Hello from Guffey, CO
Draft Started Friday September 6, 2023 (First post of this travelogue)
Updated and posted 9/11/2023
We again made our annual trip to Guffey, CO to spend the Labor Day weekend at Pat’s brother’s amazing place. Jeff and Julie built this wonderful home on 60 acres in a very peaceful location about 10 miles west of the small town of Guffey. It is so beautiful and quite here.
Jeff and Julie’s daughter and her family were here as well as all of daughter Lisa and her family.
The Shepherd and Kassel camping vehicles
We drove there on Thursday 8/31. It is a bit over a two-hour drive from our house. The drive was uneventful which was a good thing. On our trip to Monument Valley and Williams, AZ our truck overheated and we had to turn around and return home (later making the trip in our Mazda). I completely rebuilt and upgraded the cooling system and it functioned flawlessly on this trip.
We enjoyed all the family time with endless meals and fun discussions. We also took the time to set up a target practice day that was a ton of fun. I finally got to shoot my new Smith and Wesson Model 19 revolver (.357 magnum) as well as my Marlin lever action 30-30 rifle. These are my treasured weapons that relate to my TV heroes from my childhood days. It is funny that the two Kassel grandsons love to fire these weapons as well.
The Target Practice Gang
My Lever Action 30-30 — Do I look like I was having fun?
Most everyone left on Labor day, but we stayed until Thursday (9/7) and enjoyed our time with the Springs.
On this trip I wanted to test our ability to “boondock”. We parked in a field and had no connections. We had installed two solar panels and took both a small and large generator. The results were mixed. The solar did not keep up with our electrical demands. Admittedly we are somewhat power hogs, but I had hoped to do a bit better than we did. We ran the large generator a couple of hours each day and that kept us at an acceptable level. I am exploring our solar options, but I am concerned about the cost/value ratio. We did pretty well with our water situation. We were conservative and as a result our water supply was sufficient for the week and the holding tanks were not full. We were close, but we got by.
Our trip home was a bit of an adventure. We had planned to fuel up in Hartzel which is maybe 30 miles from the Springs. When we got to the station we discovered that one our tires had disintegrated! Fortunately an employee of the store helped us mount the spare and we departed about an hour later. We have no way of knowing what caused the tire to fail. I check the tire pressure each day before we leave. It is possible that we picked up something that punctured the tire or that the tire simply blew out. The rim had some cosmetic damage but should be OK. We will be getting two spares (have to buy one extra rim) but I need that comfort level as we will be taking two long trips in the next couple of months.
Anyone want to buy a used tire?
That is all for this trip.