Seeing Colorado Beauty at 7700 feet...

After the mountain drive on U.S. 50 from Montrose to Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch RV Resort, we checked in and paid for a fourteen-day stay. It was nice to get settled in on a site. The entrance was near the highway, but in selecting a site, we discovered that every site was up hill from the entrance and clubhouse. Since we do not have a separate vehicle for daily driving, we chose a site close to the adult clubhouse and laundry facilities, because everywhere we went on the resort required walking, up hill and down hill.

We have always enjoyed the scenery in Colorado. Since this park was near Gunnison, which ended up being the home office for Western Horizons, we wanted to check it out. We initially joined White Oaks on the Lake in Monticello, IN, and eventually, it became part of the Western Horizons Group.

A few months before we started our adventure of full-time RV living and traveling, we got a letter telling us White Oaks was closed. That was bad for us because we had hoped to use our membership at White Oaks on the Lake during the summer months to visit family in Indiana. They did offer us an alternative in another system, but their parks were in a region we had no interest in visiting. Alternative to that was to check out Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch RV Resort in Colorado, We needed to get a feel whether we would feel comfortable returning there year after year.

Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch RV Resort

You can click on any of the photos to enlarge them and "x" out of them to return to the blog.

Blue Mesa Recreational Ranch Sign

Clubhouse at Blue Mesa Ranch RV Resort

Sitting/Resting with Angel outside of the clubhouse before starting back up the hill

One section of rentals at the Resort

ATV's for rent at the RV Resort

Looking towards highway in general direction toward Montrose on our daily walk around the park.

Storm moving through

Another view of storm moving through

Cloud formation reminds me of Angel, his tail curled over his back, flying with wings!

Views from our campsite

The only tree with leaves turning yellow was at our campsite.

Looking in the direction of Gunnison

Beautiful rainbow

Lake across the highway -- beautiful view!

The internet cost was $12 per week for one device, so we paid a total of $24 to have access for one device, our Samsung phone in case of an emergency, for the two weeks we were there. It was nearly impossible to get a Tracfone signal to use my phone. They said there were a couple of places (down by the clubhouse and at the gazebo by the lake) where I might get a signal, but neither worked for me. A couple of times I happened onto a signal, once by holding my phone above my head at arm’s length, and once by sitting in the non-driver’s captain’s seat and placing it against the front-side window, but neither were consistent. We drove 12 miles one way to Gunnison and parked in the Safeway parking lot where we could get an internet signal in order to accomplish anything on the internet.

I did enjoy working on a couple of puzzles at the adult clubhouse. It had a pool, pool table, and four tables for games and puzzles. One afternoon I returned after lunch and found the puzzle I had been working on before lunch had been moved from the table to the middle of the pool table so the card players would have a table for their snacks. Rather than leave or set up a fuss, I transferred the puzzle board over to lay on the arms of a chair while I sat in another chair to work the puzzle. I improvised, and it worked out okay. However, it would have been nice if they had offered me some of their snacks since I was the only other person in the room. Oh, well.

The laundry section was located at the adult club house, but there was no change machine. I ended up walking all the way down to the office to get quarters, and then walking all the way back. Then, to top things off, the clothes were not dry when they came out of the dryer. That was a bummer! Instead of walking all the way down to the office and back to get more quarters, I ended up drying them in the RV wherever they would fit until they got dry.

It was interesting to note a couple of the events at the clubhouse involving games. One said bring dollars to play. Another said to bring your jar of pennies to play. Every event called for money, not just having fun. When I was a child growing up, I loved to play games, but was always taught that we did not have to put money on the table to have fun.

One night they had a karaoki night, which I thought might be nice because of the music, but they made it sound like the person was an award-winning karaoki person and donations would be accepted. As it turned out, the person running the karaoki was the only maintenance person on duty and he had to leave in the middle of the event to take care of a maintenance problem. Someone else filled in while he was gone and tried to encourage others to bring their tape to the front and perform.

The scenery was beautiful. The park was really spread out. Miniature golf was located in the teen area. In still another section, there was horseback riding available. I was glad we could visit, but the welcome feeling that has been apparent at other facilities was missing. On a more positive note, though, we only paid $70 for those two weeks (not counting the annual maintenance fee and the internet fee), I did manage to get three blog posts written, and we started taking two walks per day.

Gunnison, Colorado

The drive to Gunnison was twelve miles and twelve miles back to the park. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous, as you can see in the following pictures. Elevation topped 7700 feet at Gunnison. I have not added any captions,so just enjoy the beautiful scenery.

While in Gunnison, we made an appointment at Precision Auto to get the oil changed on the RV. The bill came to $82.66. We noticed a squeal sometimes when we run the AC, so we asked them to check the belt. As it turned out, they said it was due to power steering fluid leaking on the belt. They gave us a quote of nearly $600 to replace the power steering pump. (The price on a power steering pump itself is under a hundred dollars; we decided to put that on our list of things to be done later if the leak should require it.)

Safeway Grocery was a good spot to pick up needed supplies, including tasty sub sandwiches and tater wedges. It was also the only place to get on the internet and download posts and pictures to make progress on my blog. Nearly half of the days were spent in Gunnison where we could get on the internet. The Rocky Mountain scenery was so gorgeous! Unfortunately, however, you can probably feel my frustration of not being able to make greater progress while we should be enjoying a site with full hook-ups.

The majority of the intersections in Gunnison were designed with a dip. This meant crossing them at an angle to keep the back end of the motorhome scraping the pavement to a minimum.

The National Forest Ranger Station was a great place to pick up information. One of the things we learned was that boondocking spaces in their area were designed for smaller rigs than ours; roads were not designed to accommodate either our RV, much less one pulling a trailer.

Gunnison National Forest Ranger Station

Angel sitting in my RV seat waiting for us to return from the Ranger Station.

Little birdie sitting on the rail

Going down the mountain on our way back to Montrose

After we spend a night at the Walmart Parking Lot in Montrose and wait for the rain to stop, we get back on U.S. 50 and travel toward Grand Junction and even more beautiful scenery. The scenery is so beautiful that I may opt to insert another video in the next post.

If you would like to be notified when that post publishes, put your email address in the appropriate box at the top right of this blog. Be sure to go to your email inbox and confirm your request, so you receive notification.

Thank you for following my blog. Feel free to make comments in the box below.

Also thank you for purchasing products through my links. Any clicks on my links are appreciated, as I may make a few pennies when a purchase is recorded after clicking a link on this blog, even when you purchase an item other than what you first clicked on.