We decided to move on down a little farther south from Montrose and perhaps set up camp a the Amphitheater Campground in Ouray. We preferred to find some dispersed camping but hadn't been successful in locating any real information. Unfortunatly, the BLM office was closed over the holiday. We also needed to schedule in a trip to the grocery store, get gas, and get water and dump at the local RV park so we decided to leave around 10:30 or 11:00 so we could accomplish our tasks and get to the campground early afternoon and perhaps get a short hike in.
We stopped at the RV park outside of Montrose and paid our dump and water fees and were preparing to head on out when a group of RVers that were celebrating Labor Day invited us to share their Bar B Que with them. RV folks are really friendly and sharing. They love to meet new people and share stories. We met some really nice folks who said they spend several weeks every year at this same park with the same people. They seemed very intrigued by Nancy and I...you know two females traveling alone in two rigs towing vehicles. We get that all of the time. One of the ladies was very bold in stating that her job was not dumping or driving and had no intention of learning the mechanics of her rig and further more it was her husbands job to determine where they were going. Yikes!!! Sounds like my grandmother talking!
Needless to say, lunch set us back time wise but we headed on. One of the ladies at the lunch told us there might be some boondock camping up Bird Camp Road, so we headed up that way to check it out before going to the Amphitheater. Immediately we knew the road was going to be a problem. It was dirt, steep, and rutted and there was no where to turn around with our toads hooked up. We pulled to the side and Nancy unhooked the car and we headed up the road to explore to see if there was a campsite. The campsites were not suitable for RVs but we did find a turn around spot IF my rig would make it up the hill. We decided to go to the Amphitheater campground first and make sure some of the Labor Day people had vacated and that we would be able to secure two sites. If sites weren't available we were going to have to settle for one of the RV parks in town at a cost of a mega bucks. We were able to secure to two spots and returned to our rigs. I was able to crawl up the hill(5 mph in first gear) and turn my coach and toad around at the spot we found earlier without unhooking. Wheww!!
Nancy turned her rig around rehooked and we headed over to the campground. We were settled in by 5:00. Gosh, it only took 6 hours to go 50 miles.!! The campground host was amazed we made it up the hill and made all of the hair pin turns. Did we missed the sign that said " vehicles towing cars longer than 35 feet must turn around 50 ft ahead"? Actually we saw the sign but ignored it since we had already been up the road.
We settled in for a few days of hiking and Jeeping.
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