Scariest Place You've Taken Your B

U.S. route 550 from Durango to Ouray Colorado. Including Red Mountain pass. 3 -10,000 ft passes, 15 mph hairpin turns, and the most beautiful scenery anywhere.

Durango to Ouray is not scary in a Class B in my experience but bigger RVs can cause the driver to need a good laundry service after. :)

It is a great drive to take.

We drove Ouray to Durango, stopping in Silverton overnight. Such a beautiful drive especially when the Aspen's were at peak. Not scary but not sure I wanted to be in anything larger than our LTV B Sprinter. On another forum , folks advised against taking the drive. Sure am glad we didn't take that advice.

Let me clarify the scarey. I had driven from the Grand Canyon to Durango, and not knowing what the road was like, my wife took over driving in Durango after getting fuel. I was a passenger, looking over the edge of the road, down the mountainside. Large RVs were scarey to meet but the worst was 18 wheelers, thankfully we only met 2 between Silverton and Ouray. The views were breathtaking, but I was afraid my wife would look and not keep on the road. There was no shoulder on a lot of it, I felt like I could drop a ball out the window and it would hit 500 ft below.

We did not find it scary (maybe we just don't have any common sense) but we did the Moki Dugway in a Roadtrek 210 after the campground owner where we we were staying said it would be no problem as long as we took our time. It is definitely an interesting road to drive, but we had no problems and it saved a lot of time and miles going from Mexican Hat to Natural Bridges National Monument and back. At the top of the Dugway there is a dirt road that heads to the west. About 5 miles out you reach Mulie Point. The road is rough dirt (not gravel) but the view is quite something to see and was definitely worth the drive.

Approximately 9 years ago we took a two week vacation on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver Island is a very large and scenic island and is too large to take in all the sites in just two weeks.

One of the most beautiful places on Vancouver Island is the Pacific Rim on the West Coast of the island. After spending 9-10 days on the Eastern portion of the island, we decided to cross over the mountains to see the beautiful Pacific Rim National Park.

I do not recall the elevation of the mountain pass in the crossing, but the mountains that separate the Pacific Rim from the rest of the island are snow covered all year. The road however was not snow covered.

To get to the Pacific Rim National Park you drive on BC highway #4 from Pt. Alberni to the West Coast of the island, where there are just two small towns, Tofino and Ucluelet.

The road over the mountains is two lane, very windy and winding with very few straight sections so visibility of what is ahead is always limited.

The road is paved now, but was gravel when we traveled it. Aside from the fact that it was gravel road, narrow, and with little visibility of what was ahead, and had lots of summer tourist traffic, there were four 18 degree hills which made the trip very exciting. When we got to the Pacific Rim coast, we discovered that we were the only RV on the West Coast of the island.

We were not surprised to see no other RV's. When we started the trip at Pt. Alberni, we were following a class C RV, but a short while after they started the mountian climb, they turned around and went back down the mountain.

To summarize our experience--at the point in time that we made this trip--the road was more suited to mountain goats than to RV's.

For anyone interested in seeing pictures of Vancouver Island, go to:
http://www.britishcolumbia.com/parks/?id=404.

Sometime in the late 1990's we camped near Pikes Peak. Because we couldn't get a reservation on the cog railway up to the top for several days ahead, we decided to drive our RT 190V Dodge up - hey! all those cars were going up, why not us? The road was mainly dirt, two way traffic, no lines and no edge markers. All I could see was space beyond the side of the road. To make it more "exciting" and raise the already high blood pressure situation, dump trucks were rushing up and down the mountain. Those going up ahead would dump their load right in the middle of the already narrow road, giving you a choice of driving over newly dumped soft dirt or going right out to the edge to get past.

When we finally arrived at the top and parked, we found that we were not the only ones with rubbery legs. Some people didn't get out of their vehicles for five minutes or more. On the way down, in second and some times first gear, everyone was subject to a brake heat check. We failed the check and had to spend time in a parking area until the brakes cooled and pass the brake check again.

The next most scariest drive was the "Million Dollar per Mile" Ouray-Durango highway. At least it was paved and had line markings.

I agree that the Vancouver Island road #4 was not a comfortable ride between Parksville and Port Alberni, and even today it can be treacherous. However, I don't recall even one 18 degree hill on the way. One or two 8 degree hills perhaps. The steepest hill I have encountered so far on the island is going up to the ski resort at Mt. Washington at 12 degrees.

The scariest place I've ever taken the Roadtrek?
The RV repair facility! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Pat in Menifee, CA
www.patcarnathan.com

ROADTREKKER2000 wrote:
Approximately 9 years ago we took a two week vacation on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver Island is a very large and scenic island and is too large to take in all the sites in just two weeks.

One of the most beautiful places on Vancouver Island is the Pacific Rim on the West Coast of the island. After spending 9-10 days on the Eastern portion of the island, we decided to cross over the mountains to see the beautiful Pacific Rim National Park.

I do not recall the elevation of the mountain pass in the crossing, but the mountains that separate the Pacific Rim from the rest of the island are snow covered all year. The road however was not snow covered.

To get to the Pacific Rim National Park you drive on BC highway #4 from Pt. Alberni to the West Coast of the island, where there are just two small towns, Tofino and Ucluelet.

The road over the mountains is two lane, very windy and winding with very few straight sections so visibility of what is ahead is always limited.

The road is paved now, but was gravel when we traveled it. Aside from the fact that it was gravel road, narrow, and with little visibility of what was ahead, and had lots of summer tourist traffic, there were four 18 degree hills which made the trip very exciting. When we got to the Pacific Rim coast, we discovered that we were the only RV on the West Coast of the island.

We were not surprised to see no other RV's. When we started the trip at Pt. Alberni, we were following a class C RV, but a short while after they started the mountian climb, they turned around and went back down the mountain.

To summarize our experience--at the point in time that we made this trip--the road was more suited to mountain goats than to RV's.

For anyone interested in seeing pictures of Vancouver Island, go to:
http://www.britishcolumbia.com/parks/?id=404.

Man, you've got one big imagination going on there!! There is nothing like that on Van. Island!
If you want 18% grades, look up the 'freedom road' that goes into Bella Coola. Maybe that was what you were thinking about?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpsCXBHXndk