Friday July 31, 2015 - Day 3. North Sterling State Park, Sterling, Colorado, site 23

We ended up where we were thinking of ending up, Sterling State Park.  We didn’t want to drive as far today and we were also worried about the weekend coming up and getting too close to Denver and finding a spot.  We are about 2 hours from Estes Park right now.  We drove only 6 hours today to go about 290 miles.  Once again supporting Ed’s Theorem of driving times.

We left Crystal Lake Recreation Area at 07:30 CDT and arrived here at 12:30 MDT.  Did not turn off the engine the entire trip.  Didn't want to experience the hard start engine issues discussed yesterday.  Gassed up twice today, leaving the engine running.  At a small Cenex in Minden, NE there was only two nozzles and they were both mid-grade for $2.64.  The gas I bought yesterday was $2.32.  An old farmer walked over to Marsha while I was fueling and he was asking about our “fine looking trailer”.   He had never seen a fiberglass trailer before and wanted a tour.  Marsha gave him one while I filled the tank.  He was quite impressed.

The drive today was more of the same as yesterday’s.  We drove the rest of the way across Nebraska on US-6 and took it all the way to Sterling, Colorado.  In Sterling we took 15 miles of county roads to the state park.  US-6 was very rural all the way with almost no traffic.  The cornfields turned into hilly cow pastures and ranches.  Saw feedlots and feed stores.  The terrain became drier and eventually we were into sagebrush.  So we transitioned into the west.

 

The long and not winding road . . .

 

We took advantage of the early arrival to relax for a change.  It was a relatively short drive day and we needed a break.  We signed up for two nights here.  Tomorrow, we are going to check out Rocky Mountain Nation Park so we know where we want to end up on Sunday, when all the Denver people go home so they can work on Monday.

It is 94^o here today, but 35% humidity (yeah, a dry heat), and a nice breeze.  In the shade it’s bearable, but there isn’t much of that.  We are sitting on a plateau with no trees.  In fact, there is so little shade, all the picnic tables have built in metal shades to give some shade and protect from the wind.  I’ve seen pictures of these from BLM campsites, but never saw one in person.  We have electric and have the A/C going.

 

Marsha at the shade/windbreaker picnic table

 

 

 

The Oliver sitting on the wide open pull through site, next to the tent pad and picnic table.  All the sites here look like this.  We've never stayed at one like this.  We're used to hanging out in the forests of the U.P.

 

 

Just hanging out with some munchies after arrival.

 

We took a long shower in the very nice bathhouse in the campground.  You insert quarters into a slot for the water to turn on.  Four quarters for 3 minutes and an additional quarter for each minute after.  Kind of like those spray it yourself car washes.

 

This is the third campsite for this trip and every campground we stayed at had lots of bunnies everywhere.  And they aren’t afraid of anyone.  You walk right by them and they just look at you.  They almost get run over in the roads.  They like the dense bushy vegetation by the side of the roads. 

Thursday July 30, 2015 Day 2

Crystal Lake State Recreation Area, Ayr, Nebraska, site 10
417 miles today

This is the view I woke up to this morning on Crystal Lake.

 

We got up at 05:00 and were on the road by 07:30.  We didn’t make any breakfast.  We decided to wait until we got some milk so we could have some cereal.  A banana held us over until then.  But we ALWAYS have coffee.

When we are somewhere when we plan on just one night, we usually don’t unhitch the trailer.  But we do if it is necessary to lower or raise the trailer tongue to level it front to back, which we had to do at Lake Darling.  But I tried something new this time.  I raised up the trailer with the jack until it uncouples from the hitch ball, then remove the ball mount from the truck receiver, then lower the trailer until level.  Why I didn’t do this before was because the Reese hitch I had on the Casita could not be removed unless I moved the truck forward.  Oliver uses an Anderson hitch which is somewhat different, and I can remove it without the need to pull the truck forward.  Why should I care?  The next morning when we leave, I raise the trailer, insert the hitch into the receiver, and lower it back onto the hitch ball.  I do not have to mess around trying to realign the ball mount to the trailer.  It doesn’t sound like much, but I like eliminating the hassel of lining up the trailer with the truck.

After leaving Darling State Rec. Area, we ended up at a deserted Walmart in Ottumwa, Iowa by 09:00.  Ottumwa was where Radar in M*A*S*H came from (the TV Radar, not the real person).  After buying some ice and milk, we ate breakfast in the parking lot and posted yesterday’s blog because we had no signal in the campground.  Took us about an hour to do all this.

We stopped for gas at the Walmart, too.  When I started the truck after refueling, it would not start.  It cranked and cranked for about 5 seconds each time and wouldn’t start.  It finally did, but ran rough.  I revved the engine to keep it from quitting and it finally ran OK.  But my Check Engine light was on.  It ran fine after that.  This had happened to me a few times on my trip last year, but not as bad.

After hours of driving, we were looking for a place to stop and rest, but the back roads we like to take don’t have rest areas.  There are hardly any towns, and they are so small that they don’t have business the have big parking lots like Walmart parking lots.  We drove on US-34 all the way across the bottom of Iowa, then connected with I-29 south to S.R.-2.  On this highway we saw a sign for an Iowa Information Center and decided to pull in there, to park and make lunch.  Off the exit we saw a Pilot Truck Stop and decided to fuel up first. 

The same restart problem occurred again, but it took longer to get it going.  I was afraid the battery would run down before I got it started.  This really bothered me now.  We never saw the Information Center so we continued west on route 2, crossed the Missouri River and into Nebraska.  We saw a Lewis and Clark Information Center and parked there.  We made lunch and tried to figure out what to do about the truck.  After lunch I went out and it started right up as it always does.  I saw that we were going to be near the somewhat larger town of Hastings, Nebraska after we got to our destination.  So I got on the internet to see if I could find a Ford dealer who could look at my truck and figure out what’s wrong.  I ended up leaving a message with the service department, which never called back.  While continuing on, Marsha researched the issue and found others who had the same problem.  It affects certain Fords, particularly 2009 and 2010 F-150 with the 5.4 3-valve engines.  The problem is with the canister purge valve.  I even have the part number.  I was going to see if I could find a U-tube video to see how to replace it, but don’t have a signal here either.  It affects the venting of the gas tank.  I only get this problem after hours of driving in very hot weather, and it’s only after refueling, and not every time, either.  So I think, at some point, I may be able to do this myself. 

It sure put a scare in us, though, when it happened twice in the same day.  It’s been over a year since it did this, and was much harder to start this time.

The rest of today was uneventful, just seemed like a long dragged out day.  Took us 10.5 hours to go the same distance we went yesterday in 8 hours.  The ride was all back roads through corn, soybeans, corn, corn, and some more soybeans, and corn, and some more corn.  Straight, straight, straight with gently rolling hills.  We enjoyed it though, better than taking the interstate  (I-80) which is also straight, with more traffic.  There was very little traffic on the back roads.  At times we were the only car we could see either behind or ahead, and you can see for miles both ways.

 

 

We are in an OK campground.  It’s pretty open with large trees for shade.  We have electric so we can run the A.C.  It was 86^o when we got here.  Made some salmon and grilled medley of yellow squash, onion, and zucchini in butter.  Last night’s campground was nicer.

 

Site 10 at Crystal Lake State Recreation Area

 

Saw lots of trains today.  They look like the long coal trains, but they are enclosed and are carrying grain or beans to the rest of the country because they have too much here.  Had to wait for one at one point.  We passed a lot of ethanol distilleries also, with tanker cars on the siding.

Tomorrow we will end up in Colorado, not quite sure where, but we’re thinking North Sterling Lake State Park, near Sterling, CO.  We are working towards Rocky Mountain National Park.

 The pictures and stories will get better.  These travel days are a little boring to write about.

 

Day 1 - Lake Darling State Park, Brighton, Iowa

Wednesday July 29, 2015           

We are spending the night at Lake Darling State Park near the tiny town of Brighton, Iowa.  We left home at 08:40 EDT and arrived here at 4:00 PM CDT.  8 hrs, 20 min. to drive 414 miles.  This agrees with my theory of 2 hrs. per 100 miles.  It works every time.  We stopped at a rest stop in Indiana, and two in IL.   And had one gas stop.

The GPS gave us a scare after crossing into Iowa.  It announce a 2 hr. delay because of a road closure and changed my arrival time from 5:00 to 7:00 in the evening.  Marsha got on her phone and found a way around it, but after that my GPS also offered up the same solution and we got here when we were supposed to.

We don’t like to take interstates, but there isn’t much option to cross IL east to west.  It is straight, flat, and boring.  We got off the interstate in Iowa and followed some nice country roads through farmland to get to this state park.  We found this state park on the map when planning the trip.  We plan on crossing the rest of Iowa tomorrow on route 92, which kind of parallels I-80.

Tomorrow, our destination is somewhere around North Platte, Nebraska.  I-80 follows the Platte River.  It is basically following the Oregon Trail, which by the way, is the name of the book I am currently reading.  It is about two brothers who are repeating the trail from end to end in a covered wagon, pulled by mules.

The state park here is nice, and we usually don’t like state parks.  We have a site right on the water.  When we got here in this 85^o heat, there was a nice breeze blowing off the lake and a nice shade tree on the site.  It didn’t take long for us to set up our chairs beneath the tree and enjoy the breeze with a cold one.

Made some English muffin burgers on the grill for dinner.  This is nice to get off the road early and have time to relax.  Before I was retired and had a limited time (2 weeks), I would push to get 550-600+ miles per day to get to our destination and we never had much time to relax before we had to go to bed so we could leave early so we could get to the next destination early enough to relax and make something besides a sandwich.  Well, we have time now to cut it back to 300 or 400 miles per day because time is not crucial anymore.  This all goes back to the “because I can” theme.

One of the milestones of the day was crossing the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa on this bridge:

 

Welcome to my blog . . . "Because I Can"

July 24, 2015.    Grand Haven, MI


After retiring a year ago, I have earned a new freedom I always dreamed of.  The opportunity to hook up the camper and take off to anywhere I want, whenever I want.  I frequently get asked when I describe a trip I'm about to take why I will be gone so long, and the answer always is  "Because I can."  It wasn't until I retired that I was able to say this and this freedom means enough to me to use it as the blog title.

Many of you reading this now may have read my blog of my 2014 travels to some of the Western National Parks.  ( https://edscasitatravels.wordpress.com/ )      I appreciate the positive feedback I received from many of you. 

This year Marsha and I will take another lengthy trip out west to see mountain and desert scenery, drive scenic highways, flyfish the trout streams, and camp in beautiful places.  We expect to visit Rocky Mountain N.P. in Colorado, Flaming Gorge N.M. in Utah, Grand Tetons N.P. and Yellowstone N.P. (of course) in Wyoming, and Glacier N.P. in Montana.  When not in the national parks, we'll be camping in national forest campgrounds.  We are not as formal in our planning this year as we were last year, so anything may change as we go.

We have a new camper this year, which we took possession of June 8 in Hohenwald, TN at the factory.  The Casita served us very well for the five seasons we had it.  Marsha follows the forum, www.fiberglassRV.com, which is a forum for owners of molded fiberglass RV trailers from manufacturers such as Scamp, Casita, Bigfoot, and many others.  One of the premium makes is Oliver.  The owners, the Oliver brothers, both owned Casitas and owned a fiberglass factory that makes tubs and showers.  They decided to make the ultimate Casita with all the bells and whistles and very high quality components.  In 2008, they halted production of the trailers due to the recession.  But in 2014 they resumed production of the original 17 ft. model and came out with a new 23.5 Ft. model called the Oliver Legacy Elite II.  These are premium trailers, even envied by Airstream owners.  And they are priced like an Airstream.

When Marsha discussed it with me, I told her we should go down there and look at them, which you have to do at the factory.  We immediately called the 800 number and set up a factory tour on Thursday of the next week.  This was on a Friday in February.  The factory is in Hohenwald, TN, about 1.5 hour drive south of Nashville.  We thought nothing of it.  Why? Because we can.  We were so impressed with the quality, the friendly skilled people building them, the materials, customer input, and how they will customize things for the customer like putting electrical outlets or hanging hooks where the customer wants and allows the customer to pick colors, graphics, flooring, etc.  Very few things are optional.

They use a double fiberglass hull, with an inner and an outer shell.  Insulation, tanks, wiring, heat ducting, and plumbing is between the two hulls.  Our camper has a king size bed, with mattress (not cushions), double pane windows, Delta faucets, stereo with 4 speakers, Bluetooth, DVD, that connects to 24" HD flat screen TV, commercial grade microwave, LED lighting, pantry lights, closet lights, ducted heat, remote control Maxair fan, 2000 watt inverter, 4 6-volt deep cycle batteries (405 amp-hr), electric tongue jack, electric stabilizers, tank level monitors, air conditioner, dual steps, welded aluminum frame, 16" commercial grade BF Goodrich LT tires, dual axels with self adjusting electric brakes, machined aluminum wheels, shock absorbers (not common an any trailers) and awning.  Of the items mentioned above, only the king size mattress, upgraded batteries, and inverter were optional.

Here's some pictures:

The Oliver at Canoe Harbor SFCG near Grayling, MI in the Mason Tract



 The Oliver at Autrain NFCG near Munising in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

An inside view:

Note the king size bed, counter space, dovetailed soft closing drawers, window blinds, mirrored cabinet doors, stainless steel marine hardware, under bed storage, and lots and lots of other features.

We will be leaving on our trip out west on Wednesday July 29th.  We will start out taking I-80 across Illinois and Iowa and stop somewhere halfway across Iowa.  I'll try to blog everyday, but may not post every day, depending on cell phone coverage or WiFi availability.  So there may be days with no posts, and days with several all at once.

Hope you all enjoy reading about our adventures in our new camper.