Travel day: Today we left Colorado Springs and are heading west to Gunnison, CO. We will travel small roads once again, which is fine with us. Some of the Airstreamers are taking the interstate, which we find boring.
It was an easy 180 miles. The scenery was beautiful and ever changing…
We left Colorado Springs about 9:45. Along this route we are traversing 4 mountain passes, some higher than others. Wilkerson Pass is at 9,500′ elevation. (This is not as high as it sounds to you flatlanders – we started at the RV park at elevation 6,320’. In contract, Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the 48 United States, is 14,500′, rising out of the plains of Death Valley, at elevation -282′.
We stopped in the tiny town of Hartsel. This is a highly recommended café called Highline Café. Breakfast burritos and buffalo burgers are their specialties. Several other Airstreamers were already there, and they kept on coming.
After lunch we walked the town a bit; there was this cute little schoolhouse… And then we were back on the road.
The views continued…
We stopped along the road to stretch our legs…
We crawled up Monarch Pass (11,312’). It was an easy drive, as there was little traffic, and the big red trucked pulled the Villa effortlessly.
We finally arrived at Gunnison, and 12 miles out of town we found the Blue Mesa RV Resort. We set up the Villa…
Our site was a little uneven… This is how we leveled the Villa on the low side…
At dinner time we readied for the Grill Night at the main office and recreation center.
We met the other caravaners at the clubhouse, where we grilled our own entre, then moved into the Rec Room, where we were served side dishes and desert. This was a nice time to socialize…
We returned to the Villa, and I dozed off a bit. At 8:30 we drove 10 miles to the Gunnison Valley Observatory.
We watched a slide show given by the astronomer who was the lead researcher at the GVO. (Yawn) The we climbed the stairs up into the dome. They have an “old” telescope that was built to observe Halley’s Comet in 1986. More star talk (Yawn). But then I had the opportunity to talk the telescope operator, who explained how the dome works, why the “hatch” opens as it does, and how the entire dome rotates to allow the telescope to have access to the entire sky. This stuff is interesting!
We each had a chance to look into the telescope and see a cluster of stars 25,000 light years away. (Yawn) But it is amazing that the light we were looking at was 25,000 years old…!
We didn’t return to the Villa until 11:30 pm… And an enjoyable time was had by all…
Adventures in the Villa 