Saturday, May 5, 2012

Colby to Frisco--Kansas Plains to Colorado Mountains

We woke up this morning in Colby, KS, where the high was expected to reach 85 today. Tonight we'll be sleeping in Frisco, where the low is expected to be 31. Brrr. For exercise, we walked around the rest area, which has a large grassy lawn and a view of the prairies all the way around.



While we were out walking, we encountered an unusual caravan. We stopped to talk and learned that the couple were moving from Fort Riley to another post. He said he figured it would be his last one. He'd been shot twice and especially hated land mines. The entourage included two horses and a dog as well as a VW on a trailer and all their household goods.


Our drive today took us west through the Denver area and into some magnificent snow covered mountains. Beautiful views, but challenging towing, with some long steep grades. We didn't have a lot of pep on the uphills, but the brakes and transmission held us quite steady on the downhills.


Our stopping point for the night was Frisco, CO. When I picked it out on the map, I had no idea it was a tourist town, nestled at the foot of Peak 1 and along the shores of Lake Dillon.


We had intended to spend the night in a Walmart parking lot, but were turned away because of a Summit County ordinance. However, the manager of the Best Western nearby gave his permission. We would never have found this spot if a fellow RVer in a Bounder hadn't pulled into the Walmart lot about the same time we did. We joined forces to locate a place to stay the night.


We walked tonight along the Frisco Pathway, a hike and bike path that winds past a lovely little park and through some neighborhoods of chalet style homes. The park amenities include this "Rocky Mountain Cabana."


All would be well--except that our battery charger is evidently not working. Our Magnum inverter/charger reports that we have discharged our batteries below 50% state of charge, but that the battery voltage is 12.9 volts or more. The charging light will not come on unless the generator is running, and it is not charging very well. We can't get the state of charge up over 50% even after running the generator for five hours. And we've been invaded by a flock of large moths. At first we tried to capture them and release them outside, but finally we realized that there were too many of them and they were evading capture. So we got out the fly swatter. No matter how many we eliminated, there were always more, until we turned out the lights. Then I guess they went to bed too.

Troubles today:

Our ABS brakes are malfunctioning. We're getting strange error messages on the DirecLink.

We ran into a low clearance warning or 13'6" at a fuel station we wanted to use. We were measured at 13' 5 1/2". We ended up unhitching anyhow to level the coach, so Ken just drove over to get diesel.

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