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 canyonâ€. 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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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
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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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The other evening I was leaning on the â€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)
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.
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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!