Week in the Vail Valley

The Vail valley has no commercial RV parks and very few boondocking options for something other than tent campers.  I thought I might have to park 20 or 30 miles away until my brother figured out an absolutely ideal option—2 parking spaces in his small subdivision’s parking lot!   The front side of the spaces didn’t look so hot (parked next to the dumpster), but the view from the back was pretty spectacular—a view of Beaver Creek mountain!

Best of all, we were only a few dozen steps from my brother’s townhouse, so not far to go to visit at all!

We were greeted by my cousin, J.R., and my brother’s girlfriend, Karen, and all went into Vail for lunch.  We stopped at my brother’s store in the village, Christy Sports, for a few photos:



The next day, Millie got to go to her absolute favorite dog park in Edwards for a swim.  Karen’s dog, Shine, came along to play as well, but Shine was more interested in swiping toys from the dumb retrievers as they brought them into shore than she was of actually swimming out to get them herself…pretty smart dog!

The View towed the Tracker up Loveland and Vail passes with no trouble at all.  I didn’t set any speed records (only averaged about 40-45 mph on the steepest climbs), and decided to keep my A/C off during the climbs as well just in case.

So, with that test behind me, the new test was to take the Tracker out to some 4WD trails to start practicing with my brother’s expert assistance.   I drove the first trail, an “Easy” trail up to Blue Lake west of Wolcott.   The lake was beautiful and crystal clear, but we were mobbed by a few hundred blood-thirsty flies the minute we got out of the car!  No luck paddling the Sea Eagle on this lake!

 

 

 

 

 

The wildflowers were wonderful though!

The next trail was a more challenging trail up to Boca Mountain—I let Randy drive that one while I hung on for dear life!  Even though both trails started from the same place, the scenery was completely different.  Boca Mountain was more arid and overlooked I-70.

I’m not sure if this little Tracker had ever spent any time on 4WD trails before, but it performed flawlessly on it’s first trip out—much more capable a vehicle off-road (with it’s true 4WD Low gearing), than it is on the highway!

Later in the week, we headed out to a very easy trail at Shrine Pass (between Vail Pass and Red Cliff).  This was Millie’s first 4WD trip.  She wasn’t too thrilled with all the bumps and bouncing, but did like getting to hike up to one of the last remaining snow drifts!  I enjoyed spotting my first wild columbine flowers to photograph.

Colorado, here we come!

After leaving the T@B rally, Mom, Millie and I hopped on I-80 to head across Iowa.  Found a few new windmills west of Des Moines--

And a wonderful summer sunset (who cares if the temps were still in the 90’s with 90 percent humidity?!!!)

We made it out to the west side of Omaha, where we found a nice Wal-Mart parking lot to stay at for the night.   The next day we continued our trek across Nebraska and finally arrived to our campsite at Cherry Creek State Park in suburban Denver.  Nice pull-through sites!

We relaxed the next day, stocked up on supplies, and met my cousin (who lives near the park) for dinner.  We then decided to spend a night in Golden so that we wouldn’t have to drive through Denver traffic the next morning on our way to my brother’s house in Avon.

The Clear Creek RV Park in Golden had small, cramped sites, but what a great location right in town along Clear Creek (which had a great whitewater kayaking run)!  The town was delightful and wished we could have stayed longer.

Midwest T@B Rally–Mississippi Palisades

This past year, I’ve enjoyed attending a few View-Navion rallies, but my deeper ties are still with my dear old T@B camping buddies-- some I’ve known and camped with for over four years now.

Since I no longer have my real T@B trailer, I now bring my little toy T@B to the rallies instead (everybody has to have a T@B, right???!!!)

This summer’s destination was Mississippi Palisades State Park on the northern Illinois side of the river south of Galena.  It was a lovely park with large sites, lush green grass and pretty oak trees.  Our group virtually had our camping loop to ourselves.

My camping pal, Judi, and I explored some great views from the high bluffs overlooking the river and posed for some snapshots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, no rally would be complete without the obligatory pot luck dinner!  Here’s the gang:

and what was left of our pot luck offerings!

 

 

 

 

 

Our rally organizer, Jim, continued his tradition of “Movie Night” where we all gathered round his LCD monitor to watch a fun cheezy comedy.  Here’s Jim setting up this year’s flick -- Galaxy Quest. 

During the day, everyone ventured out to do their own thing.  One afternoon, I took Millie to play Frisbee, followed by a hike down to the river for a little swim:

Another afternoon, Mom and I went to historic Galena, Illinois to window shop.  Some funny stuff in those windows!

This year’s novelty at the rally was my new yellow “toad” which was making it’s first camping outing.  

Everyone gathered around to watch me hitch it up (yeah! I did it!!!) and bid us farewell as Mom, Millie and I continued our travels west to Colorado!

A New Yellow Toad!

For the first year and a half with my View, I never thought I would need to tow a car (a “Towed” or “Toad” as they’re called in RV’ing circles). I even blogged about the Toad Alternatives I had come up with when I began snowbirding this past winter.

Being parked for a month where I was in Florida, was very conducive to renting a car when I needed one, or riding my e-bike when I did not. But, had I stayed at a park further away from conveniences, or had the weather not been as nice, it would have been a different story.

Later in the winter, when I was out in the Southwest, I again initially thought that not having a toad was fine. I was moving around quite often, and again was able to rent a car, or ride my bike if I didn’t want to drive the RV.

But then I visited Anza Borrego State Park in California and saw how much fun folks were having taking their 4WD vehicles deeper into the park where only 4WD and off-road vehicles could go – “Gee, I wish I had one of those” started popping up in my mind.

Next, was mistakenly driving the Apache Trail in my View. Yes, it was mildly terrifying, but it was also incredible fun! I realized it would have been even more fun in a proper 4WD vehicle rather than a 25’ motorhome!

Finally, as I began researching my summer destination (the San Juan mountains of southwestern Colorado), I was reminded again of the renowned 4WD trails in the area, and just knew I had to give some of them a try this summer. Sure, I could rent a Jeep out there, but the more I started thinking about it, the more I realized a vehicle of my own could come in handy in many other ways besides this particular trip or when stowbirding —extra cargo carrying for the View, a second motorized vehicle if the View breaks down on the road, a pick-up car when river paddling, etc.

So I began my search for a lightweight, automatic 4WD toad. Not too many options there! Jeeps were too heavy, CRVs and RAV4s were mainly AWD and not true 4WD with low gearing, and others were only towable with manual transmission rather than automatic. But there was one model that fit all the criteria—a 1999-2004 Chevy Tracker/Suzuki Vitara.

After a few weeks of test driving and looking at a number of used cars, I found this cheery yellow one with leather interior that looked to be in extremely good condition compared to all the rest. The dealer had priced it accordingly, so I waited a couple more weeks and kept looking. Then, one day, the dealer lowered the price $1000, and now made this little yellow beauty competitive with all the others. I ran out on a Friday evening and snatched it up!

So, now I just had to get it set up for towing! Another few weeks of researching the dizzying number of towing options, and dealers, and I finally decided on a BlueOx baseplate and a ReadyBrute tow bar with an integrated surge braking system called ReadyBrake.

My RV dealer installed the whole system and gave me a thorough demo on how to hitch and unhitch. So far, on the flatlands of Illinois, the View seems to tow this 3000 lb car with no problems at all. The bigger test will come next month when we head off to those big mountains in Colorado. Fingers crossed!!!