Hello from Heaton Bay Campground in Dillon, CO<\/p>\n
Monday afternoon\u00a0 \u2013 June 29, 2020\u00a0\u00a0 (First post of this travelogue)<\/p>\n
We are in the Heaton Bay Campground in Dillon in our trusty old bus.\u00a0 Our location on Google Maps is here<\/a><\/p>\n {google_map}39.602113, -106.078831{\/google_map}<\/p>\n We arrived Sunday 6\/21.\u00a0 We are in site 40 in loop \u201cC\u201d.\u00a0 Of all the spaces we have stayed in, this one is probably our least favored.\u00a0 That said it is still a great site.\u00a0 Many years ago the campground was devastated by Pine Beetle.\u00a0 All the gorgeous pines had to be cut down.\u00a0 We noted that the new pines have really filled in and the vegetation is close to what it was when we first started coming here.<\/p>\n For many years we have come to this beautiful campground \u2013 usually for a period that includes the Fourth of July.\u00a0 This year our reservation ends tomorrow (6\/30) since we thought we would be flying to Hawaii for Pat\u2019s earned trip.\u00a0 It turns out that trip has been postponed till next spring.\u00a0 Reservations are hard to get here, so we will not try to extend.\u00a0<\/p>\n As has been the case for several years we make our reservations so that we can camp with daughter Kelly and her family.\u00a0 Actually I should clarify that Kelly makes the reservations since it is very cutthroat process and you need to be online at exactly 6 months prior to you arrival date and then it is not always guaranteed that you will get a spot in the area that has water and power.<\/p>\n We have had a very large range of weather here.\u00a0 It has been close to 90 degrees at times but it is very cool in the night.\u00a0 Indeed, I saw one reading of 37 degrees when I got up.\u00a0 We had to put on our sleeping bag as an extra cover to keep us warm at night.\u00a0\u00a0 We have also had quite a few rainstorms \u2013 almost every afternoon.\u00a0 It has cleared up most of the evenings so that we could have a campfire.<\/p>\n This has been a pretty laid back stay.\u00a0\u00a0 Many of the things we tend to do (shopping, movies, etc.) are closed or we have chosen to avoid, given the COVID 19 situation.\u00a0 On Wednesday (granddaughter Madison\u2019s birthday) we did take a pontoon boat out on the lake and had a ton of fun.<\/p>\n I did have one terrible moment.\u00a0 As we were pulling into our camp spot (tight spot to get the bus into) my power steering quit.\u00a0 Of course, I suspected the worse (bad pump) but decided that I should replace the hydraulic fluid filter to see if that would solve the problem.\u00a0 That in itself is a challenge since I have three major hydraulic circuits and three filters.\u00a0 For some reason I decided to pull one of the filters to look at it \u2013 like I could tell anything by looking at the filter.\u00a0 The next day I decided to do some testing on the pump and to do that I needed to start the engine.\u00a0 I then went back and crawled under the bus to check the hydraulic fan and looked over to see a HUGE amount of hydraulic fluid raining on the ground.\u00a0 I quickly shut off the engine but by that time I had pumped well over a gallon of hydraulic fluid on the ground.\u00a0 Turns out I did not get the filter properly seated.\u00a0 I did get the three filters ordered and went to Walmart to get a bag of kitty litter to finish cleaning up the oil (I had sopped up quite a bit with paper towels but there was still a bunch left on the asphalt parking pad).\u00a0 I ended up using almost two bags of kitty litter and lots of scrubbing with my shoes to get most of it cleaned up.\u00a0 What a mess.<\/p>\n That is all for this trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello from Heaton Bay Campground in Dillon, CO Monday afternoon\u00a0 \u2013 June 29, 2020\u00a0\u00a0 (First post of this travelogue) We are in the Heaton Bay Campground in Dillon in our trusty old bus.\u00a0 Our location on Google Maps is here … Continue reading