Grand Junction, CO - Yesterday a Caboose, Today a Chassis

Some adventures are great fun, some land you in the Freightliner Service Center. Ours today was one of the latter. It began on the 3rd, when we left Forest City, IA having made a return at the Winnebago Service Center. About 3 miles out of town, our temperature light came on, the warning sound squealed in our ears and Gary drove to a stop at the side of the road. We waited a bit, the temperature gauge came down, and, he turned the engine off and back on again, everything seemed fine and we drove on, thinking it was a stuck valve which was now unstuck. Problem solved - ha, ha, ha.

5 days later, in Nebraska the same thing happened with the same results. Stop, wait for the engine to cool down, turn it off then back on and we drove on, with everything as normal. 2 small omens. The real fun started yesterday when we began our climb up to the Continental Divide outside of Denver. The first time it happened, we proceeded as we always had. The second time, we stopped at the side of the road and unhitched the Jeep to take some of the load off. Lots of fun stopping at the side of Interstate 70 with cars, trucks, other RV’s whizzing by us. Luckily, it was right when the lanes turned to 2 from 3 for construction so we had lots more room than we might have had. But, it was a still a bit scary.

By this time what had started as a light rain had turned into a downpour. I was driving the Jeep, following Gary. At one point, a car passed me going through a large puddle and covered my windshield in water for what seemed to be 5 minutes but was surely only a few seconds. 60 mph through the mountains and I couldn’t see out of my windshield. And, me, a flatlander.

Well, that worked enough to get us over the Continental Divide but just barely. I had my fingers crossed and that must have worked since we made it to the downhill slide. We had planned to meet up at the Dillon, CO scenic pull-off and we stopped to rest, talk and take in the beautiful views. There were kayaks and sailboats out on the reservoir, mountains looming in the distance and pine trees adding color to the scene.

Since we planned to stay in Eagle for the night and didn’t want to chance having to stop again along Interstate 70, we both drove. Earlier, I had checked for Freightliner dealers and service centers on line and found one in Grand Junction, CO, which was our next stop. How fortunate since we wanted to get this problem fixed before we headed on.

It rained pretty heavily overnight but had stopped by the time we were ready to go. This morning we decided that we were going to be lucky, hitched the Jeep back up to the RV and took off. It didn’t take long for that little temperature light to do its song and dance. We only got to the next exit. I guess we weren’t as lucky as we thought. We then did our little song and dance and were able to get back out on the road. By the way, have I mentioned that it rained off and on all day today also? Sure does make it fun to be driving a sick RV through the mountains in the rain.

But that didn’t stop us from marveling at the engineering feat that is Interstate 70 through Colorado. 4 lanes, slaloming through a canyon, cantilevered out over the rushing Colorado River below with a train track running alongside the river on the other bank. And, they even squeezed a bike trail through here too.

Even the tunnels slalomed.

What a marvel is this road. But, it’s not just a marvel, it goes through beautiful territory also. Every curve brings new beauty to our eyes - even through the rain.

We arrived in Grand Junction, checked in and drove to our site. Our first order of business was to call Freightliner to see what we could do and they said - ‘Come on Down.’ We thought we were Queen for a Day since we got right in. We had not unhooked the Jeep nor had we done any of our campground arrival tasks since we hoped that we might be able to get into Freightliner. We did however, manage to get another site since the rain had deposited a10’ wide, 3” deep pond right out side our door. In my wildest dreams I couldn’t jump over this. Not even for chocolate.

And, that’s the story about why we are sitting here in Freightliner, at 11:30 p.m. waiting for our RV to come out of the shop. We just didn’t want to drive back into our campground and cruise through to our campsite at midnight with our diesel engine.

I hadn’t realized that I was going to be ‘Queen for a Night’ too.