Back from Colorado

After a great couple of days with the Winnebago Fuse Owners Group we headed back home for Tallahassee.   This time we did it a with a little bit more sanity.  We were not going to do it in one big lift, but take several days to go home.

We took off Sunday morning and headed down the road through Denver towards Colorado Springs.  I-25 is a nice road to drive down, but avoiding Denver is probably best.  We thought a Sunday morning through Denver would not be too bad.  Well we did not figure that the Broncos would be playing.   The traffic was standing still.

      

Once we got past Denver we still had stop and go traffic.  There were several accidents on the road heading South and rubber necking was slowing the flow.  But once we got past that it was a great drive.  The mountains were snow topped off to the West making the scenery really pretty.

Once we got to Colorado Springs we headed up into the mountains.   We were going to look into the mountains outside of Ft. Collins but the snow had already started there.  I did not want to learn to drive the Fuse in the snow up in the mountains so we did our sight seeing south.    It was a pretty drive and then we got back on the Interstate.   Headed to Raton, New Mexico.

  

We got to Raton and it was still early in the day so we went on into Texas.  The downside was we were back to heading through the high plains.  Pretty but very monotonous.  We did pass an extinct volcano at Capulin Volcano National Monument.  We were too late for the visitors center, so we just saw it from the road.  

We headed for a campground in Dalhart, Texas for the night.  The Corral RV Park.  We pulled in at dark.  The sites were large, flat and for a place to stop for the night it was perfect.   I did not see much since we got there at dark and left at first light.    We were told when we called ahead for the reservation that there was not any cable TV and the nearest OTA TV stations were in Amarillo, 65 miles away.  Well we could not get any TV over the antenna so we watched DirectTVnow streaming over our cellular hotspot.   Worked great and after a couple of hours we went to sleep.

   

We headed on out on Monday morning at first light to see how far we could get through Texas.  Note to others, Texas is a large state and making it through in a day is pushing it.  I figured we could make Dallas easily and we would try to find a campground just the other side.    We we drove through Amarillo to Wichita Falls and then south to Dallas.  The roads were great and there were no issues with driving.

We ran into a delay just north of Dallas.  We stopped to fill-up and the diesel nozzle got stuck in the Easy-Fill cap.  I could not get it out.    I wound up having to break the tabs and take it apart.   After 20 minutes we were able to get disconnected from the pump and we went on our way.  Just to hit 5 o'clock traffic in Dallas.  That was the most stressful driving the entire trip.

We made it safely outside of Dallas and headed down I-20 to our stop that night in Terrell TX at the Bluebonnet Ridge RV Park.  We actually stopped before sundown and picked up a couple of steaks along the way.  We had a wonderful meal and then settled down for the evening.  

And then it happened, our first breakage during the trip and the first real issue since we have owned the Fuse.  We lost our Automatic Transfer Switch.  The magic smoke left the device.  No electricity from the 110v connection to campground.  Just battery power.  Well it was a little humid and I wanted the Air Conditioner, but we survived with just fans.  Just like boon docking for $40.00 a night.   At least the bathrooms were nice and lots of hot water.

Well with no shore power it was time to end the trip.  So Tuesday would be a longer run back to Tallahassee.  

Started mid morning and ran through some of the heaviest rains I had seen in a long time.  We drove through Shreveport, Monroe, Vicksburg, and got off of I-20 in Jackson, MS.  The roads were fine in Texas and Louisiana but once we hit Mississippi they got bad.  Bump after bump and/or bump.  We were hoping that this was going to be restricted to the Interstate, but once we got onto US-49 it did not change.  We went down 49 and then onto US-98 into Mobile, Alabama.  Once we got into Alabama the roads got nice again.

Well we drive through Mobile and got onto I-10 and headed for home.   We took our time :-) and got home a little before midnight.

The stats for the entire trip were 3450 miles from beginning to end.  Our average speed was between 70-75 mph and we got 12.5mpg.   I was not as happy with the milage but given some of our speeds, I understand.  We were back to 15mpg once we got back in Florida and ran our normal 69-70mph.