Daphne's Drivel

Since leaving Steamboat Springs on June 18th, our route has taken us through Granby, Grand Lake, Rocky Mt National Park, Estes Park, Boulder, Denver, Mt Evans, Breckenridge and now Aspen. These are really all mountain towns at altitudes that leave you breathless! Denver and Boulder are the lowest at around 1,700m. Our campground just north of Breckenridge overlooked Dillon Lake and was 2900m. (Our house in Calgary is at 1230m). Generally we've had lovely sunny days, but at night we're happy to have our down duvet in the van. One night we even turned the furnace on! Downtown Boulder Highlights include the lofty drive along Trail Ridge Rd in Rocky Mt National Park that takes you to 3713m (12,183 ft), well above tree-line and into the tundra. We loved the city of Boulder with its great parks and river running through the city centre, with rafters, kayaker and tubers having fun right downtown. The car-free Pearl Street Mall in the historic downtown has a very cool vibe. Tha...

We were just west of Idaho Springs a few days ago, not having any luck finding an official campsite. It was the weekend and they were all full. So we did what we often do and started looking  for a dispersed spot on some Forestry land. It was around 7pm when we headed up an unpaved road which we could see on our map. It started to climb steeply and got very rough and rutted, and our van struggled to make it. Luckily it soon flattened out and revealed a nice little treed turn-out beside a creek that looked perfect to us. It was off the beaten track, dead quiet and we were sure noone would bother us here. Our "quiet" campsite As we were getting the roof raised and the inside of the van organised, the silence was broken by the sound of gunfire. Single shots followed by rapid-fire. Frank and I looked at each other. The shooting continued. It seemed to be coming from further up the road and higher in the forest above us. It would pause for awhile then start again. We...

I can hardly believe I'm sitting on the lawn in Denver's Botanical Gardens about to hear Mary Chapin Carpeter in concert! Brother Des will be so jealous! He loves her music and I know he's been to see her in Dublin. Yesterday (Thursday) in Boulder, we saw advertising for her concert there to take place on Sat. Tickets were around $50. However the timing wasn't going to work out for us as we had hoped to have left Boulder by then. But in a local newspaper I happened to read that she would be at Denver's Botanical Gardens on Friday at 6.30pm, no mention of ticket prices or any other details. So today, after completing a hike in Eldorado Canyon near Boulder, we continued our intended route towards Denver, and decided to drive to the Gardens just to check out the situation in the off chancethat we might get lucky. As we approached the venue around 5pm, traffic was congested and there were throngs of people looking for parking and starting to line up with their law...

Steamboat Springs was the first good-sized town we came to in Colorado, and we warmed to it right away. It's main attraction is skiing. In fact, I read that they call it Ski Town USA because it has sent more athletes to the Winter Olympics than any other ski town in the nation. It also has miles and miles of hiking and mountain biking trails too, a lovely paved path along its Yampa river, and lots of great boutiques, galleries and restaurants. The town is surrounded by ranch land, so there are plenty of cowboys around. So it makes sense that they hold a Pro Rodeo here every weekend in summer. We happened on the Rodeo grounds accidentally while out for an evening bike ride, and the aroma of BBQ ribs and the live country music lured us in to join the family fun for a couple of hours of good entertainment. The bull riding and saddle bronc riding were the most exciting. As I watched these hardened, wirey cowboys get thrown around and bucked off and sometimes stomped on, I c...

Doing laundry at home is a pretty simple chore, albeit mundane. Getting it done while on the road can have its challenges as we found out on Saturday. So, we're in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and we're starting to run out of clean clothes. Time to do laundry. Our GPS finds a laundromat and we obediently follow her directions. We get there to find the place is out of business. That's ok, because a note on the door offers another suggestion that we are welcome to use. It even sort of describes where it is. Our GPS finds it and we head off to the other end of town. Steamboat Springs isn't too big. Great, this one is open. We need detergent, but to get it we need quarters. No problem. There is a change machine, in fact there are two but one has an out of order sign on it. So we put our one dollar US bills into the good one, but get nothing but a red flashing light. Seems it's broken. So off we traipse to the adjacent ACE hardware store to get a roll of quarters. ...

We are now in Colorado, but before reaching here, we passed through a beautiful area straddling the border between Wyoming and Utah. Flaming Gorge was formed by a dam on the Green River, which formed a very large reservoir, and further to the south end, a spectacular gorge with steep red cliff walls and lots of interesting rock formations.  The area is not overly developed, and is uncrowded, and has great campgrounds, marinas, hiking and biking trails, wildlife and also many areas for "dispersed" camping. (That's what they call wild camping in the USA). We spent three days in the area and really enjoyed it. One of our camp spots reminded us of Baja, Mexico. What was nice was how quiet it was. Mind you, it would likely be busier on weekends and later in the summer.  We spent time on both sides of its border. The Utah side is definitely more dramatic. Frank will also remember it most fondly because he was asked for ID in a little restaurant when he tried to order a bee...

We were in a car crash on Sunday evening. The great news is Frank and I are perfectly ok, and the other driver is also uninjured (although I doubt if she's ok). We were down in the very south-west corner of Wyoming, kind of in the middle of nowhere, heading east on highway 30 towards Green River, intending to make our way to a campground in the Flaming Gorge area. It was a sunny evening and we were cruising along at about 100km/hr (well below the speed limit) on this two lane road with very little traffic, in an area of high desert. All of a sudden, a car flew up alongside us to our right on the narrow shoulder, and WHAM she struck us from the side and sent us swerving into the oncoming lane, her alongside us, metal on metal, striking us two or three times as Frank struggled to keep control. For a moment it felt like we might flip over or end up in the ditch, but somehow we came out of it and were able to pull over on the right side of the road. We must have sat there in st...

He looked a lot like Sean Connery and his dark bushy eyebrows commanded attention. He had a trimmed white beard and a hint of Scottish in his English accent. We first met Dick at a rest-stop south of Lethbridge, Alberta. I had immediately noticed the odd European-looking licence plate on the white Mercedes camper van as we pulled in. By the time I emerged from the bathroom, Frank had struck up a conversation with the owner. We learned that he had shipped his van from England to Baltimore and was travelling around the US and Canada. He mentioned that he had run into snow somewhere along the way and that "she couldn't handle that", as he nodded towards the van. I assumed his wife was inside. Sounded like they were on a great adventure. Like us, he was also heading towards Yellowstone, but seemed to be set to spend the night there at the rest stop. We bid him farewell and said "you never know, we might see you in Yellowstone". "Not likely!", he repl...

Wildflowers adorn the pathway we cycled with this view of the Teton Range. It was a gentle 26km ride which served as good rehab for my post-surgery knee  before we  hit the harder stuff that I'm anticipating lies ahead!  Today we are moving camp and heading south to Jackson.

You know the Willie Nelson song "On the road again"? Well, my esteemed colleagues from Treatment Planning adapted and performed a version of this song for my retirement, where the words went something like "the work she loves is treatment planning with her friends, but she can't wait to get in the van again". You really had to be there, but this performance was punctuated by creative instrumentation, like spoons, an old washboard a ceramic whisky jar and other stuff. It was hilarious! And all this from a group that's not at all into country music - made it even funnier. Anyway, I'm happy to report Frank and I are indeed in the van again and on the road. We've headed south across the border through Montana towards Yellowstone National Park. Montana was experiencing a flood watch after some heavy rains as we passed through, so all the rivers are running very high and fast. Yellowstone was great. It has canyons and waterfalls, geysers and fumaroles...