Monthly Archives: July 2008

Drive to Colorado Springs

After Great Sand Dunes we were going to drive to Colorado Springs. Originally we wanted to go to Pikes Peak (14.110ft/4233m), but with the bus we didn’t think it was a good idea to drive up. With the cog train it would be $32 per person – with 30 minutes at the top and then you cannot even bring your own lunch. So we decided to stay down and see it from “away”.

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Capitol Reef, Mesa Verde and Black Canyon

Capitol Reef was very relaxed, fewer (German) tourists compared to Bryce Canyon, with a nice campground. There were a few short hikes one could take, but we thought we wanted to take the hike up Grand Wash to see the “slot canyon”. Technically a slot canyon is a canyon where you can touch both sides at the same time, and Grand Wash a just a tad too wide, but it still should be very impressive.

 

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Gas for less than four dollars

This time we did it – we got gas for less than four dollars per gallon. While we’ve actually seen it once or twice, we never got it even close to that when we needed it. On the road from Black Canyon to Great Sand Dunes we had to have gas – in Gunnison – and we finally managed to get it for less than four dollars

 

At present, in the Great Sand Dunes National Park, we have driven about 2400 miles (3840 km) and our average fuel economy has been 15.9 MPG (6,7 km/L or 14,9 L/100km) so far – 23% better than expected.

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Felix bed malfunction

The other evening I was leaning on the ”stick” we use for the outer side of Felix’ bed and it said .. crash! Well, it broke. Duct tape made it back to one piece, but after a few evenings it was not straight any longer – more like a hockey stick – and as a result Felix fell out of bed one night while sleeping! Oops!

Since then we have used the aluminum supporter for the awning. This means, that we can not fully extend the awning while Felix’s bed is build, but we usually don’t do that anyway.  Mostly we just roll it out a bit (shade or sleeping Felix, our choice of the day J)

Phone Service

We opted for the ATT “Go Phone” (pre paid) for the trip as we did not want to get a two year contract with anyone. The Go Phone was a cheap solution – and as it shows, a bad one. ATT has almost no service west of Chicago and today, in a tiny town called Gunnison in Colorado we had service for the first time since we left Yosemite more than three weeks ago! As it happens ATT relies a lot of “partners” in the west, but Go Phone customers cannot use them. Unfortunately Gunnison is just a small town on the road (two supermarkets) and besides shopping for gas and food we didn’t expect to be in town long.

 

The phone should be more useful when we reach Chicago – I’m glad that we have not had any meltdown with the bus so far as we would not have been able to call anyone!

Zion and Bryce

Zion was mostly a place to hang out and rest – and so we did. The first day we took the shuttle, there are no cares in Zion Canyon, to the lodge and got our lunch at the lodge under a huge cottonwood tree. The second day we ran from the end of the canyon (The Temple of Sinavawa down to the campground – about 8 miles (13km) – as our only preparation for the Bryce Canyon Half Marathon.

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Arrived in Mesa Verde

The last tank of gas was for the drive from Bryce Canon to Capitol Reef and again to Mesa Verde (or at least mostly). Since both went quite a bit uphill (to Capitol Reef we had a 45 minute uphill to 2900 m/9670 feet) we expcted the fuel economy to tank, but we still stayed above 15.5MPG/6,5km/L.

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Drive to Zion and Bryce

As you might have understood from the post about leaving Grand Canyon, then we have now moved on to first Zion National Park and now Bryce Canyon National Park. There might be more about that later, but here is or driving map ano yesterday.

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Out of Grand Canyon

On our way out of Grand Canyon many things didn’t go as we planned them. Firstly it was raining all afternoon the day before and we thought we would visit the “Tourist Trap” at the rim that day. In the morning we packed, not too early, and went down to dump and fill fresh water on the bus. When we were done we noticed that the holding tank was still not empty – no matter what we did it didn’t want to empty.
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