Are you ready to RV?

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Rupert & I hit the road today. Becca drives us to the RV center outside of Denver, and when we get there are informed that we did not call ahead to tell them when we would pick up the RV so have to wait a while until they can get it ready. Which ends up being fine for us, because we needed to head to the store anyway to get some groceries & supplies. Becca as usual is a great sport about it, and comes with us before she has to run back to work. I was sad to say goodbye to her, we had such a good time together in Boulder & exploring Colorado.

After a rather brief introduction to RVing, we jump in and head west on I70. Rupert is driving (that was the deal with we booked it- I would cook, and he has to drive), and for some reason the bus is not responding- doesn't seem to be switching up high enough. Well Ruber starts to panic a bit because the bus is so hard to control, and we get off & call the RV support team. They think it might be a problem with the transmission lines, and we are already about 30 mins outside of the RV place. So we try again, and the bus is still not shifting up properly (and we don't think we'll make it to San Francisco in 3rd gear the whole way). So we stop for the final time, and I make Ruber go through the gears. Well.... seeing as it's a crappy car, although it looked like we were in drive (automatic transmission), we were actually in 3rd gear the whole time..... So we both felt a bit stupid, but at least we were reassured that the bus did in fact work. The RV support team had a good laugh when we called them back to tell them everything was OK- oh well!

So on with route 70- going up and down the mountain passes of the Rockies. Really beautiful, but quite hard driving a big bus. We started at an altitude of about 5430ft (Boulder) and climbed to 11,000ft, then headed west and down again. We picked up the Colorado river again at Dotsero- it was massive now, a total difference from when we saw it in Rocky Mountain National Park when it was a wee stream. The landscape was constantly changing, going from mountains and forest to desert and dry. We passed some cool coal trains- one of them had 2 engines, 104 trailers filled with coal & 2 cabooses!

The journey was really long on the 1st day, we definitely miscalculated how long it would take in the bus. Ruber was exhausted when we finally rolled into Arches National Park late in the evening. We couldn't see much as we entered the park, and then had to drive for 18 miles through it in the dark to get to Devil's Garden Campsite. It was very peaceful & calm though, and we both slept pretty well.

Start: Denver- 43,423 miles
End: Arches National Park- 43,789 miles

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