After Tofu (the van) spent 2+ months at the Ford dealership in a final attempt to isolate and fix the horrible noise coming from the front suspension, the van is now (hopefully) fixed🤞. They replaced the struts, mounts, isolators and the front axle. They thought they were done and did a final look over and found 4 of the 5 bolts holding the front passenger wheel in place had been sheared off. This could have been a catastrophic accident at highway speeds. Not sure how this happened, but likely one of the many dealerships across the West Coast that have tried and failed to fix the horrible noise problem in said suspension system.

Our plan was to drive to Denver and spend a week in the ADU which we signed a year lease for last Fall. The weather was already turning a bit warm in Arizona and we wanted to experience a little bit of true winter. We packed up Tofu and headed out but only made it about 2 miles from our house when we noticed the dashboard was aglow with warning lights. After a failed attempt at turning it off and then on again, we arrived at yet another Ford dealership. It took the technician 30 seconds to diagnose our problem – packrats had eaten wiring and damaged our nox sensor. This is not an easy or cheap repair as it involves removing the whole intake and not something they could do quickly. In an effort to salvage our Denver trip, we packed as much as we could into our trusty 7-year-old Prius called Stormy, dropped off Tofu at the dealership for the repair work and made the journey to Denver.

We arrived just prior to a cold front and snow storm which kept us inside for the first 2 days. After that, the sun came out and melted the snow and the temperatures have continued to climb into the 50’s and 60’s. We love our place in Denver as it is a brand-new backyard ADU in a lovely walkable area of downtown Denver. We can walk to Sprouts, Natural Grocer, our favorite vegan restaurant, bars, boutiques, and cafes. It is lovely to just leave the car and explore on foot or bike. Also, our landlord, who lives in the front house, now has a 5 month old Pomsky puppy!

Once the weather warmed, we hiked Dinosaur Ridge except the last ¼ mile which was like a luge track. We absentmindedly forgot our microspikes at the house and didn’t want to risk a broken leg or testing our out-of-state health insurance emergency coverage. The trail itself was lovely with 100-million-year-old crocodile and dinosaur tracks embedded in the rock.

Next up was a day trip to Golden, CO. We spent several weeks there last summer and have come to enjoy the laid back and friendly vibe in this small mountain town. Only a 25-minute drive from our house, we packed up a cooler with a picnic lunch, our foldable Brompton bikes, microspikes and trusty hiking poles for a day of adventuring. We explored the Clear Creek Bike path, downtown Golden and some of the residential areas. The pathway is still under construction but will one day be 70 miles of paved pathway from the South Platte Trail in Denver to the headwaters of Clear Creek at Loveland Pass. We can’t wait. The end of our day involved donning our microspikes to hike the Cedar Gulch Trail. Epic views of the city of Golden along with peekaboo views of downtown Denver made this a lovely hike. We saw about a dozen people and happily each with a friendly dog. We returned home for a dinner of black bean burgers, Japanese Sweet Potato oven fries and edamame. One of our favorite meals.

Rocky Mountain National Park is only a 1.5-hour drive north and neither of us have ever been there in the winter. The park was empty in comparison to the massive crowds during the summer and time-restricted entry doesn’t begin until May. We waited less than 5 minutes at the gate to enter and we were treated to spectacular views of the snow-capped mountains against a bright blue and sun-filled sky. The weather was perfect with temperatures in the low 50’s. After a repeat of our picnic lunch the day before, we took the last parking space at the Glacier Gorge trailhead. Although the temperatures were lovely, it was quite windy so we wore snow pants, puffy coats, hats and gloves. The trail was 99% snow-packed and could be a bit icy in places, but completely manageable with microspikes and hiking poles. The air was crisp and clean, the number of fellow hikers considerably thinned after the first mile and the birds were singing. The hike was SPECTACULAR and has been added to our top 10 favorite hikes list. There were several places it was safer to “butt-sled” than attempt to walk down the icy trail, so we were glad we wore our snow pants. Crunching through the snow while walking between the huge pine trees was only interrupted several times by vistas and lookouts where there was 180 degree views of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains. It was a really beautiful hike. We ended the day, doing a short walk around Bear Lake which was completely frozen over and safe to walk on before returning home via way of Boulder.

Overall, it has been a great week. We love being able to walk everywhere from our little backyard ADU but still are only a short car ride from hiking trailheads and even a National Park.  Tony has already been in contact with several local bicycling clubs and we are looking to do some volunteer work at a local dog shelter, too. Our plan is to return to Denver in May and use it as our summer homebase while we explore some of the mountain towns we love (Aspen, Breckenridge, Telluride, etc.) and as a jumping off point for our 6-week road trip to Maine, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island along with visits to friends and family along the way. We head home to Arizona in a few days and look forward to enjoying the last vestiges of cooler weather. Vibrating and ultrasonic packrat devices along with high intensity rope lights await us at home in attempt to ward off those pesky packrats from attacking poor Tofu again.

Update: Suspension has been fixed but those pesky packrats got Tofu a 2nd time just 2 weeks after the 1st repair. Another $1000+ repair to the exact same harness. We are moving Tofu to the expensive vaket indoor storage facility where she will rub elbows (bumpers) with the fancy Prevosts and not be subjected to hungry packrats.