Blog

Midwest prairies

After a breakfast together and a farewell to Paul’s cousins, we headed out to the fairgrounds to dump the waste tanks in the trailer and head west. We’re travelling secondary roads today – no interstate and travelling through lots of small towns.

It looks like we’re in for cool mornings but hot, sunny days. Today is forecast for highs around 32 or 33 degrees C. but where we are stopping for the night looks like a low of 12C.

We passed through lots of farming today. Much of the corn has dried up. They also grow a grain called sorghum, often used for livestock feed but is a food grain in Asia and Africa. We also passed a number of cattle factory farms – thousands of cattle’s in pens with lots of dirt and no shade!

Tuesday night’s campground was at John Martin Reservoir State Park. There are 2 camping areas and we chose the lake area because there are quite a few trees and the temps are still up. Not only are there trees, but also electric hookups which means we can run the air conditioning.

Site 69

The park was nearly empty and very quiet.

Wednesday’s driving was much the same with less winds but still hot and clear skies. We’ve seen a bit of different agriculture with a few farmers’ markets. We also saw our first foothills in the distance.

Lots of scrub farmland west of Pueblo looking towards the foothills.

Our campground destination for tonight is at an elevation of 7500’ with minimal trees. However the low is to be 5 C so the lack of AC shouldn’t be a problem.

After making lunch in Pueblo, our landscape started to change. We started to see more rocks and even a few cacti. We entered the Arkansas River Recreation Area and eventually made it to the foothills and then followed the river for quite some time.

West of Pueblo
Arkansas River

Busy River for rafting.

the trip today has been slower. Between some hills to come up and down and quite a bit of construction, it’s turned into a slower day. It’s now looking like we won’t get into our campground before 5 pm. Our aim is for a place west of Gunnison called Elk Creek. It’s in the National Recreation Area. Cell signal is questionable so I’m posting this now. We hope to spend 2 nights here.

What a trip!

Well, it’s been a great 7 weeks! Certainly very busy but so much to be thankful for. We’ve had incredible weather, hardly any rain and when it did come, it didn’t cause us any changes to our plans. We did have some warm days of low 30s C, but not enough to be uncomfortable. Most nights it cooled nicely for sleeping; some nights were actually too cold, but the furnace warmed the trailer (and us} up! Our drive home across S. Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan has gone well, although long. N, Dakota was the land of all things oil and gas! What an industry! Minnesota certainly is full of lakes. We had a very short drive through Wisconsin. We did stay 2 nights at a Corps of Engineers park near Deer River in Minnesota for a break from driving. It was beautiful and a chance to relax before getting back on the road! I think it’s a definite one to be on the list to return to if we are travelling highway 2 again.

The leaves were just starting to show a hint of colour in Minnesota.

Once we got into the western edge of northern Michigan we were treated to some beautiful fall colours. By next week they should be at peak.

Last night (Thursday) was a later night. We pulled into a small community park in Michigan just after 6:30 but we were only a few miles from the time change point so by the time we were parked it was getting dark. We had the whole place to ourselves – about 10 campsites along a stream.

We awoke to fog that had mostly dissipated by the time we were on the road, but it did appear again as we wound along the shore of Lake Michigan and then was fairly thick as we crossed over the Mackinac Bridge.

Tonight’s destination is on private property at a Boondockers Welcome host. They have a 100 acre bush where they have established a couple of sites. We plan to spend two nights there before we drive the last day of our trip to arrive back home.