Jul 20 – To Colorado Springs

Even though I messed up again and booked our campgrounds so that we had to move on a Sunday, along with everyone else, the traffic was not that bad.

Heading east from Buena Vista we had a long climb, up 1000 foot in elevation, onto a plateau, pulling over several times to let people past.

Then off to the horizon on a gradual downhill.

Another short climb back up to 9500 feet.

At the town of Divide, at a stoplight, we changed from a somewhat narrow highway with no passing lanes to a 4 lane divided highway. No more worries about going too slow.

As we got close to Colorado Springs we headed down rather quickly to around 6000 feet.

The lower altitude also means hot. We are supposed to have highs in the mid 30’s C all week.

The campground we are at is on the south end of the city, whereas most of the thing we want to do are in the north but it will be worth the drive.

This is a great campground. Cheyenne Mountain State Park is on the slopes of Cheyenne Mountain where, I think, the Norad complex is buried.

 

I think this park is quite new. Very large sites.

Even the washroom buildings look kind of fancy.

And a great far off view down the mountain. Most of what we can see is part of Fort Carson Army Base.

We got here around noon, did some chores and then just sat outside enjoying the view.

There is no campground WIFI here. I have a small puck like device that connects to the Verizon network. I can just just buy more time when I need it without a contract. When I got it out and turned on, according to the lights it connected up to the network but when I tried to surf I couldn’t get anywhere. I rely on the internet a lot to do my day to day planning. This would be a problem.

I tried everything I could think of, even you a full reset. No luck. Finally I called customer support at the company, StraightTalk. They were very professional and in about 15 minutes everything was working again. Whew!

I had been using a 5 Gig refill card that expires in 2 months. I had activated for use in the state parks at Ridgeway and Grand Junction and we had used about half of the 5 Gigs. When I checked today after everything was working it had been reset back to the full 5 gig. Great.

We are here for 5 nights.