Friday, July 16

We said good-bye to Heart of the Rockies Campground around 10:40 a.m. A long two hours later, we pulled into Gunnison. Now, for those of you familiar with the area, you know Salida and Gunnison are only about 60-something miles apart. Why did it take two hours, you ask? The answer is in two words: Monarch Pass. Our 1996 Ford F250 Turbo Diesel doesn’t feel the love for climbing mountain passes while pulling a travel trailer containing an atv and a motorcycle. We pulled over a couple of times to let the truck cool down and add water to the coolant reservoir.

On the way down the pass, the trailer brakes weren’t connected, so our truck brakes protested by getting really hot. Once again, we pulled over. Through what I think was divine intervention, we happened to pull over at the spot on Hwy 50 that has cold water flowing out of a pipe in the rocks. After filling countless gallon jugs with water from that pipe so John could cool off the brakes and the truck, we were once again mobile. Gunnison must have been having some big rodeo event; horse trailers were everywhere. If we would have had time, we would have stopped at the Gunnison Brewery on Main Street where Jennifer Fronterhouse’s friends are the proprietors. According to Jen, they have a very tasty summer IPA.

From Gunnison, we drove through Almont toward Taylor Park. Almont is a nice little resort town, with lots of river access and cabins to rent. We arrived in Taylor Park and set up in our camp site located between Illinois Creek and the Pie Plant town site turn-off around 2:00 p.m. There is an RV park called Colorado Dream Ranch, but we didn’t have reservations and had no problem dry camping for just a weekend. We didn’t even have water in our freshwater tank in the travel trailer, but we did have several gallon jugs and sent a text to the Autreys asking them to be sure to bring plenty of water when they came later that night.

Taylor Park is an ohv paradise. Located in Taylor Canyon near the Taylor Reservoir, there are tons of places for dispersed camping, as well as national forest campgrounds. There are countless miles of ohv trails, creeks, streams, rivers, and mountains on all sides. Our friend, Jerry Autrey has been trying to get us to visit Taylor Park for the last year or so. We only skimmed the surface of the trails there. I’m sure we’ll go back, but I think I’d like to have reservations at the private campground there with full hook-ups. It was a very dusty place!

We found a camp site that was near upper Taylor River. It was more or less sheltered from the dusty road by a large rock formation. If you don't tolerate getting dirty, then Taylor Park is not the place for you! Almost as soon as we let the dogs out for their "nature break," they headed for the river.

The Autreys arrived from Fruita/Grand Junction around 10:30 p.m. We hadn’t seen them in about a year, so we had a good time chatting for a while before hitting the rack.