We’ve been in Denver now for almost two weeks and will be heading out on Sunday. I thought I’d bring you up to date on the last part of our trip to get here.

Mcpherson, Kansas

We left Oklahoma City on Friday, Dec. 21 and drove to McPherson, Kansas. We stayed at the McPherson RV Ranch and Horse Motel. It’s a bare-bones RV park which makes for a quick stop while passing through. We never met or saw the proprietor’s – just left a payment in an envelope pushed through the mail slot of the office door. I forgot to take pictures for illustration.

As a side note, while researching our night’s stop I had found a place in the same general area (Lindsborg) prior to this which was a city park and had cheap electric hookups for passers-through. However, after investigating a bit on Google maps, I found that the road to get to the park passed across a weight-limited single lane bridge. Here’s the street-view picture of the approach to the bridge. I decided we wouldn’t risk it!

 

Oakley, Kansas

On Saturday, Dec. 22 we continued on. I called ahead to see if we could stay at the Whistle Stop RV Park in Colby, KS where we stayed on our first night out of Denver back in May (see the 5/9/2018 travel log). However, they were completely full, so we instead found a place about 20 miles prior to that in Oakley, Kansas. Again, I forgot to take pictures. Colder weather caught up with us and we got a bit of snow that night.

Cherry Creek State Park, Colorado

On Sunday, December 23, we arrived at Cherry Creek State Park in Aurora, Colorado.

There two particularly cold nights here in which the temperatures dropped to single-digits or negatives. The coldest temperature I’m aware of was -3 degrees! As a result, we ran through our propane very quickly. That night that was so cold, we returned to the RV after an evening with family to find that our propane gauge showed empty. We prayed that God would stretch the propane enough to get us through the night. He did! The heat was able to run until about 6am the next morning. From 6am to 8:30am, the temperature in the RV dropped from 58 degrees (our usual overnight temperature setting) to 43 degrees. We left and went to a propane dealer to refill. They opened at 9am and we arrived at 9:05!

That same night, our water system froze – or so we thought. We waited it out throughout that day and into the next, when temperatures crept above freezing again. It was then that I discovered the actual problem.

I had refilled the water tank the night it was the coldest, not wanting the tank to have just a little water in it. However, I overfilled the tank and it overflowed, freezing immediately between the access door and the side of the tank. Once I chipped away and melted all the external ice, the water system worked again!

We decorated a small tree for Christmas and placed on the dash. We have collected ornaments representing significant events during each of our 33 years of marriage.

We spent a lot of time just hanging out with our local family (our son and my sister/brother-in-law). We played lots of games and just used the time to catch up with each other.

We are heading south on Sunday, January 6. Our plan for now is to travel through New Mexico and West Texas for a few weeks.