Saturday.
That took a lot of leaving. We did the Breakfast in a Bag thing. Raw
scrambled eggs, cheese, bacon bits, mushrooms, olives, ham, anything you
want in an omelet spread out on the table, in containers. Write your name
on the outside of a Ziploc bag. Pick the stuff you want. Dump it into the
Ziploc. Squeeze all the air out and seal it. Drop it into the boiling
water for ten minutes. Dump it onto a plate. It's an omelet.
Thirty-five people in the group, plus us. It took a lot of conversation to
get through breakfast. Then several people wanted to come over and meet
Rags the cat. Then there were several RV tours exchanged as everybody
checked out each other's rig. Finally, we escaped.
Rags didn't make it very far. He started drooling. Just can't handle that
occasional motion. We stopped and drugged him, and he rode quietly after
that. We had lunch at the Durango RV Park we stayed in before. We picked
up a WiFi terminal for high speed internet and did an email dump.
From there, north on highway 550 to Silverton. A person might be
disinclined to bring a motorhome up this steep winding road. It is
definitely slower in a motorhome than in a car. But slower means a better
look at the scenery, and in a motorhome means you get that look from a
higher perch. Not much traffic. Plenty of room to let the people by that
do catch up to us. Plenty of high county scenery.
Arrived at the motorhome park in Silverton. There are ten units here
already. We parked at the other end of the row from the one that has
www.rightwingbooks.com <http://www.rightwingbooks.com> stenciled on its
forehead.
Leveling logic. Four point hydraulic levelers. The front two work
together, off one button. The back two work together off one button, or
individually, off separate buttons. All side to side leveling has to be
done with the rear levelers. When leveling, you start by letting the air of
the suspension so the whole coach settles down. Then you want to level it
with the least amount of lift, so that last step going in and out isn't too
high. Besides, if you lift it too high, it might look like you don't know
what you're doing.
I read the directions for leveling. I followed them. If you follow the
directions, sometimes it ends up looking like you don't know what you're
doing. The directions say to put both the front jacks down until they touch
the ground. Then put the rear jacks down and level it side to side. Then
raise the front jacks some more if you need to. The problem is, it changes
the side to side leveling when you raise the front jacks, so then you have
to level it again with one of the rear jacks which raises the whole rear end
a little more, so you have to raise the front a little more.... You get the
picture. The hydraulic jacks will extend far enough to raise the wheels
clear off the ground. It looks silly if you're on fairly level ground to
begin with, and your motorhome is that far up on its tiptoes to get level.
Theoretically, one corner of the motorhome should never have to be lifted at
all.
Here is what I discovered. Don't go at it from just one direction. You get
to watch a leveling bubble while you're pushing the leveling buttons. Don't
level it all at once, front to back, or side to side. Bring it a little
closer each way, alternating as you go. Sneak up on it.
Silverton Colorado. 9,300 feet above sea level in a mountain valley. It's
all up from here. It's a rough mountain town. They haven't paved the
alleys here yet. They're all dirt and gravel. They haven't paved the
streets yet either. They're all dirt and gravel too. There is only one
paved road in town, the one that runs right down the center. It's a
dirt-road main street kind of place..... except that the main street is
paved.
It was sad when we left Riverside. I picked up the feeders and packed them
in an outside bin. As soon as I did, a house finch hopped up on the grill
stand where the seed feeder had been, and hopped all over it looking for the
feeder. At the same time, and hummingbird was buzzing all over where the
other feeder had been. They'll have to adjust to life without us now. It
took the hummingbirds two days to find our feeder at Riverside. It took
them ten minutes to find it here. All broadtails. Different altitude.
Tomorrow. Check out Ouray and Box Canyon Falls.
