It’s officially been one week since I’ve embarked on this trip. While I have seen a decent amount of Colorado by now I realized that a week just does not give you many choices when it comes down to doing a road trip. Getting in and out of Texas alone can eat up two of those days.
I slept well and finally getting use to the brisk near freezing mornings I no longer had to spend the first hour or so trying to persuade myself to embrace the cold. Although I’m glad I was not in a rush to leave this morning, as my car had iced over at night… in early June. Since when do car ice over in June?!
And yes I'm easily amused.
Before making my breakfast I went on a quick hike up the hills just behind our campsite. I was hoping to make it to the top of the hill, however when I found the top of the hill I was met with yet another hill to climb. After dealing with about four of those I turned back down, the view alone was quite pretty with how short of a climb this was.
Our camp site for the night.
Hiking back to camp I found my friend Ryan still sleeping, although it wasn’t even seven am yet, and I went about making myself breakfast along with a hot cup of coffee. Once I polished off my food I spent the rest of my time catching up on my journal entries as I hadn’t written anything down the past two days. While spending my time writing I had a visitor pop up without as much of a sound. A red fox trotted right by my chair, about 2 feet away. We both turn, look at each other, and the fox seemingly unconcerned with my presence continues on his way. My camera is looked in my car and before I even think about pulling out my phone to shoot a photo mr fox is already another 20 feet away.
Don't mind the fox on his morning commute.
Shortly after our visitor left my friend finally wakes up and goes about making his breakfast. My belts are still squealing in the cold weather and with just my luck there is a trench dug out here that allows me easy access to the underside of my car this time. While I did bring a large variety of tools, getting access to the underside of a low sports car can prove to be the biggest issue at times. Now that I can finally get to the underside I find my problem. My alternator bolt is gone. Just a large hole where a bolt should have been. I’m baffled at how the bolt is just missing, however there is no one I can blame. After All I’m the only one who even works on my car in the first place. So with no extra hardware, something I didn’t think to bring, I opted for the most common solution a 240sx owner uses: zip ties.
This slope made it night and day difference in how easy it was to repair the car.
As you can see I really enjoy doing this.
One zip tied alternator coming right up.
With three zip ties now holding the alternator to the car, I go and re-tension the belt for the final time.
With my car temporarily repaired, we both go about packing and head towards Denver for lunch. Looking at our maps we settle on highway 67 that winds through Pike National Forest. I would not want to drive through this area during a heavy rain, the side of the road has frequent warnings to climb to high ground in the event a flash flood occurs. The road runs right along a river with cliff sides on both sides of you. Thankfully the sky was blue and there were no clouds threatening to rain on the journey. That wasn’t the only issue with the highway, for about 15 miles it turns to dirt with one section having a 15% grade. I was quite surprised just how steep of a climb that proved to be as I had yet to encounter anything more than 10% so far.
Driving along the paved part of highway 67
Once off highway 67 there wasn’t much excitement, although Denver traffic can haul some serious butt through the city. Despite the speed limit being posted at 65, the flow of traffic was closer to 85. I personally did not mind, as driving in Austin, Texas people are more concerned with updating their facebook than actually driving. I found the change of pace refreshing.
We finally made it to Denver and stopped at Queen of Sheba Ethiopian in Denver for lunch. A little hole in the wall and the three unit strip center looks like it was built in 1980 and never got a refresh once and it could use a fresh coat of paint. Once inside it was a quaint joint with various types of decorations, I noticed there were framed newspaper articles above the kitchen entrance as well. While we were there it appeared the entire restaurant was ran by the lady who owned the joint. She was super nice and was the cook, waiter, and busser. From what I could gather from those newspaper article the owner had been running this restaurant for quite some time. Given that it was my first time here I opted to try one of the sampler plates with various types of meats. The wait wasn’t bad as we were oddly the only ones in there for lunch. Once our food came out my tastebuds were thoroughly impressed. With Ethiopian food you eat with a type of bread as your utensils no fork and knives here. Overall the food was absolutely amazing with all the difference flavors and spices used in the dish. I truly wish this place was down the street from my house, not a 17 hour drive one way.
With my tastebuds happy with a good meal and my stomach far too full we left the restaurant and I popped over to ACE hardware to grab a bolt to properly fix my alternator. The nice thing after working on your car for so long is that you eventually start to learn what size bolts are used for parts. I grabbed an assortment that felt adequate although in the end I never got a chance to install them, and the zip ties held the alternator on for the next 1,500 miles of my trip.
From Denver we headed westward towards Este Park which sits at the entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park. The Drive did not disappoint as it wandered along the mountain range and was a really beautiful drive, the like majority of the mountain roads that I had drive so far.
The road heading towards Estes Park.
Once we arrived in Este Park we spent the remainder of our day trying to find a camping spot. So far it seemed that only the San Juan mountain range provided the easiest to find spots for dispersed camping and that luxury had ran out the minute I left that mountain range. We first visited the information center, but didn’t have much luck there. I called around to park ranger stations looking for help. The park ranger who helped me had some serious patience. Probably a combination from the altitude and driving I didn’t realize that while you can set up camp where you please in National Forest areas, National Parks are much more controlled and do not allow dispersed camping. It sadly took me far too long to understand that. With not much luck we headed towards the entrance of the park, only to find it was $20 per car to enter plus a daily fee for a campsite. We opted to pass on that however I talked to the booth attendant who gave some options that were near by. With that information we turned around and headed towards Allenspark just south of Estes Park. It turned into another evening of hunt for a campground and driving down various dirt roads. We eventually lucked out and found a good area near a trailhead, that just happen to be the dead end of the road.
A curious mule deer.
With our camping spot now set up we went about eating dinner and went to bed shortly after.