2012-20 Second week in Montrose Colorado

Montrose Colorado Week 2


Telluride 


Travel Warning:

dangerous road highlighted with arrows

I thought I’d start off with a warning to any fellow campers who are planning a trip out in this area.  As you know, last week I took a day trip to Ouray Colorado which is on hwy 550.  It’s safe to drive from Montrose to Ouray with a large camper and there are plenty of campgrounds in the area to select from.  The warning comes if you are considering driving south of Ouray on 550.  It’s called the million dollar highway and is for Rv’s a treacherous, winding and extremely steep sided highway with no guard rails.  This is a scary road to even consider taking.  Thanks to Mamie and a few other readers for pointing this out.  Lets put it this way.  Bikers love to ride it.  Need I say any more?  Needless to say, I won’t even drive it while touring in my truck.

Frozen Dinner tip:

I occasionally have a frozen dinner, especially when I’m not in the mood to cook anything.  All those wonderful pictures on the frozen dinner packages usually end up being a total disappointment when I’ve finally nuked the dinner.  Today I tried a Boston Market Chicken Parmesan frozen dinner.  It was a good portion size.  The chicken Parmesan was very tasty and the breading was perfectly prepared.  The spaghetti and tomato sauce were equally good.  The sauce was, to my taste perfectly flavored.  I sprinkled a bit of my own Parmesan cheese over the spaghetti but wasn‘t really needed.   I will have to try a few more of their frozen dinners.  Let me know if you've tried any of them.  

A day trip to Telluride.

view just before entering Telluride

Now Montrose is about an hour and a half drive to Telluride which I had visited one previous time, only to end up there on one of their many festival weekends.  That time the place was so crowded it took over 45 minutes to crawl into town with traffic backed up for miles outside of the mountain town.  This time I waited until the day after their Bluegrass Festival, which I would have dearly loved to attend, but knew the logistics of making it even one day would be too much.  When I arrived the weekend traffic was thinning out as the last of the festival goers were heading out of town.  Or at least that’s what I thought.  Driving through the 8 or so blocks of main street, every parking spot was filled, including many vehicles in the center lane, restricted to special permitted vehicle parking.

hydo power plant and home atop Angel Falls

I continued through town and drove to the dirt parking lot at the end of the valley to view Angel falls and take pictures.  A most wonderful set of waterfalls with a house and power plant sitting on the edge of the cliff and waterfalls.  It’s half way up those 14,000 ft mountains that surround the town.  Took some time viewing the last remaining mining structures as well.  Then it was back into town.  Electronic parking meters charge for parking on main street and one block off main.  I of course went two blocks off main street and got a “for free” parking spot next to some wonderfully restored Victorian homes.   They love color up here and many are painted ladies.  It should be noted that this is very expensive real-estate, Sotheby’s being one of the leading sellers of the homes priced in the 1.2 to 9.2 million dollar range.  The downtown buildings have many second floor condo’s and pen-houses going for that starting price of 1.2 million.  I only saw one condo priced under the million dollar mark.

As I had a bit more breathing room than the last time, though downtown was still crowded, I realized that as beautiful as the homes and historical buildings are, it’s all way over my head price wise.  So many of the shops cater to the affluent.  Of course there are the tourist T-shirt shops and basic grocery and drug stores, even an ACE hardware store.  But even those seemed a tad upscale sitting next to a designer clothing and
jewelry store or art shop.  One can take a free gondola ride up to the mountain village.  I didn’t do it this time around, though it provides great views of the valley below.  Mountain village is a new town and is an active center especially during all those festivals and winter skiing that goes on.  After all, this is a premier snow skiing destination.

I guess over all I was a tad disappointed by Telluride this time round.  Realizing Ouray has so many more activities as far as outdoor activities from my vantage point.  Others may disagree, but that’s how I see it.  Ouray also seems more middle class friendly than Telluride.  Of course if anyone has one of those million dollar homes and wants to invite me over to get a different perspective, well, I’m available.

Work, work, work….

And you thought all I did was play each day.  Well I can tell you for the last couple of days I’ve been a workin my buns off. First off I use these small orange cones along the side of my campers slide outs.  Remember my camper is parallel to the road this time around and I don‘t want another camper hitting my slides.   Because the cones are so light weight, I needed to attach a wooden block to each one so they wouldn't blow away.  So I drove to the local Home Depot, went to the lumber department and scrounged the waste bin which is usually filled with cut pieces of wood.  Found just the right pieces and had HD cut the scrap lumber to size.  Total cost:  50 cents. Can I get a bargain or what?

My next project was to bring the truck in for an alignment and balancing the wheels. Whew, I had to wait almost an hour and a half.  But I got the job done.  

Then it was back to the Verizon store where I had brought my Droid “thunderbolt” smart phone in to have it checked out.  Not getting any reception at the campground even though other Verizon users were getting reception.  Come to find out the Motorola phones have a much better built in antenna.  After reprogramming the phone and sending me off to retry it, it was a no go.  Soooooo, my “work” continued and I had to go back to the store and “negotiate”.  After 45 minutes of discussion over the phone with a technician, I was able to bring down the offer of a new Motorola Razor phone from $365, down to $200 and finally not being satisfied, I asked to speak to a supervisor.  Ta-Da, I got the price down to a FREE exchange of my Droid phone for the new Razor phone.  Now that was work that was worth the effort.  I pick up the new phone on Friday.  Yippee.

And lastly, I installed a new directional vent on my toilet vent on the camper.  And you didn’t think I ever did the W word.  Oh, I almost forgot.  I washed the truck as well…. Well actually I drove it through the cars wash… but I got er done…  I got so much done in the past couple of days, I might have to take the next week off.


A final note, I just received my second payment of $100+ for my adds on my Blog.  Nice to have a bit of an income from all the work I do on my Blog and of course a big thank you to all who occasionally click on one of those adds.


More photos on PICASA