On the Road Again
Up at 7am. Finished packing carbus and closing up the house. Left at 9am. First stop – Sam’s for gas and some produce. Then it was cruise control for three hours to Redding. Pulled in to the Elks lot, parked and hooked up carbus, had a brief lunch and then into the pool. Very refreshing. 107 in Redding today. We will leave early tomorrow to get in to mountains before it warms much.
Statue outside Redding Elks Lodge
Wrap up of our visit home.
I donated plasma a couple more times last week. We also attended Nicholas’ belt test to advance a level in Taekwondo. He passed and was given an Orange belt. Wednesday I waited around all day to meet with the phone man to install a DSL line in the Net Control building for the WS100 race. This is the place where we process information regarding the location of every runner (400 of them this year) throughout the duration of the race (30 hours). Friday I spent most of the day setting up Net Control and processing graphics to be used on each runners bio. page. Saturday I was at Net Control at 4:30am to get ready for 5:00am start. The next 30+ hours were filled with collecting, processing, and posting information as each runner was tracked along the 100.2 mile course. If you’re interested in the WS100 ultra run go to the web site.
Sue worked on the church rummage sale setup for a day and took a friend to Roseville to shop at a number of stores another day. Last weekend she attended an all day sewing class in Rocklin to learn freehand techniques for quilting.
Part of another day was devoted to attending a memorial for a friend and neighbor. One afternoon I helped Dan move a piano and we had dinner with Ken, Julie, Amanda, and Nicholas on Fathers Day.
Tomorrow we head north. Redding the first night. Yamsi Ranch the next day for several days and then on toward Aurora, OR for a wedding.
We’ll get back to regular entries and pictures soon.
Mid-Break report
Pretty busy week and a half. First two or three days we cleaned the carbus inside and out. I also changed the oil in both vehicles. I also worked at polishing out some etching on the windshield. I had my yearly physical for the frequent plasma donor program and have done two donations in the last four days. I sat in on two full length simulations of the Western States 100 ultra race in preparation for the real thing on the 27th. We were debugging and cleaning up our tracking program. Sue just returned from six days in So.Cal. visiting family and friends. While she was there she worked on the photos she took on our first trip, organizing and labeling and then posting some of them to the web to share. She did a great job. Much better than my random efforts. Go to our web site www.carbustravels.com and click on the Photos button. That will take you to a page that has a link to her albums. The next ten or eleven days will be busy. Will try to log in once or twice.
The Loneliest Road
We left our surprisingly nice casino RV camp spot about 8:00am and headed west. We had filled up the night before just before parking so we were good to go. A word of advice, NEVER leave Ely with less than a full tank of gas. Both east and west it is a long way to the next services. If you are headed east on US-50 from the Reno area, fill up in Fallon. US-50 across Nevada has been called “The Loneliest Road in the Country”. Life magazine once did an article on it and told its’ readers to be very sure of their survival skills prior to traveling on this road. The residents of Delta, UT (about 60 miles east of Nevada/Utah border) say they live on the eastern edge of nowhere. In some ways they are right. With the exception of Ely which is a decent sized town with many services, there are few people and no services between Delta, UT and Fallon, NV. Because of this there is not much traffic on the road. Truckers use the interstates and there just is not much for locals to travel to. It may be lonely but it is not boring. The road goes around and over a series of small mountain ranges. They may be small but they are not short. We went over several summits higher than Donner Summit. There are also a lot of them. We lost count of the number of marked summits but there were at least eight or nine. The scenery is outstanding. Mountains and valleys, mountains and valleys. Long straight stretches of road mixed with curvy parts as you go over passes. Right now every thing is green although we have done this road in late summer and it still was pretty. The day was partly cloudy which added shadows to the views. With a full tank of gas and time to enjoy it I would definitely recommend US-50.
We got to Reno about 3:00pm. We had thought we would stop in Truckee to spend the night with friends. But, home was less than 100 miles away and we had lots of day left. We pulled up in front of our house before 5:00pm. I do not know yet how many miles we traveled in our eight plus weeks but I do know that the stretch of road between the California/Nevada state line and Colfax is far and away the worst we were ever on. Parts of it are being refurbished but I doubt it will ever be as good as some of the roads we traveled which also have heavy traffic and extreme weather.
We have several things to do while we are home but not much of note so blogs will be somewhat sporadic over the next few weeks. We will work on pictures and add a few to previous blogs so you might want to review them from time to time if anyone cares.
Long Drive
There is not much in the way of destination stops along I-70/US-50 across Utah so it is just go and go and go some more. I will say though that this section of I-70 and the small portion of US-50 that branches to I-15 is some of the most picturesque road you will ever find. There are no destinations along the way but there are constant views that change as you move west and change elevations. And not one single billboard. The southern freeways are so cluttered you can hardly see the landscape.
We made it all the way across Utah and stopped at Great Basin National Park just inside Nevada.It was cold and windy and just starting to rain so we just did the visitors center and decided to move on to Ely for the night rather than stay in a NP campground. An hour later we were settled in a casino RV park sipping our complimentary margaritas.
Colorado National Monument
Short travel day. A little over two hours. In Grand Junction we parked the carbus and did some sight seeing. First was a hike around Dinosaur Hill. A large nearly intact dinosaur was unearthed here nearly 100 years ago. It has been on display in Chicago almost that long.
Local resident on Dinosaur Hill
Most of the afternoon was devoted to touring through Colorado National Monument. Rim drive with vistas of stunning red rock canyons and eroded formations.
Picture of picture taken on a better day from a better vantage point
Overcast day made it difficult to get good pictures. Don’t know what Sue is pointing out.
See the window rock in picture on the left? Picture on the right is same rock from a little different vantage point.
After the drive we found a post office and mailed a modified shirt to Sue’s friend Portia.
Last thing of day was a wine tasting. This area has lots of wineries including one that specializes in Meads and fruit wines. So you all will be a bit more educated, Mead wines are made from honey not grapes. They can be blended with juices from fruits or berries for different flavors. In addition to lots of grapes the Grand Junction valley also grows fruits, especially peaches which we were too early for obviously.
Continental Divide (again), John Denver Sanctuary, Maroon Bells
We left about 8:15 and headed north – and up. You know you are going up if the river next to the road is flowing downhill and it is going the opposite direction you are. The climb was pretty gentle but it was relentless. Eventually we went through Leadville, CO. Welcome sign said elev. 10200’. Decent sized town and gas was cheaper than Pueblo which is a huge city on two major highways. Leadville is right about tree line. Don’t know why people live there. Our climb was not over. Several miles north of Leadville we crossed the Continental Divide at Tennessee Pass. 10424’ above sea level. There is a monument there to the Tenth Mountain Division which trained there and was very influential in many conflicts in the Alps in WWII.
From there we headed down, and down, and down. Road not bad but more twisty and steeper. Glad we came the way we did. We joined I-70 in about 20 miles and kept going down for another 30 miles. Part of that went through Glenwood Canyon. Amazing feat of roadway engineering and very scenic. At Glenwood Springs we headed southeast and started climbing again slowly. We parked the carbus at a campground in Basalt and drove 20 more miles to Aspen. Basically an upscale resort town. I would guess that most of the people who work there live elsewhere. The major road to town has a carpool lane that is active in the morning for traffic into Aspen and active in the afternoon for traffic leaving Aspen.
Our goal in Aspen was to visit the John Denver Sanctuary. We located it without too much trouble, took pictures and contemplated for a short while and then headed out of town.
Sue read about a scenic area called The Maroon Bells. Not far out of Aspen so we headed that way. It has been called the most photographed area in Colorado and that probably is true. We got there on a bit of an off day (breezy, scattered clouds) and it still was outstanding. We hiked, took lots of pictures, and then headed back to carbus to rest, edit, and compose.
