyoming as I type this- on our way to Wapiti Campground just east of Yellowstone and West of Cody, WY. This will be an all day trip (over 500 miles, about half on secondary roads) ending in a cell phone/internet less area I am sure- so I will do my updates now. The Loveland/Ft. Collins area is a great place and we will have to go back to do all the things available. The weather has been pretty funny there this spring, with rain and wind storms every afternoon, so we didn't get to see and do as much as we wanted. Additionally, I was just not up to the trip to Rocky Mountain National Park and the drive at 11,000 feet. My breathing has been bad, I feel as though there is a weight sitting in the middle of my chest all the time and it does not make having fun- fun. This weight has got to go!! Anyway .....

We did drive west of Ft. Collins on Co. 12 through Poudre (pronounced in the west as cash luh pew-der) Canyon along the Cache la Poudre river- Colorado's only designated wild and scenic river. We were early in the morning so did not encounter all the late to rise Coloradoans (yes, they all seem to get up after 8 and take awhile to get doing things, might have something to do with the late sun in their valleys and the early morning cold) so had the road to ourselves for awhile. Once it got more towards 11 the traffic picked up so we became the sight seeing slow pokes. They were all on their way to raft, kayak, picnic, etc. on the river. Many of the pictures in my album in the canyon are just that- remembrances of the drive. It is beautiful and the river was high, moving fast, and very cold (per Bruce who walked down the steps and sampled it with his foot). There were all sorts of people rafting- and quite a few companies offering to shuttle, provide the raft, pick up, etc. Kayaks are prolific also, with most people wearing some type of dry suits to stay warm. Trout fishing is also big- with several of the areas only for catch & release and artificial lures and flies are all that can be used.

We stayed at Boyd Lake State Park in Loveland, Co This lake is used by lots of boats (motor & sail) as well as jet skis, wind surfers and of course swimmers. The campground is the normal type where water activities are the center - more campsites to accommodate as many people as possible, but still done in a park setting. The state is very involved in preventing zebra mussels from infiltrating the fresh water bodies- so all of the water craft go through mandatory inspections before they go into the water. That does cause quite a back-up during heavy use times like weekends and all during the summer, but everyone seems to take it in stride and it is very necessary. You should do some research on the zebra mussel- they are very prolific, cover everything, clog up intakes for the water ways, and cover anything that sits still, etc. They are not natural to the US, they came into the Great Lakes on freighters and just stayed. They are not in Florida yet, probably because so many of our boating areas have salt water intrusion and they are fresh water creatures- but they need to be contained where possible. Bruce's idea is that this is a plan, that since the US hasn;t fallen to communism or major terrorist activities, instead the countries that really hate us are just introducing these innocuous things into our environment and letting them run amuck, killing indigenous species, and costing us time and mucho money to try to control (which we probably can't). But you know us- we are big into those conspiracy theories. I got several pictures of the boaters waiting in line to get their boats OUT of the water later yesterday afternoon as a storm approached, and that is probably how it is on any given weekend.

We were fortunate that the camp site one I picked out and reserved via the web was next to an unused site so we had more room. I have run into people who have asked why I reserved sites (they supposedly didn't want to be on any type of schedule) - well I can tell you that every campground we have stayed at since summer started has been full on the weekends - and if the sites were reservation sites, people camped on them had to move on if someone had reserved them for that time. The reservation systems work both ways- to help and hamper you. I would also have preferred to ramble this area, but in a 36 ft motorhome, you can't always find a campground at the last minute that will accommodate us. In the west many of the parks are older and were built for smaller trailer campers, pop-ups (they are the #1 type of non-tent camping out here I think), tents, etc. - let's face it this is an outdoors type of world, not a stay in your moving home world. The bigger RVs were never contemplated. If we ever move out this direction we will add a smaller class C, or a nice slide-in for the truck to our assets so we can stop about anywhere (Right now that is a big IF).

I will close with the campground we all see- Walmart. Seems even where the parks abound there are those campers who will park at Walmart. I always find it kinda funny that people will pay $100,000+ for these homes on wheels and then have to save money by camping in the Walmart parking lot. When you are traveling for one night- fine- you come in, park, eat, go to bed and leave the next morning- but that is not the case with many - I will never understand.

We just left Casper, WY on the trail to yellowstone so I will probably lose connectivity soon but who knows. The next few posts may be farther between as we enter the wilds of west Wyoming and Yellowstone. Don't think the Verizon coverage map shows much of that area having connectivity. Enjoy.