With reservations still made for the KOA on the previous night and our next stop booked through Harvest Hosts for this night, we were pretty well locked in, and so (as I mentioned previously) we acquired some local beers for the night and prepared for our first leg in earnest driving The Titsworth towards home. These two ideas are not necessarily related... it's just that they both happened. I did link my untappd in yesterday's post and it didn't quite do what I envisioned. If you happen to have an untappd account, you can see without much difficulty. If you don't, you can make one... if you want. Ultimately, we shared two beers from Rock Cut Brewing in Estes Park and then also had a bottle each from Estes Park Brewing which will be the one I share for entertainment's sake if you don't want to have an untappd account. If you've been playing along, you know that we had gone on day 3 to the Stanley Hotel (The Shining, etc.), so of course we had to acquire the bottle that we shared - Estes Park Brewing's Redrum Ale. In subsequent revisits, it is a big, malty red with a good and multi-layered hop character in it. If you all want at some point, I could do a deeper dive on the beers of the journey, but they're really not the point, so we move on.
As we learned, we were doing a better and better job of getting ourselves in positions to get good rest. In fact, for the most part, we never really did ever feel poorly rested during this journey. At this point, we had added the air mattress which was meant for the cab over area on top of the fold out couch, which we would continue with as it yielded plenty good enough results. We had dumped our black and gray tanks for the first time yesterday, so after we woke, we scrounged some breakfast, dumped our grey tank again and headed for our next destination: a ranch just past the Idaho border in the vicinity of Yellowstone which we had booked through Harvest Hosts. This day, by design, was the longest of our planned drives as we were going to spend a little time in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone before we made a bee line for home (ish). As we had an effective range of 100 miles (+/-), we had spent a good amount of time before going to bed planning our gas stops rather meticulously, so we were on the road with a very clear view of what the day would look like.
Pulling out of the KOA and heading generally northward, we had some significant climbing to do, which would be some good learning time right away... straight into the frying pan as it were (like when the propane was actually working, not when it was not. That particular frying pan would have been very easy to deal with.) In addition to the climbs, learning how to counteract the wind and deal with a rear-wheel drive vehicle was more than enough to keep me entertained.
In a quite literal way, it occurred to me, driving a rear wheel drive vehicle is very much like what it must be like to drive a cargo ship. Very large, very heavy, and sluggish. Like a wet sponge, to quote Airplane! Insofar as the propane was a recurring theme with our parked functioning, the air and what it did to the behemoth that is The Titsworth was the recurring theme on the road itself. You really don't know until you know, I guess. If you've spent your entire life driving front-wheel drive vehicles where your power is instantly on the road, you kinda don't know how spoiled you are. By the same token, if you are used to that, you have no idea how spoiled you are. Until the wind pushes you around a bit, you try to compensate according to your experience and... well... nothing happens. At least not right away. It just takes time.And so we're on the road, and perhaps in this way the 100 mile range (without the use of the larger rear tank) was of benefit... we would have to stop regularly and it would give chunks of the trip time to absorb into my brain. I don't know if this helped to internalize lessons learned on the road, but I am inclined to believe that it did, so it's my story and I'm sticking to it. As we were driving the first leg and figuring out some of the basic things and dealing with some of our uphills and the acceleration challenges attendant, I was well prepared to make judicious use of the turnouts. The problem is that a lot of the time, you don't get a lot of notice that a turnout is happening. If you are looking to use a turnout and are going, say, 50 mph even in a vehicle that I'm told weighs 8100... just randomly skipping out when you don't know that it is coming and you can't decelerate any before hand is.... well... it's not on the cards.
I want to spend some time complaining about the turnouts that we ran across – particularly on this first leg in Colorado – but seem consistent with my memories of other turnouts. Oftentimes, you are looking at a section off the road that is almost as deep off the road as it is long.... which on paper maybe seems fine. If you've had to pull off for some reason to exit your vehicle, you're well away from traffic. It's a great system if you're in a passenger vehicle. If you're in The Titsworth, however, that extra space away from the road is as frustrating as it s useless. Even if it was a 0-sum change – say if you added exactly an equal amount of square footage in length as you took away in depth – you would provide a much more usable situation for vehicles who can't keep up to the speed limit, which is what and who the turnouts are meant for in the first place. Road Engineers: sort it out.
After we cleared the ridge, the drive got considerably better as we approached I-80. Largely this is because the roads were a bit straighter and devoid of the big climbs from the early stretch. Also, it was the brain catching up to a different driving skill set. Then came the interstate driving. I alluded earlier to the way the air pushes the van and how it is different. Add semis traveling at speed, and you are kind of starting from zero... again. The really odd thing about the semis is the way they push you at the tail end (if you're passing them, say), pull you toward the trailer as you pass the middle section, then push you again as you clear the nose of the tractor. It was a much slower process getting used to this as not all semis are created equal. Stock trailers for whatever reason are significantly more challenging in this regard. Some of the areas through northern Colorado and southern Wyoming presented their own challenges with gusty winds across the highway. It's harder to deal with these because if you are passing or being passed by a semi, you know it. If you're soon to be struck by a cross wind, you don't really know. It becomes more about reaction than preparation. If it catches you really good, it's like there is a giant child and you're a Matchbox car and you're being pushed sideways (across the tires, not with). Like ice skating sideways. Gas stop after gas stop, though, lessons were assimilated. For the most part, the day's travels worked out exactly as planned. The exception had to do with wind and semis and all of the challenges all coming together in a tunnel through a hillside. If I had not had my eyes open to have frame of reference, I maintain that I would not have been able to tell you which way was up, the wind and pulls and pushes and all were so disorientating. Saying I was always 100% comfortable on this day would be a lie, but this was the only time that I was truly white knuckling it.
The day, although long, went as planned and thanks to an earlier-than-anticipated departure, we ended up rolling into our Harvest Host's ranch with a couple hours to spare before sunset. Personally, I hid from the sun a bit. When you have a 9 + hour day of driving, you can't hide from the sun so much, so I had had my fill. Our location was beautiful, though. Just south of the mountains and the way the sun came across was really quite good.
Part of the Harvest Hosts program is that, although you park and stay for free, you are encouraged to support your host through purchases. In this instance, we parlayed that into some nice copper pot jam, fresh snow peas, and fresh raspberries. We planned to eat the peas in particular (as well as some fermented veggies) with bacon cheeseburgers off the stove. Because I'm really great at things, I decided to do the bacon first. The stove did light up and stayed lit long enough to fry a pan of bacon. Then I moved on to the burgers... and it cut out. It took the rest of the night off. Lesson learned: Do the burgers first. If you do, then you at least have that. At any rate, we ended up eating sandwiches with the veggies and another local beer. Well... Estes Park local. I was quite ready for bed when the time came. while it was not the hardest day driving that I ever had, it was not the most relaxing either. Sleep came for me hard and fast, which was fine. Tomorrow was for the Tetons (my favorite) and some Yellowstone highlights, so an early start wouldn't hurt anything.
Road miles to home: 906
This post was not sponsored by Harvest hosts or the Crosswind Alliance of Southern Wyoming.
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