September 2021 – CO,
UT, NV, OR
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A guy out walking his llamas isn't
something you see every day |
In 2015, we passed right through
Gunnison Colorado on our way to the Lottis Creek
Campground in the Gunnison National Forest. From there we visited Crested Butte
and explored the forest but never got back to
Gunnison.
This year we stayed in
Gunnison and focused on
the town. There is a lot to see and do there and in the surrounding areas. We
stayed at the
Palisades
Senior RV Park, about six blocks from downtown, on the grounds of the
county senior care and services facility. The whole area is quiet, secure and
immaculately maintained by volunteers and work campers. This is a great place, but it is small and reservations are hard
to get, so book early. It is also only open from mid-May to mid-September.
Gunnison seems to be a
pretty open, friendly town. It’s big enough to have one or two of most
services. It appears to be pretty prosperous, too. We didn’t see any signs of
civic neglect, and the overall appearance was quite attractive. It’s also a
college town, which we always think makes it more vibrant and interesting. Western Colorado University has an attractive
campus right down town. With 2,900 students and a couple of hundred faculty, it
fits into town without being the focus of the town.
I didn’t look at the map very carefully when we were in
Ridgway. I guess I assumed that the
Black
Canyon of the Gunnison National Park would be near the town of
Gunnison. Actually, it is
much, much closer to Ridgway. Despite the 160 mile round trip, we were
determined to see it. If you ever get close, make the effort to go. The
Grand Canyon is certainly majestic, but this place is
just as impressive. It is not as commercialized as the more famous canyon and
sees far less traffic, making it a much more personal and pleasurable visit.
The pictures don’t come close to the experience of actually being there. With
better planning, accessing the bottom is possible, which must be really
spectacular; next trip I’ll do a better job.
The Pioneer
Museum in
Gunnison is a large, eclectic
accumulation of items that
are grouped together in a sprawling complex of 30 buildings,
barns and sheds housing everything from a locomotive to hundreds of dolls. Two
of the largest buildings are dedicated to an extensive car collection that is
notable for it’s overall lack of… notability. Most of the vehicles are simply
well preserved old cars with little-to-no automotive significance. Someone just
took really good care of one and gave it to the museum when they died or
stopped driving. That said, I spent most of an afternoon wandering around. The
old fire engine and a Cat bulldozer were highlights for me.
Like the museum in Meeker, pianos and parlor organs seemed to
be popular donations, but Gunnison has so many
that they are packed in too closely to walk through. None of them are playable,
so I guess it doesn’t matter that all you can see is an array of water stained
and delaminating veneer. As you would imagine, the collection includes lots of
old farming and logging equipment, too. Again, none of it has been restored,
just cleaned up and parked. If patina is your thing, this place is for you. Only
open from May to October, it’s worth a visit.
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| Tourists went nuts, the locals just went about their business |
We decided to revisit Crested Butte. We enjoyed seeing it
for the first time several years ago and this trip we were lucky to stumble
into the weekly street market. Unfortunately, we got there a few minutes before
closing, so a number of the vendors were packing up or had already gone. I did
manage to grab the last sourdough bagels as the baker’s booth was being
dismantled. They were excellent; I wish they’d had more.
Crested Butte
is an unabashed tourist trap that is growing like a weed. Townhouses, condos
and houses are under construction in many places in and around town. It
seems like every other shop on main street is a restaurant, a bar, a pizza
place or an ice cream shop. The other stores sell high end outdoor and leisure
wear or expensive, lavishly logo’d sports gear. As popular as this town is
during the summer, I can only imagine what getting around must be like once the
ski season kicks off and all the rentals fill up. The skiing must be terrific.
We had a few days before we were due in
Durango
to meet some old friends from
Thousand
Oaks. On the spur of the moment, we checked the NFS
reservation system and found
one site that we could fit in at
Lottis Creek
Campground, one of our top five all-time favorite places. We could only get
it for two days, so we booked two additional days in Palisades to catch up on
laundry and clean the coach before heading to
Durango.
You may recall that we were camped at Lottis Creek when the
bear wandered by as Kayeanne and Lucy were sitting outside reading and napping,
and pandemonium ensued throughout the campground. We didn’t see any bears this
trip, but Lottis Creek is just as lovely, quiet and spectacular as we
remembered it. Pictures completely fail to capture the size and subtle colors
of the walls of the canyon that the campground is in. At night I think you
could hear a sneeze a mile away. Two days was just not long enough, but I’m
really glad we decided to go.
There are three feasible routes from Gunnison to Durango. I’ve ridden two
of them on motorcycle trips, so we chose the third. I’d ride US 550 or CO 149
thru Lake City anytime, but both would be pretty
intense in the coach. Instead, we made a long loop to the east consisting of US 50
- CO 114 – US 285 - CO 112 - US 160 over Wolf
Creek Pass
and thru Pagosa Springs to Durango.
There were some sections that held my attention, but it was a good route.
Junction
Creek NFS Campground converted from reservations to FCFS the day
after we
arrived. We couldn’t reserve a site with electric hookup, so I got one without,
hoping to get one of the power sites when the current occupants left. It worked
like a charm. The dust hadn’t settled behind the departing campers the next
morning when we backed in, plugged in and set up housekeeping.
Junction Creek is a real gem of a campground that has three
real negatives: no dump station, limited water access to refill tanks, and one
of the worst access roads we have ever seen. The first two items limit how long
we can comfortably stay, but the last one turned out to be the worst. The road
is over two miles of dust and ruts. It was so bad that we went straight to a
car wash every time we left the campground just to hose off the dust so we
could see. The rough surface may have damaged one of our tire pressure
monitors, too.
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| John, Rick, us, Cheryl and Janie |
Anyway, those issues notwithstanding, we had a great time.
We like
Durango,
but the reason we came this year was to visit with close friends Janie and Rick
Fellows and Cheryl and John Clement. What with Covid disruptions and our
travels, we hadn’t seen Janie and Rick for a couple of years or John and
Cheryl since 2015.
Well, we had a ball. Lots of great food, very, very good
company and a fair amount of wine and song just can’t be beat. One morning we
took the Durango to Silverton train
with Janie and Rick. It was just as spectacular as we remembered it. John and
Cheryl drove up to meet us for lunch. Cheryl is very familiar with Silverton
and having an experienced local guide certainly made for a far better
experience than our last trip here.
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| Train from Durango to Silverton - this is a tame section |
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| Waiting for the ladies to shop Kayeanne's pic |
One day we wandered the length of main street in old town
Durango. I think we toured
every shop but fatigue tends to fog my memory. We stopped in to the
Strater Hotel, a well preserved, still
operating example of the finest in 1890's-era accommodations. It reminded me of
the
Copper Queen Hotel in
Bisbee, AZ,
built in roughly the same era and style. The Strater's most famous and long term guest was Louis L'Amour.
On the last night of our visit, everyone gathered around the
campfire at our site. John brought his ukulele and led us in song after song as
the sun set and night fell in the forest. That is a night that I will remember
for a long time. I hope we can all get together again, soon.
We were sorry to leave such good friends, but we had a
schedule to keep. We pulled out of Durango and
headed northwest to Cape Blanco State Park
in Port Orford, Oregon,
to spend a week with Leslie and Ray Friebershauser at the state park where we
met in 2019. We were all hosts at Cape Blanco Lighthouse that
spring, giving tours and regaling visitors with tales of life on the Oregon coast in the 19th
and 20th centuries. They also spent a couple of months at our park
in Benson the following winter. Ray’s help was invaluable when I had to replace
some of the siding on the casita.
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| We had Cave Lake to ourselves |
It’s about 1,500 miles from
Durango to Port Orford. Using interstate highways
is supposedly faster but, as usual, we (I) picked a more “scenic” route. In my
defense, this time it was actually shorter, if not faster. Anyway, from
Durango we headed to
Richfield, Utah, which has an RV-friendly Walmart, reasonably priced diesel fuel and convenient
propane access. Rested and all fueled up, we pushed on through
Moab to
Cave Lake State Park just south
of Ely,
Nevada
to dry camp in the parking lot near the dam. We don't fit in any of the campsites. They still charged us $20, which I
thought was excessive. We should have left early to beat the ranger’s morning
rounds.
We picked up US 50 in Ely and headed west to Reno.
It is too far to do that in one day, so we needed an overnight spot somewhere
near Austin, NV. Nothing sounded promising, but we took a
chance and pulled into the Bob Scott NFS
Campground and were early enough to get one of the two spaces in this very small park that are big
enough for our rig. We didn’t even have to disconnect the car. With our Senior Pass
it was just $5, a much, much better value than Cave Lake.
It is a beautiful setting, and quieter than I expected given how close it was
to the road. Schroeder really liked it, too. Unfortunately, we both forgot to take pictures.
I’ve long wanted to cross Nevada
on US 50, which was called “the loneliest road in America” by Life Magazine in 1986.
I don’t think it still deserves that distinction, but there are many long
stretches without any sign of habitation except the fences that keep the beefs (or, "beeves", really, look it up) off the boulevard. Kayeanne was pretty bored with it, so it was good that we
had cell coverage most of the way.
After three days of dry camping, we wanted a couple of
nights with full hookups, and the laundry had been piling up since we left Gunnison. Gold Ranch Casino RV
Park in Verdi, NV, just west of Reno had everything we needed, so we dropped
anchor there for a couple of nights. We did the laundry, dumped the sewer,
refilled the water, restocked at Trader Joe’s and enjoyed our first sushi
in weeks. Ah, all of life’s basics fulfilled in just two days, so on to Oregon.
Verdi to Port Orford can be done in two days if you put your
mind to it, so we decided to go for it to spend an extra day with Ray and
Leslie. I laid out a route that avoided the fire areas and most of I5. Klamath Falls turned out
to be just about half way, so we spent the night at the Klamath County Fairgrounds
RV Park, which is an exaggeration for a large gravel lot with hookups. What it lacked in ambiance
it made up for in convenience. I think there were five campers that night,
giving all of us lots of elbow room.
Rolling into Port Orford the next afternoon felt very
familiar. We spent two months at Cape
Blanco State Park in the spring of 2019 giving tours of the lighthouse, and came to really like Port
Orford. One supermarket, one gas station, a half dozen or so restaurants and a
food co-op pretty much describes the town that is small enough that US 101
passes right thru without a traffic light or a stop sign. Despite that it has a
pretty fair art gallery, an interesting Coast Guard station museum and two great state parks. And, of course, the not-to-be-missed lighthouse when Covid
relents. Not bad for a town of about 1,200 people.
Ray and Leslie are once again working in the park, but the lighthouse
tours are a Covid casualty, so they are camp hosts, cleaning cabins and selling firewood
this year. The four camp sites that are usually reserved for the lighthouse
hosts are now available FCFS, and Leslie grabbed one for us that came open the
day we arrived. Host sites are the only ones in the park that have sewer
connections, which was pretty critical because we wanted to stay a full week
and the park doesn’t have a dump station. Despite their work schedules, we got
to spend a lot of time with our friends.
This park is truly one of the gems in the Oregon system, even with the lighthouse closure. I went on and on about it in blogs #55 and #56, and suffice it to say
it hasn’t changed one bit, except the weather is sure better in the fall than
it is in the spring! Schroeder clearly remembered it, too. He led me right to
the trails, the horse camp and the group camp areas that he and Lucy thoroughly
inspected a couple of years ago.
A couple of our favorite places to eat had closed down, but
the Golden Harvest was just as good as we remembered. They still make the best roast
turkey and stuffing that I have eaten outside of my kitchen (or Paul Wiklund's, too, I must admit) and they
have added a bulgogi entrée that was very good, too. The lemon blueberry
cookies, though, are one of my all-time favorite things to eat, and were just
as good as ever. When Ray’s Market restarts their smoker after Covid, be sure to try their brisket sandwiches and the ribs.
Bandon is the “big” town about 25 miles or so north of the
park. Fish tacos at Tony’s with a double helping of their secret sauce was
terrific. When we tried to walk it off, though, we stumbled across Cranberry Sweets and More which we had
to check out. Cranberry is not what I think of when I’m looking for sweets, but
this place really merits its 5-star reviews. We didn’t try everything, but the tea
cookies were delicious, even the cranberry ones.
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| Da Gurls had a ball |
Sooner than we hoped, it was time to leave Ray and Leslie,
and head to
Nehalem
Bay State
Park for our seventh season as camp hosts.
Some of the wines we discovered this month include:
Chateau St. Michelle Horse Haven Sauvignon Blanc 2018 – Kayeanne really liked it
Santa Ema Reserve Cab 2018 - Val Chile – Very good
Rough Day Cab – Romania - Maybe the best cheap wine I’ve had in quite awhile
Juan Gil Jumilla 2018 – Spain - Very, very good. Total Wine may have it.
More
soon,
Bob
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| Black Canyon |
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| Lottis Creek |
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| Schroeder remembers Cape Blanco |
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| Crested Butte |
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| Hiking at Cave Lake |
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| Junction Creek |
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| Silverton |
