Day 3 - Saturday, June 6

Greetings from Fort Collins, CO. The weather is in the low 70's right now. It's beautiful. The doors and windows are open and there's a nice breeze. It looks like we may get better weather overall, than last year. We were behind a pretty strong storm all the way here and there was one behind us that turned east just before here. :-) It was a pretty tough drive today, through mountains. Not so much winding roads but climbs and then the descents.

Our spot tonight and for tomorrow night too (Yay!!) has grass and a tree. It's nice and peaceful. Sis gives it two paws up. Don just put the tailgater up on the ladder so we have satellite tv. We've had dinner and are now "off duty".

Well, as beautiful as Utah was, Colorado is just as gorgeous. I took pictures but they are nothing compared to seeing the land in person. I can't even explain how awesome the sights we saw were. The green, grass or whatever coated, mountains. Little towns nestled in between. Most of the drive we were between mountains (a lot of beautiful rocky ones) on both sides and looking ahead you could just see the narrow area of the road ahead as it went between them. We passed many of the well heard of ski areas (Vail, Beaver Creek, Copper Mountain, Breckenridge, Keystone, etc). Most still had snow. The ski towns, especially Vail were quite something. The homes and shops and golf courses were high dollar. We passed so many really pretty little towns. One, Idaho Springs was real old and quaint and again loaded with tourists. I found at least 5 towns I want to live in.

There is whitewater rafting down the Colorado river in many of the towns. We saw some rafts on the water in some pretty turbulent areas. It did look like fun. That's another thing on our list to come back and do. We had the Colorado River beside us most of the way and then the Eagle River when the Colorado ended. The Colorado was very full as I'm sure the Eagle was too. You could see areas where the water was obviously higher than normal. It was nice to see so much water all day and to see it so animated, rushing so fast. The Colorado switches back and forth to both sides of the road. We stopped at one rest area on I-70 (which we were on most of the day) which was right down beside the river. We put our hands in. It was COLD. Sis declined a bath.

The two high climbs were Vail Pass Summit and Loveland Pass. Both were worth the climb. There is still lots of snow in Colorado. Some of it still deep up there. The temperature most of the day was in the high 40's to low-mid 50's. But we were not cold in the truck nor outside really. The last part of our drive was on I-25 which took us north from the eastbound I-70. On I-25 we could see the mountain ranges we had passed and see all the snow on them. They were in the distance but it was still really something to see. Beautiful! They went for miles.

We passed a sign on the freeway that said: "road repairs are funded by faster vehicles".  Another warned truckers to "not be fooled, steep downgrades and winding roads still ahead". Colorado has a sense of humor. There are lots of RV dealers here in Colorado and boat dealers.

We passed through downtown Fort Collins on the way to our KOA. It is very picturesque and is a college town. There are tree-lined streets of well kept old homes. We may venture out tomorrow and look around for a bit unless we decide to just rest. The drive was tough today for Don and even my eyes have had it. They stay peeled looking at the sites and reading signs.

Sis was so good today. She only asked for one stop apart from ours, in Loveland. She is on the couch now in her blanket from home. She whines once in a while but I don't even think she knows she's doing it. Having a day off tomorrow will be good for her too.

Well, I think that's it for tonight. I may not have put this together too well. I'm just tired. We have no more one night stands ahead of us. We will now be taking some time and staying 2-5 days at each stop until we get to MI. Then we are there for about 2 weeks. To sum it up, we had another beautiful drive. We had no idea what beauty was out here. We are really speechless. We found ourselves waiting to see what was around each bend as if we were opening presents. And what we saw was much better than any present we could get. This is what it's all about. So again, I have to end with thanks to God for this opportunity and the "presents" HE gives us! Thank you God also for a safe trip today and for watching over our families while we are gone. Amen!

Good night all! I will now try to add some pictures. If I have no success, I have tomorrow to really load them in!