As usual, we remain way behind on this blog, over two months as of today, but within a couple of days we will be caught up.  Promise!  In the meantime, our facebook page is almost always current.

The Distance: 382 miles, all of it in Colorado, and one of our shortest distance months.  This was obviously due to our breakdown only 10 days into August, just as we were leaving Rocky Mountain National Park.  Before that catastrophic failure we had driven from Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park to Ami’s Acres via Olathe for a county fair, then on to Heaton Bay in the White River National Forest, then to the Boulder County Fairgrounds, before finally heading up to Elk Meadow Resort in Estes Park near RMNP.  Total distance for the year: 11,384 miles.

The Places:  In addition to all those places listed in the above paragraph, we also spent a week as guests of the Sumner family at Sumner Automotive in Milliken.  Leaving The Big Kahuna in Colorado Rosemarie and I headed off to London via Denver and Chicago to spend the rest of August with relatives.  So despite our problems, we made the absolute best of it.  We had full hookups for 7 days, drycamped for 9, stayed in hotels for 3, and with relatives in their home for 12.

The Budget:  It’s hard to stay on a monthly budget when you take a vacation to London, even if you do it cheaply with airline points and get free room and board.  Having to modify the flights at the last minute added to our unexpected costs, but generally or busting of the budget his month was due to denying ourselves little while in England.  We ended up 19% over for the month.

The Drama:  Can we ever have a month without drama?  No, no we can’t.  Obviously our breakdown in the Rockies is the top issue, but I suppose we can count positive drama as well, in that we successfully crossed the Continental Divide headed east during a long and engine heating climb that fortunately resulted in no problems since we learned the limitations of our bus following our our coolant problem in Utah.

The Improvements:  We got a new windshield, finally clearing the “bullet hole” that continually plagued Rosemarie’s front view road pictures.  .

• January Report
• February Report
• March Report
• April Report
• May Report
• June Report
• July Report