Ouray, CO is on my short list to visit in the RV. I go through there about once a winter on my way to ski at Telluride and Silverton, and the hot springs look inviting. However, I'd probably scare my wife to pieces on the Million Dollar Highway just south of Ouray. Those passes are a real grunt-fest for an RV too, going up past 11,000 ft at the top.

 

I didn't drive the RV on the Million Dollar Highway, we came into Ouray from the north and left the same way, never even getting as far south as the actual town with the RV. We left it at the campground and drove the Bronco until we headed back north again. The tight turns wouldn't be fun in an RV. People do it, and I know I could. But it wouldn't be my first choice! Power-wise though I don't think my RV would have too much trouble. It sure handled 11,312' Monarch Pass well.

I'd certainly recommend Ouray as a destination, but do a little scouting for a campground. A lot of the campgrounds around there are just big parking lots. They work, and if you're there to hang out with a bunch of friends they could be a good choice. But if you're looking for something that seems like you're camping in Colorado they might not be what you were hoping for.

I also saw a couple RVs parked and leveled on a wide spot in the shoulder. I don't know if you could get in trouble for that, but apparently some people see it as an option.

 

The final trip last year was again just my wife and I, this time driving down to Walt Disney World. Again we just brought bikes rather than messing with the Bronco.

One thing that made this trip a little more of an experience was that the temperature in Minnesota dropped below freezing a couple days before we left. Rather than winterize it and then refill it I just started the furnace to keep it from freezing up inside.

Then when we hit the road (temps still around 30) we found that although the inside stays at a pretty nice temperature when driving across South Dakota on a sunny day in the 90s, not so much through Wisconsin at night in the 30s! We weren't running the furnace, which I'm sure would've helped. And the van heater certainly kept us warm enough in the front seats. But we kept getting cold drafts against the back of our heads. Oh well, at least we were headed away from that weather!

Both nights on the way down were a little chilly. Again we could've turned the furnace up, but without being plugged in I wasn't sure if the coach battery would last all night. The van battery is isolated from the coach, so we wouldn't have had any trouble getting it started in the morning. And we could've run the generator too if we really needed to. But we decided to set the thermostat as low as it would go to make sure nothing froze, but still not use up too much battery. We were warm enough under the covers like that and I turned the furnace up when we got up.

Again it was nice to be able to take our time going down and not worry about finding a hotel when I was getting tired.

We stayed on Disney property at their Fort Wilderness Campground. Not the cheapest place to camp (and hard to get reservations!). But my wife is a self-admitted Disney freak, so it was the only option for us!

We didn't give ourselves enough time to take it so easy on the drive home. The motorhome drives well enough that it wasn't too much worse than a long drive in a car. But I suppose I'll blame the fatigue for the "oops" I had in a parking lot, cutting a corner too tight and crunching the side (right by the coach door) against a rock. Damage wasn't too bad (the door still functions fine and seals well). But it hurt none the less.

Temperatures at home were a little warmer by the end of our trip, so we didn't need to worry about anything freezing and I was able to drain the water a day or two after we got home rather than needing to rush.

We have tons of pictures from the trip, but none of the motorhome. The best I can do is a couple from the campground. It was October and Disney people get kind of crazy about decorating for Halloween! (these are just how random people decorated their own campsites) Of course now my wife wants to go see how it's decorated at Christmas time!

 

I'm headed to Disneyworld in a couple of months, mainly to see the Avatar-related stuff. Not in my RV, however.

Sounds like you are already doing what I'm hoping to do in about 6 years - retire and travel in the RV a lot!

 

I'm still 10 - 15 years away from retiring, but I've worked for the same company just about forever (closing on 32 years) so although I don't have the free time of a retiree, I do have quite a bit of vacation time. And my kids are out of the house now and I'm done with Boy Scouts (I was Scoutmaster of our Troop for several years) and the house is paid off. I'm sure I'll have more time to travel when I'm retired, but right now we have a fair amount of time, and we're starting to be able to afford to do a little more as well. So we're sort of easing into retirement!

And unfortunately (or is it fortunately?) in addition to the RV trips we've also discovered cruising. The way things are working out this year we're going on two cruises (wouldn't plan to do two that close together, but my parents are taking us on one of them, and who says "no" to that?), so the RV won't get much use this year. But it's looking like we'll still get one week-long trip and a long weekend or two.

And for what it's worth, I highly recommend camping at Walt Disney World. We did it three times when the kids were young, and now once as empty-nesters. With kids it was a (relatively) inexpensive way to do Disney. Driving down was cheaper than flying, camping on Disney property with a pop-up trailer was cheaper than getting a hotel (even off Disney property), we ate breakfast and dinner at the campground (much cheaper than restaurants), and our little kids handled the trip much better when they could play in the dirt at the campground and then splash in the pool before dinner and then heading back to a park for the evening.

And now as empty-nesters it's nice to be able to take things at a slower pace too.

 

I guess I'm overdue for an update here. We only ended up taking the motorhome on one trip this year. We had plans for a couple of weekend trips, but life got in the way. But we still were able to go on the bigger trip we'd planned. My wife and I have both wanted to see the Grand Canyon, and Moab Utah has been on my 'wheeling list for quite a while. So in September we drove to both.

One thing we did differently on this trip was avoid all restaurants. We ate all meals in the motorhome. On the road that usually meant stopping at a rest stop (or at least a wide spot on the shoulder when we were on 2-lanes) and fire up the generator to use the microwave to heat up a hot dish (that's "casserole" to those of you who aren't from Minnesota). It helped keep costs down and was kind of fun!

The Grand Canyon was certainly cool to see, and we're glad we went. But Moab was the highlight! Not only was the fourwheeling on "slickrock" amazing (it was slick for the iron-shoed horses of the pioneers that named it, but gives great traction to rubber tires), but the terrain was amazing, in an other-worldly sort of way.

The motorhome had no trouble with any of the roads we encountered. We maybe pushed a little harder and only averaged 7.5 mpg, but still not bad for what we're able to bring.

Here is a rest stop in Colorado on the drive out.


This guy strolled through our camp site while we were at the Grand Canyon:


Here's a picture of the Canyon:


And here's one trail picture from Moab:

 

There was a little bit of maintenance needed after the trip, as well as finishing up a project. On the trip the slide wouldn't go out without me pushing hard on one end of it. We took it to a dealer after we were home and it was a cheap bill for them to re-synch the slide motors.

Also the generator was surging a lot. You're supposed to run it something like an hour every month to keep the carb clean to prevent that, and I wasn't doing that. So this fall I ran it on a mix of a little gas and a a lot of Sea Foam (about 4 parts gas / 1 part Sea Foam) and it seems to be clearing up pretty well.

The project I finished was the battery isolator relay I installed last year. This year I added an oil pressure switch so in the normal "on" position it switches off when the engine stops running, but comes back on once it's started again. This keeps the batteries isolated when parked so the camper won't draw down the van battery, but automatically connects them to let the van recharge the camper battery when it's running. I can still turn it off completely, or turn it on with the engine off (for jump-starting the van from the camper battery, or recharging the van battery when the camper is plugged in).

So nothing major. And that's a good thing, because the Bronco is supposed to be my project vehicle!

 

Well glad to see you are enjoying the rv. As to the trans and engine, look at the Mikes 5star tuner for the rig. Does help to control the engine and lets you do a little more. Right now I am looking at the update for the throttle. It appears to hook up in between the pedal and the oem harness and give more throttle control. One is from hyper tech, the other from (forget name now).Hypertech
102300 is the Tow version which would likely be the better option

for gen storage I put stabil in at the last fuel stop prior to home. Its good for up to 6 months at a time which is about how long I store at a time. I also run the gen on way to circulate the fuel/stabil combo prior to parking. When parked run the gen at 50% load for 1-2 hrs to keep it ready. Do you have the electric heater on the rig? We have both elec and propane with the electric requiring either the gen or a 30 amp supply to run. Works well and can be added on. Sea foam is added prior to any trip to clean up things. The hot springs in ouray are nice and cheap to get into to. We stopped there on a motorcycle trip some years back have been back a couple of times. Other good ones are in Utah at Honeyville. they have rv park as part of complex.

Have fun.

 

I have always stored it with Sta-Bil and was hoping that would take care of it. But evidently not. So I put a "T" in the fuel line to the generator so I can either run from the main tank or from a gas can. That's how I'm running it on the gas / Sea Foam mix. While I was tryting to get it to start to improve I was running it on the Sea Foam mix for about a half hour a couple times a week. I do not have electric heat in the RV, so I'm plugging a 1500W space heater in while I run it.

Now that it's settled down pretty well I've decided that rather than plug it in for a few hours each month to keep the batteries charged I'll run the generator, still on the Sea Foam, once a month for the rest of the winter. We'll see where I go with it after that.

On the "throttle optimizer", I have a hard time believing something that "controls throttle response" is what I'd be looking for. Better control over shift points is more what I'd want. And with the relatively small amount of time I spend driving this I'm not sure it would be worth it, or that I'd even really be able to figure out how I wanted it set up. So for now I'm not really planning to do anything other than whine a little each time I take it to the mountains

We went to the hot springs the first time we were in Ouray. We had little kids then, and spending an evening in a pool was a good diversion for them. We talked briefly about going there again when we were back there a couple years ago. But we weren't staying right in Ouray this time, and it just never seemed worth the short drive.

 

... and if anyone wants more on the Moab 'wheeling part of the trip, since it didn't involve the motorhome I didn't include much here. But if you click the blue arrow below it will link you to a trip report with more pictures.

 

Not to derail or hijack your great thread but HOW did you create that hyperlink in the post? That's amazing, something I've not seen before.

 

It's so easy anyone can do it. In fact, you just did! When you quote a post it opens up a window for your reply, but with the post you are quoting at the start of your reply. After you post your reply it shows up as a link back to the original post followed by the quote. Before you post the reply you can go into the quote and edit it **. So I just cut out my entire quote other than the parts in brackets at the start and end (which is the code of the bulletin board to show it the way it does) and added the text I wanted. Then rather than post the reply to that thread I copied it and pasted it into a reply on this thread. Simple!

Having said that, that's how I do it on a Windows computer. I'd guess it would be similar on other devices, but I haven't tried it on an Apple product, or a phone or anything.

** But don't use this power of being able to edit the post you're quoting to change what it looks like other's said. That is highly frowned upon!

 

Time for an update. I was running the generator on the gas / Sea Foam mix once a month like I'd planned. It was still surging a little, but seemed tolerable. But then it died one day with the indicator light flashing the "engine needs service" code. We had a trip coming up in February (this was in January) so I decided to take it in rather than try to fight with it in my front yard in a Minnesota winter! $1300 later it has a new carb and starter as well as a tune-up and it's running great. I'll try to be a lot more religious about running it periodically from now on to avoid too many of those $1300 bills!

The other thing worth noting here was that "taking it in" in the winter (obviously) meant driving it in the winter. It turned out to be a day with a winter storm advisory. Roads were a little slick and there was a STRONG wind out of the west. So as I drove north to the shop I was going about 50 mph on the freeway and had the steering wheel turned about 60 degrees to the left to make it go straight. Normally the wheel is pointed straight ahead, so that was just to compensate for the wind! I'm glad it was just a 25 mile drive. It was stressful enough as it was!

 

So then came the trip we were readying it for. We were going down to Disney World again, this time to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary! With the temperature WELL bellow freezing when we left we didn't even think about unwinterizing the water system for the drive down. We figured we'd just have to do that after we got camp set up.

We left after work on a Thursday and made our first gas stop in Madison Wisconsin some time after dark. When I got out I said "Oh oh, that looks bad!" The sewage pipe was dragging on the ground! The tanks were empty so it wasn't a problem yet, but it didn't seem like it was going to go well if / when we tried to use the tanks! So I laid on the ground at the gas station and tied the pipe up so it wouldn't keep dragging (note to self: on ANY trip bring clothes to wear while working on vehicles, not just the trips with the Bronco that I expect will need work).

We spent the night in a rest stop. We set the thermostat pretty low (about 55, it only goes down to 50). It cycled as needed for about 6 hours, but then wouldn't come on any more. Dead battery. So I used the isolator relay to jump the generator from the van battery and got the furnace going again. But by that time I wasn't going to fall asleep again, so we used the microwave to heat up an egg-bake breakfast and got back on the road. (The generator ran perfectly smoothly for the brief time we used it then, as it did on the rest of the trip. Once we were driving I shut off the generator and let the vans alternator recharge the coach battery.)

After it warmed up a bit I crawled back under to figure out what the damage was. Turned out both the black and gray blade valves had holes worn through, as well as an elbow. And the mounting flanges for the blade valves were also shot, so we needed a bunch of parts. Somewhere in Illinois we saw the huge American flag that signals a Gander RV store, so we stopped. They didn't have all of the specialty parts we needed, but we got a good start. Then in Nashville we passed another big flag and were able to get the rest of the special parts. Home Depot took care of the rest.

We spent Friday night at my brother-in-laws house in Nashville (as we'd planned). Saturday morning we had thought we'd hang out with the relatives a bit, but instead while my wife did that I worked on the plumbing out in the cold driveway (it was actually colder in Nashville that morning than it was back in Minnesota, which was enjoying a February thaw as soon as we left). I got it done and after a shower we were back on the road around noon, pretty much right on schedule. It could've gone a whole lot worse!

The furnace and battery made it through Saturday night (the outside temps were a lot less cold than Thursday night had been) and we made it down to Disney World without any more drama.



The drive home went more according to plan. I winterized the water system before leaving the campground so we wouldn't have to worry when we started seeing sub-freezing temps. That gave us a late start, so we drove pretty hard, trying to stay at the posted 70 mph. Weather-wise it wasn't too bad, but there were strong winds, so it was a little draining. I think after this I'll try to plan to stay about 5 mph below the limit to reduce the stress level (frequent lane changes in a motorhome make the driving more tiring). And I don't know what I should use for an upper limit on daily mileage, but the 750 - 800 miles / day I did here was too much. I can do it if there's a good enough reason to, but saving a day of vacation isn't a good enough reason any more!

We drove back through Nashville on Saturday night and got home on Sunday (the furnace hardly ran that night, outside temps were pretty high, so battery life wasn't an issue). Then on Monday night the tornadoes hit Nashville. My brother-in-laws house didn't get much damage, but there were homes on his block that were gone. Lucky there!


We did only manage 7.4 mpg for the trip, even though we weren't towing or in many mountains (or even hills really). I'm sure the 70 mph didn't help us there, and I suppose winter gas might have been a factor as well (although I'm not sure how much effect that has anymore now that E10 is about all you can find any time of year). Not too many other take-away from this trip. The coach battery isn't getting back to full charge so it will need to be replaced, at least before our next winter trip. But although there's room to mount a second coach battery I don't see the need for it. Otherwise no new projects or service work needed. So it turned out to be a good trip and we're looking forward to hopefully at least three more trips with it this year!

 

Finally another trip in the motor home, but just a short one this time. My wife and I went north in Minnesota to Moose Lake State Park and met some friends there. We brought the dogs on this trip (they usually stay with our son or something when we go on vacation). The two kennels fit (sort of!) between the van seats, which keeps them pretty much out of the way. And Kenzie didn't seem to mind getting into the top bunk!

Maybe it was just that such a short trip (~220 miles round-trip) wasn't long enough for accurate mileage calculations. But I was pretty happy with the 9.2 mpg we got! No wind to speak of, not towing anything and staying under 65 mph, so I'm not surprised it's better than past trips. But it does seem too good to be true.

Here's the camp site, and a pic of the dogs in their bunk beds