Vacation…finally!Day 1-Driving
A McDaniels vacation just wouldn’t be a McDaniels vacation if there weren’t some sort of harried construction project going on during the days leading up to the day of departure. The rain and the discovery of a section of rotted floor hindered progress on the travel trailer renovations. We planned on leaving Saturday, but I cast the deciding vote which determined it would be better to leave early Sunday morning rather than 10:00 p.m. Saturday night. I think John was just too tired to argue.
Believe it or not, our rig and we were departing from our house at 5:00 a.m. Sunday morning. (I know; I can hardly believe it myself.) We made it to Amarillo in time for lunch at
Fazoli’s. I still for the life of me can’t figure out why the Dallas area can’t seem to support Fazoli’s. We were none too happy when the one out in Irving turned into a Taco Bueno. I think it is some sort of Communist plot. But as my pal Vinnie says, “I digress.” It was around 6:45 p.m. mountain time when we pulled into campsite E2 at
Heart of the Rockies RV Park. It’s often a crap shoot when booking reservations at a place you’ve never seen, but I gotta say, I did good (sic). We have almost a 360° view of the mountains, the restrooms/showers are clean, and the sites aren’t stacked on top of one another. It’s located about halfway between
Salida and
Monarch on W. Hwy 50, just west of
Poncha Springs.
The remainder of Sunday evening was spent setting up camp. Just as we were about to take the pups for their evening walk, it started to rain. After the rain stopped, we went for a walk so the dogs could stretch their legs and we could explore the rv park. During our walk we began to hear thunder. Then lightning—I mean really close, loud lightning. All of a sudden, there was a downpour. No worries, it often rains in the mountains.
Day 2-Salida & Buena Vista
Monday morning, (Caleb’s second birthday, in case you care) we went into town to run some errands. We had breakfast at a place that was full of locals, which is often a good sign. I can’t remember the name of it, but it was on Hwy 50 and was called
Pancake something or other. The pancakes were delish, but the scrambled eggs were essentially a dried omelet that I had to scramble myself. Blech. John had it replaced with an egg cooked over-medium. Much better!
After breakfast, we motored over to
Absolute Bikes in search of some advice and maps on mountain bike trails in the area. A personality-challenged, heavily tattooed girl wearing really cool glasses gave us a few ideas, but she wanted to make sure we flatlanders understood that there would be a lot of climbing. Finally, I told her we’d ridden in Colorado before, just not in this area. John decided to ask the other girl and the dude that worked there and received much better information.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Absolute Bikes in Salida, but it is located right by the Arkansas River. Next door to the bike store is a coffee place, which includes patio seating and a view of the river and “S” Mountain. (“S” Mountain is the mountain with a big white “S” on it. Go figure.) We decided we would be returning to this part of Salida later on that day to explore some more.
Since I don’t want to bore the two people who might actually be reading this with the minutia of our errands, I’ll summarize this next part in bulleted points:
• Went to
ranger station for
ohv maps
• Purchased ohv sticker from
state park office• Sonic! (for a beverage)
After that, we went back for the dogs and took them swimming in the river by the bike shop. I thought Caleb was going to chase the kayakers who were practicing their moves, but I guess he thought better of it at the last minute. They always have a great time when swimming is involved.
With the dogs in tow, we decided to drive up toward
Buena Vista to check out the area we would be going to ride the 4-wheeler. I think there are more
fourteeners in that area than anywhere else in Colorado or maybe even the U.S.. (I’m sure
Jan is Googling this right now.) Suffice it to say, it was beautiful.
Since we were closer to Buena Vista than Salida and we were hungry, we headed into Buena Vista (pronounced by the locals as byou-na vista rather than the Spanish pronunciation) for dinner. We were very disappointed in the restaurant selections. After driving to historic downtown, then down to the “new” section of Main Street, we decided to try a place with Buffalo in the name that was on the highway. John said it looked the busiest so it should be the best. I had a hard time arguing with that, so I agreed. We walked in and stood at the hostess stand. Someone said they’d be with us in a minute. We could hear a piano playing saloon or ragtime-inspired music and saw several people dressed in costumes. Evidently, most of the cars were there because of the hootin’ nanny they were having in the back part of the restaurant. After standing there for what seemed like forever, we decided to leave. We ended up at a place that had
“steaks and spirits” in its title. Why can’t I remember the name of anyplace? I need to work on that. This is the part where we really started to think we were in the twilight zone. The hostess asked us if we were familiar with their menu. Of course, we weren’t. Sunday through Thursday they serve only filet mignon. You have a choice of sizes, but you get the steak, baked potato, bread, salad with house dressing, and a garnish. We were starving, so when she asked if that was ok with us, I said sure. (I think John started to protest by complaining to me about the downside of filet mignon when he’d rather have a New York strip, but we stayed anyway.) As we sat there waiting on someone to take our drink order John said, “This town doesn’t seem to be big on service, huh?” The house dressing on the salad turned out to be a mix of Ranch and honey mustard. Now why did they want to go and mess up perfectly good Ranch dressing? I felt a little sorry for John, because he doesn’t like Ranch at all. Ironically, he said the honey mustard made the Ranch more palatable. As we were eating our oddly-dressed salad, the hostess came over and asked us if we’d mind moving from our table into a booth. Apparently a large group just arrived, and they needed our table. Being the affable Texans we are, we agreed and were rewarded for our niceness with dessert on the house. Dinner was actually pretty good, and we got out of there for $22 plus tip—not bad at all for a steak dinner with dessert, even if the experience was a little odd.
We weren’t too impressed with the town of Buena Vista. Maybe we didn’t find the good part, but until someone gives me a good reason, I’m not making plans to return there unless I’m just passing through on the way to someplace better.
As I’m typing this John is…wait for it…you guessed it…working on a project. Last summer he bought this cheap little portable trailer (some assembly required) so we would have a way to transport our 4-wheeler to the trailhead. He’s out there now making the final modifications so we can go on our atv adventure tomorrow. Hopefully he won’t be out there all night.
In my web 2.0 class I learned that it was good to ask questions on my blog so people would make comments. So here goes.
Have you ever been to the Salida/Monarch/Buena Vista area? If so, what fun things did you do while you were here? Where are the good restaurants?
Until next time!
While on the trail, we chatted with some guys on motorcycles who told us if we wanted to see the Maroon Bells, we could see them by traveling up a 4-5 mile trail to Taylor Pass. What he didn’t tell us was how wicked the trail up there was! At one point, the trail diverged into a rocky creek. We had to travel about ¼ mile through a rocky, flowing creek. I had my doubts as to whether or not we would make it, but we did. As we traveled onward and approached our destination, we heard gunfire. The gunfire came from a group of 20-something guys who were getting hammered and shooting skeet at Taylor Lake. They came down from either Crested Butte or Aspen and were planning on going back the way we came in. Lucky for them, Jerry told them they’d probably never make it in the vehicles they were driving, so they decided to go back the way they came. I hope they had three designated drivers.
