Driving, and driving, and driving, and more driving.

My day started at 6:30am after a horrible night of waking up to various weather alerts and high winds. Car seats don’t make the most ideal bed either. Stopped by a local park in Amarillo for breakfast, a delicious peanut butter jelly sandwich with an apple, and promptly hit the road towards Colorado after scarfing my food down.

This is what the 99.99% of Texas looked like, flat open roads that go on for miles.

After about 2 hours of driving I finally hit the New Mexico border. Finally out of Texas! My damn state goes on forever, however I still have a lot of drive time ahead.

Yay snakes… Kind of surprised I never saw a snake warning sign in Texas.

Well after another two hours of driving I finally encountered mountains! Here I was starting to think the earth was flat after the past day and a half of driving!

Finally made it into Colorado and stopped in Trinidad for gas and lunch, almost a full day later from leaving my house. However as I’m leaving the gas station a small dark cloud lingering above lets loose a hail storm that last all of few minutes before stopping again. Sunshine and hail, and here I was thinking Texas had weird weather. The nice thing about an old car that has sat outside all of it’s life is it has seen a few hail storms before. A few more hail dents doesn’t bother me. After pulling up my maps app I find a camp site just east of Pagosa Spring and plug it into the GPS. Headed north up on I-25 before cutting over to highway 160.

Well it didn’t take long for the first issue to pop up. Thankfully it was a minor issue of my throttle cable coming a bit loose which I noticed while checking fluid levels at a gas station. I grabbed the wrench out of my tool bag, snugged up the fittings and I’m off again.

This won't be the last time I poke my head into my engine bay.

Finally cooler weather and mountains in every direction! I personally enjoy stopping about every two hours or so just to unwind for five minutes or so before getting back on the road. Once you pass through Del Norte on Highway 160 and start heading towards Wolf Creek Pass it becomes an absolutely breath taking drive.

The last pit stop of the day, a scenic overlook on the western side of Wolf Creek Pass.

Eventually the road flattens out into a gradual downhill, so I began to search for a camp site. From the scenic overlook I thought the small RV camp in view was what my app was referencing and went in search of a better site. I wanted to camp out in the forest, not a flat manicured recreational area. There are plenty of those in Texas. Jumped back into the car and continued down highway 160 in hope of finding something.

Driving along I see a sign posted East Fork Service Road. I pull off onto the dirt road and drive about half a mile in and come across the East Fork campground. Pine trees, mountains and plenty of space between camping spots. Just what I was looking for!