June 13, 2025 - June 30, 2025 -- Eleven Mile Campground to Salida
Written By: Wendy
As we left the flatlands behind and saw actual real mountains on the horizon, Scott and I grew more and more excited to finally be back in the west. The west and the mountains are our true home and happy place, so it felt good to be out of the suffocating humidity and see some changes in the terrain. Slowly it changed from seeing the mountains in the distance to being in the mountains on narrow windy roads with peaks towering overheard on either side of us. We could see the reemergence of shrubby pine trees and smell the cool fresh mountain air. Our hearts were happy. We drove right on through the first set of mountains to the high alpine desert like area of Eleven Mile State Park in Lake George, CO. We turned off the paved road and onto a gravel road and, according to Google Maps, still had a surprising long amount of time left to already be on gravel road. We felt a bit nervous, but our anxiety was quickly forgotten when we saw bison to our left and a large herds of pronghorn scampered across the road in front of us. (Side note, there are actually NO antelope in the United States. Those things we call antelope are actually pronghorn, which are only found in the Americas. Antelope, on the other hand, are only found in Africa and Asia. So that song, "where deer and the antelope roam..." was incorrect, but I guess antelope sounds better? So there's your fun fact of the day!) After what seemed to be an extraordinarily long time on terrible gravel roads with me trying to catch everything that kept flying around the truck, we finally reached our campsite. It was on the edge of the campground, at the top of the hill overlooking the lake. The site was huge with smatterings of rock clusters around the site that would lead to endless play for our kids. We stepped out of the truck and breathed in the fresh mountain air and peaceful environment and decided the drive was worth it. Worth it until I stepped in the trailer and was at a total loss for words. It looked a bomb had gone off inside our trailer. During the rough gravel road, no, rough is an understatement, I mean extremely turbulent gravel road, our fridge and freezer had opened up and food has spilled out of them and onto the floor. Several other drawers and cabinets were open with other food and random items strewn haphazardly about. And two of our very large blinds with wooden decoration had fallen off the wall. Was it still worth it?
Luckily, we were also meeting up with Scott's parents, his sister, and my brother and his girlfriend for the weekend, so I suppose that it was worth it. After we had taken stock of the mess, everyone else arrived, and we excitedly greeted all our family members. Our kids happily played on the rocks with their aunt for hours while we sat around the campfire taking in the stunning and unobstructed view of the sunset over the mountains in the distance. Ya, it was worth it and good to be back in the mountains and with family again.
The next day we went fishing for the majority of the day. Well by "we" I mean Scott and my brother and his parents. I spent the day wrangling the kids by the river, but it was nice to have the help of the other family members, and it ended up being a leisurely river day. My brother tried to teach Caroline how to fly fish with little success, due to her being 3, but it provided great entertainment to watch.
The next morning was Father's Day, and I woke up early to start cooking Scott an elaborate Father's Day breakfast that he deserved. Unfortunately, I could hardly stand up, my throat hurt so much to swallow that I could barely even drink anything, and I could feel chills starting to take over my body. I woke Scott up with tears in my eyes and a thermometer in my hand reading 101. I apologized profusely about being sick on the worst day to be sick and went back to bed. I spent the whole day in bed with my fever hovering around 102 all day. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and not feeling any better, but I hoped that with a good night's sleep, I would be feeling better and ready for our travel day tomorrow.
The next morning I woke up and my fever was down to in the 99's, but my throat was still incredibly painful, so much so that I couldn't eat anything but yogurt and liquids. In the back of my head, I was worried that I had strep, but there wasn't anything I could do about it until we got to our next campground and closer to civilization. We said our good byes and knew we'd see all our family again soon since we'd be in Colorado all summer, and then headed out onto the dreaded long pothole and washboard ridden gravel road for the next hour. Just before turning onto the paved road, we pulled over to fix the inside so that stuff wasn't flying around for the rest of our drive. Luckily our fridge and freezer stayed closed time, but two more blinds had fallen off and the bag of pellets for our smoker had exploded and was all over. Worst of all, as we opened a cabinet our beloved wooden pizza peel feel out and cracked in half. I still felt terrible and could not handle the mess, so I tidied up what was necessary and quietly closed the door and got back in the truck with a deep sigh.
We pressed on with my throat hurting worse, and I could feel my fever coming back. I looked up places to get a strep test in Gunnison and called around so that I could immediately get the medicine I needed once we got into town. Just after getting off the phone with a pharmacy and while cresting over the top of Marmot Peak overlook, we head a loud BANG! and our tire minder started beeping in warning of a flat tire. Luckily, we were right next a huge pull off, the first saving grace of the day, so Scott immediately pulled off. We both hopped out to see the damage. The tire was flat alright, shredded to bits on the inside, to be exact, so we pulled out the necessary equipment and started to change the tire. Upon further investigation, Scott realized that not only was our tire flat, our leaf spring hanger was also busted, which is what had probably popped the tire and shredded it. The underbelly was all torn up, and it was unclear if the axel was broken as well. "Well we're done," said Scott. "What?? What do you mean?" I asked in a nervous voice. "We cannot go anywhere without a tow truck, and we have no cell service, so we will be here a while," he replied. I instantly began to panic. Minutes ago, I had made plans for how to get antibiotics so I could start feeling better, and now we were stuck, without cell service?! I couldn't think straight and tears started to brim in my eyelids. Scott took a deep breath and laid out a plan while I sat in the shade trying to keep myself together and stay calm in front of the kids.
It took a while, but with the help of our Starlink (second saving grace!), we were able to get ahold of a tow truck company through Good Sam. They told us to wait, and the tow truck would call when they were on their way. The kids asked if the could watch a show while we waited, and since I was barely functional, and we already had the Starlink set up, I gave in, but I told them that we probably wouldn't be able to finish it. Well, two 40 minute shows and a movie later and the tow truck had still not shown up. Scott had been on and off the phone the whole time, and with the sun setting and bedtime approaching, we realized that we were not going to be towed out that day. The third saving grace of the day was that we just happened to break down about 40 minutes from Scott's parents' second home in Salida. We called them, and they said we could stay there as long as we needed. When we walked into their home that night, the house was clean with toys ready to be played with in the play area under the stairs and relaxing music and scenes playing on the TV, strangely enough. I breathed out a huge sigh of relief and started crying again to have the comfort of a safe place to stay after this horribly awful day. By the time we got the kids to bed, all the walk-in clinics and pharmacies were closed, and I did not want to go to the ER, so it looked like I had to wait another day for antibiotics.
The next morning, I went straight to get strep tested and, not surprisingly, tested positive. Scott spent the day on the phone with different tow truck companies. Apparently the company that was supposed to tow us out had one driver that could tow our size rig. Well he got in an accident that morning and would not be able to tow anything for several days. We did not have several days. Nor did we have many other options. Finally, Scott convinced the guy at the one auto body shop in town that could do the repairs on our rig to tow it down. He jerry-rigged it, but he got it down and into his shop late that evening, just before sunset. It was a huge relief that day to have our trailer off the side of the road and for me to have medicine to help me start feeling better.
The next few weeks passed along lazily as we got into a routine. I started to feel better (I ended get strep throat again 2 more times within the next month, so it was healing journey), and we came to the realization that our trailer would not be ready in a few days. The guy projected 3-4 weeks for the repairs. So here we were.
During our time in Salida, we slowly fell in love with the town. The house was within a 10 minute walk of 3 playgrounds, the library, the river, 2 grocery stores, 4 coffee shops, and all of the adorable downtown with quaint mountain apparel shops and delicious restaurants. I didn't get in the truck for 2 full weeks, and it was easier to bike than to drive in this town. Bikers were everywhere and drivers kept a close out for bikers making it feel amazingly safe for even our kids to bike everywhere. The weather was perfect and in the uppers 70s and sunny day after day with crisp evenings where there was often live music to watch in the park. What made this town even better was that it was just under 2 hours to Scott's parents and 3 1/2 hours to parents. Silently Scott and I were having thoughts until one evening while our kids happily played at a park after dinner, I worked up the courage to say to Scott, "What if we stayed? What if we didn't go back to Wenatchee right away?" "I was thinking the exact same thing!" he enthusiastically replied. I had been having the thought for several days at that point, but I had been nervous to say anything because he had been the one who was so excited to go back to Wenatchee, and I didn't want to squash all his dreams. I was surprised and so excited about his shared sentiment. After that, things snowballed. We asked his parents if we could stay in the house, and they said we could for up to a year. We called our renters and asked them if they wanted to stay. After some negotiations, they signed a lease to stay in our house for another 2 years. 2 years!
So I guess this is where our RV travel story ends. I say RV travel story, because we of course (or at least me!) have other travel plans up our sleeves. Scott and I both needed a break from RV life and the kids needed some consistency and down time. We knew to not go too hard while we were traveling, but we of course did and burnt ourselves out a bit. It was one hell of an adventure, though, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. As I write this in mid-August, my eyes fill with tears (jeez, why am I crying again in the post?!) at the thought of this chapter of our journey coming to an end. We have a few small RV trips planned for the rest of the summer and in the fall, but we will mostly be in a house for the foreseeable furture. Time will tell where we will end up though, because I know that we will always be adventuring, I just don't know what our next adventure is yet. More RV travel after a much needed break? International travel and world schooling? Or maybe just staying put and feeling grounded in one community? Your guess is as good as mine, and time will tell. I know one thing is for sure, my travel blog writing days aren't finished yet. We traveled for 2 years, made it to 31 states, cooked and gave away 1015 pizzas/pies, completing 17 states and starting 10 states. We're not finished yet, so we'll be back!