Trip Report - Part 3

Our first morning at Ridgway State Park was a bit of a shock. We awoke to a low temperature of 30 degrees - on the 23rd of May!  As I have mentioned before, Honey loves deer, and we had seen droppings, but no deer for the first couple of days at Ridgway.  We just missed a bear at the footbridge over the Uncompagre, but hadn't seen any mammals larger than a chipmunk.

Late one afternoon, Honey was sitting at the picnic table, facing the camper and talking on her cell phone.  I came out and said, "Honey! Turn around!"  There were eight deer grazing within 50 feet of where she was sitting and another four within 50 yards!

I shot this from the door of the trailer.  That's the top of Honey's head at the bottom of the frame.

 From our base at Ridgway, we made trips to Montrose and Ouray, and across Red Mountain Pass to Silverton.  

When we left Ridgway, we were essentially on the way home, but there were several stops and several sights along the way worth sharing.  Our first leg was across Colorado - over Monarch Pass - to Woodland Park, Colorado.

That's our 5th wheel on the left in the parking lot at the top of the pass.  There are miles of 6 and 7% grades on both sides of the pass.  Our Cummins engine scarcely noticed, but the transmission got hot enough that we had to stop and let it cool down.

We got to Woodland park in early afternoon and the temperature was in the low 50s.  Then as we were setting up the trailer, it started to snow.  Big fat flakes that didn't last long, only about 10 minutes, but it was the first and only time it snowed on us on this trip.

From Woodland Park, we had an overnight at Raton Pass, New Mexico, then back to Texas.

We'll talk about Texas tomorrow.