After leaving Aspen, we drove over Independence Pass where there was still snow and made our way down the mountain to Leadville, CO. This is a small mountain town at 10,152 feet is the highest incorporated city in the USA. The historic downtown area is super cute with lots of coffee shops, restaurants, and bike outfitters. The downtown has a distinctive rugged outdoorsy vibe and is filled with Jeeps and adventure vehicles in every size, shape and price-range. This is not one of the elegant and refined mountain towns in Colorado, but we think it would proud to be called its gritty, hippy sister.

By coincidence, we were in Leadville during the time the Tiger Rally was occurring. “Tigers” are 4×4 off-road RVs which have almost a cult-like following and we previously owned a Tiger named Homer.  Ever since we sold Homer, we have missed the convenience of travel in this type of vehicle and when we heard the Tiger rally was going to be in Leadville we asked to attend as “Tiger enthusiasts” and we were welcomed with open arms. There was 40+ Tiger’s at the rally, including our own Homer! Our friends, John and Mimi, who now own Homer were kind enough to let us tour him. I was a bit teary-eyed as I walked away remembering the great times we had and all of the memories we made during our travels in that vehicle. The rally was a great place to re-connect with old friends but also make some new ones. The Tiger community is a cool group of diverse individuals, and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of this group again.

From Leadville, we travelled to Vail, CO. We have been to Vail previously, but we wanted to spend some more time really exploring the area. Unfortunately, Vail did not turn out to be our favorite place and our memories were slightly rose-colored. Maybe it was because the heat wave had descended upon this part of the country and we are living in a tin can without air conditioning, but it seemed more than that. I do LOVE the Betty Ford Alpine Garden and this was the highlight of Vail for me. We did enjoy that Vail Village is pedestrian only and they have a great free bus system but overall Vail was a disappointment to the both of us. Vail is not a place we would rush to come back to. Why you ask? Vail is like being at an upscale luxury outdoor mall. Everything in Vail is groomed to within an inch of its life, all of the architecture is carefully managed for overly strict uniformity and the shops are mostly national brand stores and timeshare condos. In addition, many of the shops were closed down or vacant and the streets were almost empty of people. We could find no vegan food options at any of the restaurants.  We went to pick up a few groceries at their local downtown Vail market but left empty-handed after seeing the completely outrageous prices (think: $3.99 for a LaraBar which normally costs $1.59). To put it in a nutshell, Vail felt completely void of any energy or passion. It feels like people are just there to be “seen” and show off their wealth and social status, but there is no substance behind the pretty veneer.

Luckily, Frisco and Dillon were not far from Vail and we pivoted from our scheduled itinerary and spent more time there instead. The Dillon reservoir was quite lovely and we had the chance to do both a morning and sunset paddle launching our kayak from our campsite. We have not had our inflatable kayak out in several years but luckily we remembered how to properly inflate it and there were no leaks. Tony did several bike rides around the reservoir and Tofu had their first oil change at a local Ford dealership.

After a few days, we drove the short distance to Breckenridge, CO. Neither of us had ever been to this mountain town before and we both had low expectations after Vail. Immediately, we knew Breckenridge was more our type of place. The historic downtown is full of restaurants (with vegan options!), unique boutiques, cannabis shops and outdoor outfitters. The shops appeared to be mostly small businesses and each one had its own unique character and were located in old houses. There were fancy people but also people with multi-colored hair, tattoos and Birkenstocks. There were even some others with socks and sandals. Overall, we found Breckenridge to be vibrant and bustling with both people and energy.  It just felt alive. We took the free gondola and enjoyed the ride to the top although the activities at the upper village were mostly geared around kids (alpine slides, etc.) and not a place we would spend much time in the future, but we really enjoyed the actual gondola ride. We were able to stealth camp in Breckenridge right near the downtown area and nobody bothered us or seemed to care. Overall, Breckenridge has 2 thumbs up from us.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have not eaten at a restaurant (either take-out or in-person) since March 2020. All of that changed in Breckenridge as we got take-out (baby-steps!) from a local plant-based pizza place for the first time in 15 months. While we enjoyed the experience, we decided we physically feel better eating food we cook ourselves and that we know all the ingredients. This is not to say we will never eat out again, but the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us how cooking at home, mostly from scratch, with organic and largely local ingredients (many from our own pandemic garden) is how we feel best.

The weather started to finally turn cooler after the heat wave passed and we got some of the cool but sunny Colorado summer days we had been dreaming of. Although we had a gasoline Webasto heater installed in the van before we left, we have yet to use it on this trip. Our comforter has been keeping us warm even when the temperatures dip into the 40’s at night although taking that first step out of bed each morning onto the icy floor does take a bit of mental willpower.

Overall, the van has been performing well with a couple of exceptions. First, we started to hear an occasional squeak from the front passenger strut, this turned into a frequent squeak and has now further progressed into a constant squeak. The long-story is we splurged and had a professional van upfitter, who claimed to specialize in suspensions, upgrade our suspension in May, 2021. We had all kinds of problems with their installation of both the front struts and rear-shocks but we thought we were finally in the clear until we started hearing that annoying squeak halfway through this road trip. After a bit of research and talking with a different van upfitter, we learned the upgraded struts are not recommended for our van due to some geometry changes between the RWD and the new 2020 AWD, which is the vehicle we have. We did not feel there are any immediate safety concerns so we decided to continue this road trip albeit with the radio volume turned up a bit louder so we didn’t have to listen to the constant squeaking. We have factory Ford struts ordered and an appointment scheduled with a local (and reputable) off-road shop back home to remove the after-market struts and replace them with original Ford struts. It has been an expensive (and frustrating) lesson of “Don’t fix things that aren’t already broke”.

The electrical system has been working great and we have been relying solely on alternator charging of the leisure lithium battery and it has been working remarkedly well. I can’t tell you the number of times that we look at each other and this van and say “We did this”. The van is far from perfect, but it really is perfect for us. We chose to install only a single 100 amp hour lithium battery but realized during this trip when the temperatures are hot outside and the refrigerator (which is our biggest power consumer) has to work really hard to keep the ice cubes frozen it uses quite a bit of our battery storage each day. We ordered an additional Battleborn lithium battery and it should be waiting for our installation when we get home. Luckily, we planned ahead and left space for it in our electrical cabinet so it should be a fairly simple upgrade.  

Next up, we push south and west on our final week of this road trip with stops in Black Canyon at Gunnison National Park, a return to Devil’s Thumb Golf course in Delta, CO, Telluride (super excited about this place!) and Durango.