Roughing it with some smooth views

This is a travel day, but we're staying in our electrical hook-up site as long as possible this morning. That's because we won't have electricity at our next camp site, so we're really roughing it there. We haven't had water or sewer hook-ups for the last eleven days here at Lowry Campground. But our next stop will have nothing--no electricity, no water, and no sewer. That is really camping in the woods with no services!

The other reason to linger this morning before moving, is because we have some projects to do. While Denisa was using up the over-ripe bananas to make banana bread, Mark was doing some more windshield repair. Yesterday he cleaned both the car and motor home windows, and put pieces of tape to indicate nicks that needed to be filled.

Besides all the little nicks, we had a big chip that had to be filled before it became a broken windshield that would have to be replaced. This job is especially tricky on the motor home wind shield that is straight up and down--rather than slanted like most cars. But Mark is getting pretty practiced at the art of windshield repair using the epoxy repair kit. If this retirement thing doesn't work out, he could always get a job repairing windshields.

Denisa's banana bread project was only marginally successful. She can blame it on our tiny convection oven and the strange things that happen when baking at 9,300 feet elevation. But if this retirement thing doesn't work out, she can't get a job baking banana bread.

We rolled out of Lowry Campground about noon, and headed west down I-70. This section of the interstate has an interesting speed limit for heavy weight vehicles. Because we weigh over 26,000 pounds, we can only drive 45 miles per hour.

That's largely because of the steepness of the road and the mountains that surround this section of I-70. We traveled a whopping 32 miles today. Most of that was steep down-hill grades between the wonderfully cool elevation at Lowry to our next (much-lower) campground.

We passed yet another ski resort, with the patchwork of ski runs etched into the trees on the mountainside. From our location at our last campground, we could drive thirty miles in every direction to ski at Keystone, Breckenridge, Arapahoe-Basin, Cooper, Loveland, Copper Mountain, Vail . . .  After their shortened season in the spring because of the virus, we just hope that the ski resorts will be open this winter.

We will miss our campground at 9,300 feet in elevation, as we checked into our site at Gore Creek Forest Service at only 8,700 feet in elevation. But we have a spacious campsite, with views of the tree-covered mountains that surround us.

We are now on day 12 at a Forest Service campground with no water or sewer hook-ups. So we are becoming masters at water conservation. Without electrical hook-ups for the next two days we will also be running the generator occasionally to keep our batteries charged and our electric refrigerator happy.

After we got the motor home parked, we did some exploring. We found Gore Creek rushing through Gore Creek campground.

So we took off on a 3-mile hike to get to know our new mountains and creek. We weren't surprised to see that it took at least one water crossing to complete this hike. Mark bounded over that log, while Denisa took her sweet time at making a safe crossing.

We went up in elevation, and got some good views of our new home mountain range.

We found a few wildflowers, including one of Denisa's favorites--the mariposa lily. They are a simple flower, but they have such a delicately intricate center.

This bumble bee was interested in the pollen more than the beauty of the intricate center.

Even though we are still "roughing it" with no hook-ups at Gore Creek campground, we think it has some very smooth views of God's wonders around us. We think we're going to like it here!