Day 33: Tuesday 27-Jul-1999
From: Arch View, Moab, Utah
To: Stratton, Colorado
Distance: 505mi (808 km)
The trip home is starting today. Alarm clock on 4:00 am! First time in a couple of weeks. We finished up around the trailer, made sandwiches and coffee. We were going to eat breakfast on the go. We have about 2,500 miles (4,000km) to go from Moab to Merrimack. The big thing today is the climb over the Rocky Mountains (before Denver). The road is following the Colorado river and is beautiful. In some places it looks like alp villages in Switzerland. Even the ski resorts are built in Alpine style. When we saw all the green forest we noticed how much we have missed the green color. We were climbing up .. 8000 ft, 9000 ft., 10000 ft. We saw patches of snow on the mountain sides. That was when we had to stop every 20 minutes to cool off the transmission. Fortunately the outside temperature was only at 70F so it cooled off quite quickly. We saw a few truckers doing the same stops. That reassured us a little bit. You have to cross over two 10000 ft passes before you go downhill into Denver. Quite an experience.
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| One of the many transmission cool-off stops during the climb over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Notice the snow on the tops. This is just before the entrance to Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel at 11,150ft (3345m). |
We stopped for lunch at a rest area after Denver. It was quite warm outside, about 90F. Lillemor was driving after lunch. We had nice straight concrete roads.
We stopped at TRAIL'S END CAMPGROUND in Stratton, Colorado. This was a nice little place, with a pool and complimentary home-baked cookies. The sites were organized a bit differently. They were grouped 2 by 2 and you parked back-to-back so you did not have to site outside and face the neighbor's sewer.
It was not too hot here so we could run without the air conditioner. We have found a few problems with the electrical systems in the trailer. We cannot run the AC and frige/freezer at the same time. The frige/freezer cools much better when it runs on electricity than on gas. So we could run the frige on electricity during the night so that it would be really cold. That helps because we also have the problem with the frige's gas pilot light being blown out on the road..
We ate dinner and went to bed early.