San Juan Mountains In Colorado
Driving Through The San Juan Mountains
Driving Through The San Juan Mountains
The San Juan Mountains in Colorado are just gorgeous in the fall. The roads are big rig friendly but you do have a slower drive with the elevation and the sharp curves. It’s very doable though.
However, I would not want to drive these roads when theirs bad rain or snow. So I would recommend checking the mountain weather before you start off on your trek.
The San Juan Mountains are home to many cute, popular and historical towns such as Telluride, Ouray and Silverton, Colorado. We did not however get a chance to visit any of these. We have to leave something to do next time we’re in the area after all.
We stayed at the Mesa Verde RV Park near the Mesa Verde National Park. A great place to explore the area. Really long pull throughs. Nice views. Their Wifi worked for us but not our friends. It really depends on where in the park you are located. Verizon worked ok with our booster. We’d stay here again.
We had some awesomely dark nights and our friends we were traveling with broke out their camera and gear to take some great shots of the night sky.
Our Coach And The Milky Way
Brenda And Joanne In Front Of Our Coach
Almost every night was this spectacular.
We had some real fun taking these pictures.
Thanks Jay and Joanne for these!
The Mesa Verde RV Park is just up the road from the Mesa Verde National Park. This is a nice National Park that has a great driving loop and many Kivas and Cliff Dwellings that you can explore.
Mesa Verde National Park In Colorado
David At Mesa Verde National Park
There is a main tour that you can take with a Park Ranger where they take you through the dwellings. They have some good stories of how these various rooms, they believe, have been used. According to the National Park Service, these cliff dwellings are some of the most notable and best preserved in the North American Continent.
It really is amazing to think that the Ancestral Puebloans climbed up to these locations and made these cliffs home.
While here, our friends Jay and Joanne invited us to their Rosh Hashanah, The Jewish New Year celebration, which this year fell on September 24th (yes, we’re a little behind in our blog postings). It’s a two-day celebration, which begins the first day of Tishrei, which is the first day of the civil year and the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year in the Hebrew calendar.
The Lighting Of The Candles And A Prayer
Apples And Honey Signify A Sweet New Year
They had a wonderful dinner planned. Starting at sundown with the lighting of the candles and a prayer. You then start off with apples dipped in honey, which signifies a sweet New Year.
Enjoying Rosh Hashanah
A Great Rosh Hashanah Dinner
While traveling around we encounter many different cultures and traditions. Whether the traditions are religious or just something passed down from generation to generation, it’s always interesting to experience first hand. That’s one of the reasons we travel. It was a great dinner and we appreciate our friends including us in on this celebration and experience.
While here we also drove to Durango, Colorado for a day trip.
Durango was much bigger and much more congested than we were expecting. We did enjoy walking around the main historical main street area.
The Durango Diner
The Giant Sized Blueberry Pancakes At The Durango Diner
The Durango Diner
I have to admit though; the best part that we found about Durango was the Durango Diner. This is truly a gem in the heart of the historical main street area. Established in 1965 it still has the 1965 charm and original countertop. We were lucky enough to find them early enough as they close at 2pm. Serving breakfast all day, we ordered an omelet and one blueberry pancake, which they are known for, and shared both.
Boy…were they good.
So we’ve been touring all over this area and we have seen a lot. However, there is so much to do and see in this area, looking back, I feel like we’ve hardly touched the surface. Next time around we’ll definitely have to make it up to the mountain towns.
As mentioned, we stayed at the Mesa Verde RV Resort. Here is a video David did for them…
Jealous! Awesome! Love it! We are heading west….watch out!
You are traveling way to fast….We spent 5 days in Durango, its a great little town. There is a free trolley and the fair park had good camping. There is a nice bike trail along the river and the drive to Silverton was wonderful. There is also a train to Silverton with a stop so you can Zip-line, we did not do that this trip but we will the next one.
Mesa Verde is another great stop, we were there for 3 days, so much to do, I love those ranger talks and hikes. Slow down and smell the mountain air.
I agree Kathy. We were traveling with friends that had a time limit on their travels, so we were enjoying traveling with our friends and seeing the sights. At least now we know there are places that we want to return to and enjoy longer and other places that we don’t need to go back to. Would love to hit some of the mountain towns like Silverton. We’re currently in Utah, sans friends, and enjoying our time here and slowing back down.
Happy New Year !!… I wish you all the best
Great blog. Beautiful pictures. Thank you. How does the Allegro Bus 450HP engine do pulling mountains with your tow vehicle? Do you ever wish you had a 500 or 600HP chassis, or would that be overkill?
Hi Chris…It does well as most of our driving is flat road vs Mts. I say this however after doing two months of mtn driving. LOL. At times, pulling a 4,600lbs SUV, we get down to 40 MPH on steep, long, climbs. Sure a bigger engine would be nice. However, it is added weight and less fuel milage right from the start. Also, along with the added engine weight due you also added transmission weight as you would require a larger trany to handle the added torque. We have an average MPG in the Mts of 6.2 MPG. Flat roads we have seen 7.8. Please be aware we expect this to increase as the engine is new with us just passing 5,000 miles.
Also be aware that the PowerGlide chassis can can take a larger engine as a new one would need to be redesigned to handle the larger sizes of the engine etc. So a lot of things would need to change in the coach design itself after that.