~Tuesday, October 13, 2020~
Day 121 (Travel day)
Goodbye Durango and on to Pagosa Springs, CO. We’ve packed a lot into 4 days and am looking forward to a little chill time, boondocking at our next site. Propane tanks full….check, fresh water tank full….check, plastic collapsible water bottles full…..check. And since we’ve had full hookups at this site, no dump station...yeah!
The drive to Pagosa Springs was only about 70 miles which should have only taken us about 1-½, which turned into 2-½ hours with a few glitches. We had plans to stay at a dispersed camping area on Jackson Mountain in Pagosa Springs whereby you take an unpaved road (good thing we rarely wash the truck/trailer) and hunker down in any open spot. The problem…..there were only 2 to 3 sites that we could see. We had no way to know that with our online search as no one mentioned any reviews that there were very few options. So we drove to the end of the road where there were quite a few horse trailers parked making it a little tricky to turn around. That’s the trick with dispersed camping is taking the chance of driving in, sometimes 4-6 miles or so, before you find out what your real options are. So 4 miles back we went until we found a spot that had potential, but a little dicey in terms of backing into it. It was on a slope down, but then a slope up in a short amount of space where I thought we could possibly bottom out. Jeff was driving, and after at least 10 tries of backing down into it (nearly bottoming out), we scrapped the idea. So now for plan B. As I’ve mentioned before our Plan B’s have usually turned out better than our Plan A’s. And this was no exception.
When we got to a pullover spot to figure out some other options, we decided on another dispersed camping area called Turkey Springs. It didn’t take long for us to drive in and find a spot in a more evergreen forest than the previous spot. A large and easily accessible site. Yeah, we’re in. But then...another mishap. While we were disconnecting the trailer, we noticed the pin that holds the sway bar in it’s locked position had come off, nowhere to be found. When we had tried to back into the other space, I do remember hearing a sound from the hitch area, but just thought it was the movement between the truck hitch and trailer. So we must have lost it there. I think Jeff is driving back there tomorrow to see if it’s there. I don’t think that part is readily available so I hope he finds it.
The weather is gorgeous, in the mid 70’s, with a big cool off the minute the sun goes down. Tonight’s low was supposed to be around the mid 30’s. If we had the inverter, we’d be able to run the fireplace and didn’t feel like pulling out the generator just for that. We did however, try out our new Apple USB-C to AV Multiport adapter (thanks bro-in-law Tim for the suggestion) to be able to watch an Amazon Prime movie.
There were a few technical difficulties so I got on a chat with Apple Support to resolve the connectivity issue from my laptop to our T.V. (monitor). It took a few tries but we got it to work. The only bummer is we can’t run surround sound from the T.V. We can only hear surround sound if we have a DVD in the player. The movie: Peanut Butter Falcon. Gosh, Shia LaBeouf is such a good actor. So believable as the character. You don’t even know it’s Shia. Unfortunately, I forgot about the low battery power on the laptop, so we weren’t able to finish the movie. But there’s always tomorrow, as we’ll recharge it from the generator. Again, if we had the inverter it wouldn’t be a problem. Go inverters!!