Colorado and Utah Beginnings

Tuesday May 14, Dead Horse Point State Park, Utah

Tripometer 2467 miles

"Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."

Edward Abbey

Desert Solitaire 

Wednesday, May 8 - Thornton CO

We drove about 400 miles to Thornton, CO to stay with Heidi’s mom, Darlene, just outside of Denver.  It turned out to be fortuitous timing to pull off the road for a couple days and stay in a house with a nice ladder and lots of tools at our disposal as my first attempt "in the field" to better affix the solar panel didn’t work out.  In Kansas I used what I had…more aluminum rivets and some wire. It didn’t fair too well on the trip to Colorado.  Many of the rivets sheared off again and the panel was mostly being held by threads of wire.  In Thornton we started anew with stronger building materials - steel bolts, locking nuts, some additional brackets, JB weld, and silicone caulk.  I feel good about it.  Time will tell.

Thursday, May 9 -

I had an amazing MTB ride on the glorious Ken Caryl trails with my buddy John.  In the evening Eloise had date night at Grandma's house and Heidi and Randy had a date night out.

Friday, May 10

I spent the better part of the day working on the solar panel.  I also installed a Tire Pressure Monitor System on the Airstream after the very insightful recommendation from our friend Ethan who is an RV travel maven.

Saturday, May 11

During our pre-travel inspections and checklist we discovered a nail in one of the truck tires. We diverted to the tire center at a local Costco before hitting the road - a 3.5 hour delay in departing and a $14 repair cost to have it plugged.  Today was the first real test of the Tacoma pulling the Airstream with real deal mountain passes to climb and descend on the way to Moab. She did great.

Sunday, May 12 - circa Moab, UT

Heidi’s mom joined us for a couple days of camping at Dead Horse Point State Park and we did a couple Mother’s Day Hikes in Arches National Park and along the border of Canyonlands at our campground.  All photos by Eloise except the ones with her in them.