Colorado Side Trip

LC at hotel in Price, Utah

   We are in Petaluma, CA, for the moment, back from a 5-day side trip to Colorado. The purpose of the trip? To get an ’85 Land Cruiser there. See, Annie has had the LC in CA since she moved here, but hasn’t driven it for 3 years because it doesn’t meet state smog regulations. It was time to do something with this vehicle. Selling it in CA without smog upgrades was not an option and Michael’s attempts to hire a company to transport it cross-country failed, so…. Because it runs well, it’s “built like a tank, and it’s too good to scrap out,” the idea formed to drive it to Michigan where it can get the tender loving care it needs before being resold (or not.)  Our side trip was Stage 1 of its eventual arrival at our Maple City driveway.

   Eagle CO is near Vail, and Phillip and Allison Shapton live there. They graciously agreed to make room for the Land Cruiser at their place (it does work well in all that snow) until we figure out Stage 2 of the Land Cruiser’s Return to Michigan. It may provide one-way transportation home for Phillip’s parents, Don & Judy, our good friends, when they visit their new grandchild in Eagle in April, OR it may mean Michael will make another trip to Eagle in the spring. One way or the other, the LC will find its way to northern Michigan.

   We took 3 days to drive to Eagle – we left Petaluma last Friday the 10^th, drove north past Sacramento, across Donner Pass, through Nevada and Utah, into Colorado and arrived at Phillip and Allison’s Sunday afternoon, just in time to accompany them to the local sports bar to watch the 2^nd half of the Denver Broncos game. (Go Broncos! Yay for Allison!) We spent the night at their house, and then the next morning, after P&A had gone to work, we drove the Land Cruiser the 35 miles down Glenwood Canyon to Glenwood Springs. The California Zephyr Amtak train would take us back to CA. (Phillip and Allison were able to pick up the Land Cruiser later in the evening and drive it back to their house.)

Glenwood Springs station      

   The train ride from Glenwood Springs to Martinez, CA, took 25 hours. Martinez is only 20 miles from Vallejo where Annie works, so she was able to pick us up when we arrived there at about 3:15 Tuesday afternoon, the 14^th. The Zephyr ride was pleasant. It’s an easy pace, a nice way to see the country, if you have the time – sitting in the observation car watching the sunset over western Colorado, and then the sunrise over Nevada the next morning, with a little sleep in our coach car seats in between. We read a lot, met some people, drank coffee from the snack bar, and ate dinner in the dining car. The train tracks follow the same route we’d driven in the Land Cruiser, so we got to see everything in reverse from a different perspective.

    

   Today (Thursday, 16^th) is the day we plan to pick up the Pickle and get back on the road. Yesterday Michael drove the Volvo to Fremont to check out the newly repaired transmission on the GMC. He also had to take a load of “stuff” (bikes mostly) to load onto the Pickle, so we can take the rest of our things plus Nina today. Was his GMC test drive successful yesterday?? Well, yes, since now the distributor has been repaired after the engine died between the 680 and the 880 near San Jose. Certainly that was the last thing to malfunction and the Pickle will be road worthy once again. (Keep the faith, baby!)

   It will be hard to say good-bye to Annie. We’ve been mostly with her now for the past month and a half, either here or in Michigan!!  I’m sure, though, she’ll be happy to get back to a less crowded house and her usual routines, and for us, well, we’re kind of anxious to get back into that driving-around-looking-for-a-campsite-seeing-the-sites-on-the-road –state-of-mind. Arizona here we come!