We have been to Amarillo several times but never explored the historic Route 66 district on 6th street. First, we needed another Texas food stable, What-a-Burger! Yum! Then we drove down to the 6th street historic district. We strolled through a couple of the large Antique malls where Leslie found a couple of Porcelain Dogs for her collection. The district is a bit run down. We wondered what it was like in its heyday.
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| What-A-Burger Fix |
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We got hit the road early to Amarillo. We picked up US84 south to I-40 near Santa Rose and then east on I-40. I-40 follows the old Route 66. David had fond memories of the stories of his Great Aunt and Uncle that drove Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angles and back ever summer in the 1950s and early 1960s. We had stumbled upon a Route 66 roadside landmark while planning our route. We pulled off I-40 at Adrian Texas and found the Route 66 Midpoint marker. It is the midpoint of the distance between Chicago and Los Angles. We had hoped to eat lunch at the Midpoint Café but were disappointed to find out it was closed on Monday and Tuesdays. So we explored the nearby tourist trap gift shop before heading on down the road to the Oasis RV park outside Amarillo ($56 per night with GSC). This is our go to RV park in the Amarillo area. But it is starting to get run down. Pot holes in the roads. Landscaping is not being maintained and the dog park is overgrown weeds. After setting up, we were ravenous after missing lunch and had an urgent need for some real TexMex. So, we drove into town to Chuy’s and feasted on delicious spicy TexMex. Man we missed it!
We had a series of thunderstorms coming through on Saturday, so we stayed home to keep Keira from going crazy. On Sunday we drove into the historic downtown area of Las Vegas NM. Parts of the TV show “Longmire” were filmed here on the square. We wandered through a couple of the antique stores that were open. Being a small town on a Sunday, many of the shops and restaurants on the square were closed. After filling up with fuel, we went to the Buffalo Hall Café for dinner before heading back to the Wanderer.
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| Sherifs Door from Longmire |
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| Historic Plaza Hotel |
We got hitched up and headed down I-25 for 254 miles. We have more confidence in the new hitch after we came up on a single lane construction zone. As we rolled up to it, we suddenly saw there was a series of deep dips in the pavement. We hit the brakes to bleed off as much speed as we could before we rolled over them. The dips in the pavement yanked hard on the trailer in multiple violent chucking motions. Keira did not enjoy the ride! But we rolled through and the trailer, hitch and truck were just fine. If that did not pull the hitch out of the pucks, nothing would! Only a hundred yards up the road there was a moving van pulled over to the side with a car trailer attached to the back. All the tires on the car trailer were blown out due to the violent motion when they hit those same dips. We pulled off I-25 at US84. It was at this intersection 40 years ago that David and two of his friends and spun out and hit the bridge abutment while headed to Telluride Ski area in a blizzard. It brought back memories. Just past the bridge, we turned onto a county road to go to the New Mexico Las Vegas KOA ($58 per night with KOA discount). We were a bit concerned since we could not see the RV park and this road was basically single lane with no place to turn around. A bit farther down the road we came up on the RV park and pulled in. After checking in, they escorted us to our sight. The roads were really tight for our big rig and we ended up rubbing against some small tree branches. As we pulled into our site, the skies opened up and it rained hard. We waited for the rain to let up before getting out and unhitching. The water system in this park is gravity fed so it is only about 22lbs of pressure. We’re not going to get good showers here! Best word we can use for this park is “rustic”. But it will do for a couple of days.
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| Our Site in Las Vegas NM |
The new hitch took a few tries to get it lined up properly, but we loved the way it automatically locked when the king pin slid in correctly. We ran our safety checks and all looked good. We headed through the RV park to get to the back entrance. When we went over a speed bump with the trailer there was a loud bang! We immediately stopped, which caused another loud bang. We got out and inspected the hitch and could see nothing wrong. We called Lazy Days RV and told them what was happening. They had no explanation but agreed to look at it if we stopped by. As long as we started and stopped gently there was no noise. We pulled up to the Lazy Days RV Service center and as we rolled up, several technicians came out. When we braked it of course made the loud bang. Don, one of the smaller guys climbed in the back and had us drive around the service area parking lot while he watched the hitch. He could see a portion of the head attachment (“the saddle”) moving when it banged. So, we pulled around to a parking area and disconnected the Wanderer. We pulled over to the service bay and Melvin checked the torque on all the bolts on the hitch. Surprisingly, over half the bolts were not torqued properly. The two bolts on “the saddle” were only finger tight. Keira did not like the bangs. Convinced this was the fix, we hooked the Wanderer back up, did our safety checks, and drove around the service area again. We still got Bangs but only when we accelerated hard or braked hard. So Melvin called the manufacturer and discussed it with them.
They asked us to film the hitch while it banged. So, Melvin climbed in the back seat with Keira to film the hitch with his phone while we drove around the service area again. Then email the film to the manufacturer. An hour later and several phone calls, they called back and said the hitch was moving in the bed puck system. They could see it when they slowed the film down and watched it. They said it was normal for the hitch to move around in the pucks a little but they had never heard one bang before. They assured us that it was safe to go down the road and they would send us some washers to use to tighten up the pucks.
So, we headed on down the road to Colorado Springs. We had some bangs when we hit big bumps on the road, but everything seemed ok otherwise. We could definitely feel more chucking than we had with the Comfort Ride Hitch. Otherwise, things went as normal. We pulled into the Colorado Springs KOA ($72 per night with KOA discount) about 2:45pm. We had a timed entry pass for Pikes Peak from 2-4PM. So, we dropped the Wanderer off at our site, grabbed some warm cloths and headed to the Pikes Peak Highway entrance. We arrived at 3:45 (15 minutes to spare). We drove the highway towards the top of the mountain. We stopped at Crystal Lake for some pictures before heading on up to the top. About halfway there was a checkpoint where they were stopping people coming down the mountain. That seemed unusual. We arrived at the top about 4:45. There were a few places on the road where the drop offs with no guard rails was a bit worrisome. The truck definitely did not have as much power as usual due to the altitude. At the top it was only 44 Degrees and the wind was blowing hard making it pretty chilly. But we walked all the way around the summit area with Keira. Keira was not liking the cold wind and was anxious to get back to the truck. Another visitor was kind enough to take our picture in front of the Pikes Peak summit sign showing the 14,115 foot altitude. The views were spectacular! The wind chill chased us back to the truck to get warm. The trip down was with the exhaust brake and low gear. We pulled up to the checkpoint halfway and they checked our brake temperature! (It was only 110). The ranger taking the reading was surprised at how low it was. David explained how we had used the exhaust brake and low gears to crawl down without using the brakes except in the hairpin corners. We continued on down and with a few stops, back to the Wanderer to finish getting set up.
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| Crystal Lake |
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| Views from the top of Pikes Peak |
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| The Behemoth at the top of Pikes Peak |
We stayed in touch Lazy Day RV to see when our new hitch would come in. It arrived on the 18th as expected and Lazy Days RV took out the old Comfort Ride 30K hitch and installed the new Demco 31K hitch. They had to cut parts of the Comfort Ride Hitch off to get it out. It was quite a chore. The new Hitch went in pretty easy and they showed David how to operate it.
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| Old Hitch |
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| New Hitch |
Being our last day here, Leslie did not want to miss seeing the eastern edge of RMNP. We loaded up and drove over to Mary’s lake and then to Lily Lake and a bit beyond. Longs Peak was in the back ground. We then topped off to fill up on fuel and stopped at Smokin Dave’s BBQ for the last night’s dinner, just like we did in 2019.
We planned to hike along the eastern edge of the RMNP on the 11th. David was tired, so he went to bed early. Leslie stayed up and before she headed to bed, so took Keira out for one last potty break. As they were coming up the stairs back into the Wanderer, Keira raced up the steps and knocked Leslie off the stairs. She hung onto the door but landed on the grill table and wacked her left foot really hard on the stairs. David woke up hearing a loud bang and the trailer shuttering. When he got dressed and investigated, he found Leslie sitting on the chair looking at large welt on the top of her left foot. Fortunately, nothing seems broken but the top of her foot is badly bruised and will take a while for the swelling to go down and the bruising to clear up. That was the end of our hiking plans for the rest of the trip. We are working on teaching Keira not to do that ever again! The next morning, David took Keira out for her morning walk and there was a herd of Elk with a huge Bull in the field next to the pond. Keira didn’t even notice them until David pointed them out. Then she looked them over and promptly ignored them. We guess they were too big to consider playing with so she didn’t care. The Elk did not like the look of Keira so they proceeded to wander away back toward the NP. But they came back later that evening for a drink.
When we were here back in 2019 we had hiked up to Dream Lake. There was still a lot of snow on the trails then so we didn’t go any further. This time we wanted to make it all the way to the end of the trail at Emerald Lake. We entered the park around 12:30 on our timed entry pass. As we drove up to Bear Lake, we could see storm clouds moving in. Again, we were surprised that we were able to get a parking spot in the Bear Lake parking lot. The Emerald Lake trail starts at the same location as Bear Lake trail. It is a very popular trail since it goes past three alpine lakes: Nymph Lake, Dream Lake and ends at Emerald Lake. We started up the trail around 1pm. It rained on us lightly off and on all the way up. The trail is 1.9 miles one way with 750 feet of elevation gain starting out at 9,500 feet. We were climbing the entire way out and were definitely feeling the altitude (lack of air density). We stopped at Nymph Lake to enjoy the views. Many people turn around here and go back, but we continued on to Dream Lake. It is such a beautiful lake with the craggy mountains behind the lake. Most of the crowd turned around here. We saw several fly fishermen catching trout in the lake and we could see many fish from the trail as it wound its way along the shoreline. We continued on to Emerald Lake. The climb up to Emerald Lake was pretty strenuous given the altitude (10,250ft). When we got to the lake, there were only a couple of folks there at the end of the trail. We took our photos and sat down to have a snack before heading back. A chubby chick monk took an interest in Leslie’s nut bar and climbed up on her and tried to get to the nut bar. It even climbed up onto her shoulder! David shooed it away when it got too aggressive. After a rest and a snack, we hiked back out to the Behemoth. As we hiked out the rain stopped and the sun peeked through. It was a lot easier going downhill on the way out but we were tired by the time we got back. It was a beautiful hike!
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| Nymph Lake |
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| Dream Lake |
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| Climbing the trail |
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| Blue Jay |
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| David on the trail |
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| Dream Lake |
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| Emerald Lake |
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| Dream Lake |
Poor Keira has been stuck in the Wanderer for the last week other than bathroom walks. So we took her down to Lake Estes where there is a nice paved trail around the lake. We parked down where we had been fishing a few days ago and walked a mile out along the lake then a mile back. Keira was pretty wore out by the time we got back to the Behemoth but she was very happy to have gotten out.
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David and Keira at Lake Estes
We noticed a winery in Estes Park while driving through town and decided to add Colorado to the list of states we have tasted wine in (Colorado is #28). There were several shops on the route into town that we wanted to explore as well. We stopped at the Sticks and Stones furniture store to explore rustic wood furniture. They had some beautiful pieces of furniture that gave us some ideas about what we may want in our house. David was also getting ideas for when he gets his woodworking shop back up and running. Next we stopped at a gift store that had a lot of interesting metal statues sitting out front of the store. Then we stopped at another store that had a lot of mountain related gifts. We finally arrived at the Snowy Peaks Winery in downtown Estes Park. We each picked five wines to sample so we could get a good cross section of their wines. All their wines are made on site using only Colorado grown grapes. We did not even know there were vineyards in Colorado! The wine was good so we ordered some local cheese and crackers along with a glass of our favorites wines and enjoyed relaxing on the patio. We ended up leaving with a few bottles to bring back with us to Texas.
