Nail Biting Election
~Thursday, November 5, 2020~
Day 144 (Travel Day)
Still no election results. This is certainly testing everyone’s patience for sure.
We toyed with the idea of staying an extra day since we didn’t get to see much of downtown Fort Collins and do a little real estate shopping, but decided we were ready to move on and will certainly keep Fort Collins on the list of possibilities for moving one day. Due to the recent unprecedented fires, we also did not have the opportunity to see Estes Park nor Rocky Mountain National Park. I suppose it just gives you another reason to come back doesn’t it? This is the last time we’ll be this far north for quite a while, as we are heading in the southerly direction for the cooler months ahead.
We didn’t get to leave Horsetooth Reservoir until after 12:00 noon due to a lengthier stop at the dump station at Horsetooth. Without going into too much detail, we had some issues with the black tank not fully emptying. Now the only reason I’m touching on this, is to help anyone who might run into a similar problem. Clogged toilets and clogged plumbing systems is a common occurrence with RV’s. Anyway, where we were dumping also did not have the best water pressure. We did our normal routine of filling the black tank with water to give it enough pressure to flush out. But it wasn’t emptying 100%. Here’s where the tip comes in: To get things moving, Jeff fed me the freshwater hose through the bedroom window so I could force water down the toilet, while we left the valve open to the dump station’s septic tank. It took about 10-15 minutes of flushing to get it to finally work. We also needed at least ⅓ of a tank of freshwater to get us through the evening plus showers the following morning since we’ll be staying at the casino parking lot tonight (no hookups).
A few stops …..a diesel fill-up, DEFT fill-up (it’s so much cheaper at the truck stops) then a 2-hour drive to Colorado Springs to our niece Katelin’s to pick up some long awaited mail. Katelin was at work so we didn’t get to see her.:-( The drive that connects Denver to Colorado Springs, is an 18-mile construction project called the South Gap project on highway 25 and makes for brutal driving. This project began in 2018 and is the longest construction zone in Colorado’s history. Over the years apparently, congestion, crashes and delays have increased due to population growth and more people simply, using the road. Thus a $350 million 4-year project.
The rest of the drive went pretty smooth, with occasional stops for Sadie, until we arrived at our destination. Lesson learned….always have a plan B, especially during pandemic times. But here’s why we didn’t. We were going to stay at a casino parking lot at Tesuque Casino in Santa Fe. Since we had read favorable recent reviews on our Campendium app, we thought all would be good. But something didn’t look quite right when we arrived. The casino was well lit, but the parking lot was virtually empty. We saw what looked like a security guard and asked what was going on. His reply was, “we’re closed” with no further explanation. I later found out on their Facebook page that coincidentally, they had 1 COVID case that day and had to shut down temporarily. Ugh! Lesson learned…..always call first to make sure things are running “normal”. So here we were scrambling, calling a few other casinos in the area to see if they would allow overnight parking. A few said no. But we finally found a yes, but 20 minutes away and in the opposite direction of where we needed to be the following morning. We even checked out a Wal-Mart parking lot idea (yes, most of them allow RVer’s to stay overnight in their parking lots), but when you read a review that says “well lit….but prepare for potential vandalism”, I think that kind of says it all. So here we go to our “yes” place….the Ohkay Hotel and Casino in Espanola, NM where we found a few semi’s parked, but no other RVer’s. Needless to say, I was restless most of the night, as I didn’t feel we were parked in the safest place. At least I got a few hours of shut eye.