Driving The Mountains Around Durango, CO.

This coming Sunday we are going to ride the Durango & Silverton Railroad so yesterday we thought we would drive to Durango so that we would know how long it takes to drive there and where we will need to park, board etc.

The drive to Durango took us through a lot of high desert area including the towns of Bloomfield and Aztec. Now, mind you, there is nothing wrong with high desert, but I'm really getting tired of brown again. It reminds me of our winter in 2006 that we spent in Arizona. I'm just ready for some real trees, green grass - you get the picture.

We arrived in Durango and found the train station without any problem. We figured it took a good hour to get here and that was going through two road construction areas, which we hope will not be "worked" on Sunday. We went to the ticket counter to see if we could get our tickets in advance - no problem. Just one thing we won't have to do on Sunday. The lady gave us a map showing where we are to park and said that we would begin boarding at 8:30 am. For Dean, that's get up time! He will just have to get up with the roosters on Sunday.

We then drove around town and I have to say that I was disappointed. I guess I was expecting more of a "old west" town, but Durango is more cosmopolitan - the downtown area does have so old buildings, but not much for shopping unless you are into art or jewelry (the expensive kind). We had spotted a Denny's on the highway and decided to have lunch, breakfast for me, there.

After lunch, we drove out in the country to find Lemon Dam and Vallecito Resevoir. We found Lemon Dam and lake without any problem. When we arrived at the dam, the road turned to gravel and according to the map we had, this was still the way to Vallecito. As we were driving along the lake, a vehicle came toward us. Well I flagged them down and asked it we were on the right road. The answer - NO! OK, so I got directions and turned around. It seems that there are few road signs on this particular county road and we missed the turn. We had our Garmin turned on, but it didn't even know we were on a road! Some help it is.

Anyway, we made it to Vallecito Dam and Resevoir and where not disappointed. The drive took us through some beautiful valleys full of farms and livestock. The trees are beginning to change in this area and there were some beautiful scenes. Yes, I took pictures and will be posting them shortly. For my readers that like to camp in the National Forest, there is a Natl. Forest Campground right on the lake. We drove down in the park and it was really pretty. There is a road marked for "big rigs" to get down to the campsites. The sign said it was down 2,000 feet but in reality it was closer to 200!

We circled around to Bayfield which is on Hwy 160 then on back to Farmington the way we came. It was a really nice day. One that if we were not fulltiming, would not have taken place! Life is good.

Today - Friday, A Could Have Been A Bad Day!

Today we left mid-morning to do laundry. When we returned we smelled what to us smelled like rotten potato's. Well, I got into the cabinets looking for the smell and didn't find anything. We emptied the trash can, thinking it might be coming from there. It wasn't.

At this point, I need to tell you what was happening here at the campground. The owner hired two young men to do some weeding and watering of trees. A couple of days ago we returned from a trip to town to find that they had added a "y" fitting to our "y" fitting on the water facet. No problem except that we found our water pressure inside very low. Dean went out and turned their water down and that gave us more pressure. We stopped by the office and told them what we did and the manager said he would have them move the connection to another site. Today while we were gone, they removed their "y" fitting and hose, and then turned our water back on, but they also opened the backwash hose that Dean had connected. I'm sure that these young men didn't know what they were doing, otherwise they wouldn't have turned the water on the backwash hose.

Back to the odor - I went into the bathroom and noticed that the toilet water was kinda tinted looking. Fortunately, I put the lid down first and then proceeded to flush - mistake! Black water spewed out the sides (remember the lid was down) and onto the rug and floor - yuck!

Needless to say, we had a mess to clean up. Dean dumped the black tank and while he was doing that, one of the young men came over to say that he had turned our water off because he saw water running off our roof. Well, it wasn't clean water he saw, but black water coming out the vent! So now we don't just have a bathroom to clean up, but a motorhome to wash as well.

Dean just came in from beginning to wash off the area of the motorhome where the black water had run off saying his brush that hooks onto the hose just broke! Will it ever end?

I still can smell a odor inside. Hopefully it will soon go away. Everything has been cleaned and the rugs are outside in a bag to be laundered tomorrow. My concern is that the smell is now coming through the vent pipe. If so, I'm not sure how we will get rid of it.

In spite of everything - I wouldn't change anything, well, maybe educate those young men on RV plumbing!