Road Trip - Days 2 and 3

Day two was a mixed kind of day.  After we had our coffee, we did a quick tour of the whole campground to see what we liked and didn't like for future trips.  We took the video camera so we can use that with the map to mark off the “bad” sites and the best sites.  Some are plenty long, but not very level, so an actual view of them will be very helpful.

Then we made a quick run up to Rifle Falls State Park.  It has a campground, but only 13 sites.  And of those 13, one is the host site, one is the handicapped site, so realistically there are only 11 to consider.  Mainly we wanted to take a quick walk to see the falls and snap a couple of photos.  We'd been there years ago, before we got our first motorhome, and only partially remembered it.  We remembered there was small campground, but no details.

 

 

They think the cliffs behind the falls were formed a long time ago by beaver dams.  The limestone is porous and with erosion, the water fall (it used to be one big one) and caves were formed.  Then in the 60s when they put in a small hydroelectric plant, the falls split into the 3 we now see.  There is a loop trail that takes you to the top of the falls.  We hiked it years ago.

 

After that we dropped Max at the RV and headed to Glenwood Springs for the CSA (Colorado Snowmobile Association) quarterly meeting.  Without realizing the capital grants meeting was running over, we went in and wound up being “treated” to a scathing accusation that the Grand Lake Trail Groomers had been “negligent” when one of the grooming machines went through the ice.  The worst part was the group had ranked all the grant requests, giving the GL Trail Groomers third place in the list of projects submitted, then started talking about punishing them for their negligence and for keeping it all secret until the last minute.  What an eye opener.  Unfortunately, the two who had presented the request were already back in Grand Lake when this happened.  The main meeting was a lot less contentious and had a lot of good points, including a proposal for CSA to sponsor an effort to install avalanche beacon checking stations at at least 15 snowmobiling trailheads throughout Colorado.

After the meeting we came home to a pot roast; I love having a crock pot on board.  Just slice and serve.  Max got pot roast and rice for dinner.  Then Tom read and I wrote down some more memories until bedtime.

Sunday we took a drive over to the third state park in the immediate area, Harvey Gap.  The guys at the entrance station told us that if we weren't looking to fish there really wasn't anything there for us.  I told them I take a lot of photos and it was worth photographing.  That seemed to catch them by surprise.

We followed the road “down lake” toward the little earthen dam.  The road went on past it, through the gap and down in farm and “ranchette” country, eventually taking us back to Rifle.  There we made a quick stop at Wally World, McD's and the Starbucks parking lot (McD's didn't have WIFI or it didn't reach that corner of the parking lot) to check email, send a couple of text messages, etc.  A quick stop at the RV to drop off our acquisitions (one was frozen custard), then we took a short drive the “other way” at the Y intersection that brings us to Rifle Gap Reservoir's developed area.  At the end of the road there's a correctional institution.  That's all we needed to know.

For Mother's Day dinner: grilled pork chops (for a while we thought the wind might blow out the charcoal), fruit salad, and instant mashed potatoes (loaded baked potato flavor).  We just didn’t have room for the ice cream with brownie brittle crumbs.  That would have to wait for another night.

The campground host came to advise us the temperature was supposed to drop to below 30 and take care of any exposed water lines.  We watched a movie before we went to bed.  Another day on the road came to an end.