Friday - That's not a truck camper!The flight is good after all and Sally is impressed when the bursar comes back to cattle-class to find us and say hello (they check the manifest for high-status passengers). After watching 3 films and half a documentary we are headed for a hotel in Aurora, Denver.
The hotel is only 2 miles from the RV rental company, so we decide to walk in the morning, then drive back to the hotel with the camper to collect our baggage and check out.
The rental staff at Apollo were great, though I suspect I am a pretty easy customer – most people renting these vans probably don’t have an American RV at home already, so in my case I just needed to confirm the exact operation of a few things.
The van is an E series (sorry, I mean it was a TC cloaked as an E-series van) with the 5.4 Triton gasoline engine. Initially, driving slowly around Aurora the v8 seemed ideal – quiet and smooth. I soon learned later when I needed to push this van up through the Rockies, or accelerate into fast traffic, that the right-hand peddle generated more noise than movement. Having come from a turbo diesel truck this gasser felt painfully slow, but I soon learned you had to drive it like an old lady – just letting it build up speed slowly.
After some grocery shopping at Wal-mart in Aurora we headed south west onto 285.
There was still a fair amount of snow at South Park, including some light snow flurries still going on.
Hoppe (Rehoppe) had very kindly invited Sally and I to camp at his summer house in the Arkansas valley. What a great location, and great company too - wonderful to have a friendly face when you arrive - many thanks to Hoppe for his hospitality (and breakfast).
We take a walk across the river to admire the scenery - I can see why Hoppe has chosen this location.
Hoppe then took us for a tour in his truck into the higher parts of the mountain range.
Hoppe also gave us a very useful lesson on the different types of camping on offer at BLM land, taking us around a few sites and showing us how to tell a reserved site from a free one – very useful. This also confirmed to us that this was exactly the type of location we wanted to camp in rather than commercial campgrounds. On our return we ran into a series of Hoppe’s friends and spent about an hour chatting as the sun went down – really nice people.
The evening was rounded off with a meal at the local(ish) restaurant to celebrate Hoppe’s birthday the following day.
Also waiting for us at Hoppe’s ‘Dog House’ was a package mailed from bka0721 containing brochures, maps and other useful stuff from his journey through New Mexico and Arizona. He had kindly collected stuff as he went and mailed it to us care of Hoppe. Many thanks again for that.
We re-arrange the rear couch to form a bed - this gets old quickly and we long for our TC's over-cab bed which we can leave permanently set-up, and of course which I can sneak up to for a bit of a rest any time.
Stay tuned as we head south...
