Differing from our usual travel day technique, we started the day by dining with our friend, Claude, that we knew in San Diego before he had to move away some five years ago to find work in this part of the world. We contacted him by phone a couple days ago and he returned our call last night. He had some business close to our camping spot and agreed to meet us for breakfast this morning.
We met at a place in Loveland called Mimi’s. The restaurant has very attractive furnishings but, unfortunately, they do not seem to have much talent when it comes to making breakfast. The food was nominal and the prices were pretty stiff for ordinary fare. I suggest to other diners that they seek food elsewhere. Nevertheless, we sat down and were able to hobnob with Claude for about 3 hours. He seems like he is getting along okay but, despite being born and raised in the Denver area, he has come to dislike what this place has become; a large metropolitan area with all the conveniences, disappointments, overcrowding and accelerating living costs that seem to pervade all mega-cities.
Peggy and I came through Denver, Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak area back in the late ’70s and the transformation is startling. Traffic is a nightmare. The drivers here seem to enjoy being pricks, butting into traffic where there is insufficient space, running red lights, gabbing on the phone while holding up traffic and generally being shitheads. The sprawl around Denver now seems to extend about 40 miles in all directions and the inconsiderate driving extends right to the end of the housing tracts. We passed through Denver on a Saturday this time but backups, stoppages and uncontrolled swerving by the local drivers made the passage miserable. We got through the middle of the city and the outbound traffic was a bit better than the inbound and after about 35 miles cleared up to a point where we could actually drive near the speed limit.
We pulled off I-25 and turned west on US-24 in Colorado Springs. A couple miles later we turned into Goldfield RV Park where we had a reservation for a three day stay in this locale. After our wonderful experience at Terry Bison Ranch and the all night howling traffic on I-25 adjacent to the park, we thought we had done well making our reservation at a place a couple miles from the hellish noise. We didn’t. Goldfield RV Park is located hard up against US-24 and the traffic noise is extraordinary. Straight-pipe Harleys, semi tractors and folks who seem to think that high volume bass stereo din is spiffy regularly drive the adjacent road, sharing their signature sounds with those of us stupid enough to book ourselves into this cacophony Hades.
Since we left late after our long breakfast, we arrived late here at skinny spot RV land. On the driver’s side of our trailer where the slide-outs extend to give us more living space the clearance to the next RV is less than 2 feet. On the passenger side of the Invader, we do not have sufficient room to extend our awning. The park has cable TV but not the channel lineup that would allow us to watch today’s NASCAR race. The wi-fi is sluggish when it works. I hope the scenery around here is good because the lodgings are a bit noisy and space, one of the true benefits of camping, is non-existent. We will endure but it is highly unlikely we will come back to this park because it is doo-doo.