Camping

2016 Highland Ridge UT2710RL

New Trailer

Camping / By / / , , / 2 minutes of reading

We have still had our 27″ Gulfstream fifth-wheel up in Buena Vista, CO, at the Snowy Peaks RV park, which has its own storage lot. Since I don’t have a pickup truck to move the fifth-wheel, the RV park moves the trailer for us when we go up for the weekend. It’s been very convenient, and less expensive than paying higher storage rates in Denver, and burning up the fuel to haul it up into the mountains. We discovered an unintended consequence of replacing the Jetta with the Touareg is that it has a 7,000lb. towing capacity! I had not imagined that an SUV that size would be able to tow that much. This got us thinking that if we replaced the fifth-wheel with a conventional travel trailer that we could tow with the Touareg we could travel and camp again. After exploring some options online, we started checking out some options at local dealers. We wanted to go to Camping World in Fountain, and stopped at a few places in Colorado Springs as well. One of the first places that we stopped was Pikes Peak Travelland, where we saw the 2016 Highland Ridge UT2710RL Ultra Lite. Surprisingly, despite being 27′ was only about 5,500lb. empty weight, well within the towing capacity of the Touareg even when loaded. This seemed to suit our needs, was well laid out, and nicely finished. I especially liked the recliners at the back of the trailer, which are incredibly comfortable. We looked at a few […]

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Outdoors

Camping / By / / 5 minutes of reading

Off-roading I used to go off-roading in my GMC Sierra pickup truck, although I turned it in at the end of the lease… I had a 2005 Sierra SLT Crew Cab Long Bed with the 6.6L Duramax Turbo Diesel and Allison 5-speed heavy-duty automatic transmission, but I haven’t taken many pictures of it… It looked almost like the one below from the GMC brochure, although the one below is only a short bed. Camping We all enjoyed camping in the mountains in our Gulfstream Conquest fifth-wheel trailer. Since we didn’t have a truck for a while, we had the trailer stored at the Snowy Peaks RV Park in Buena Vista. They have a neat setup where they store the trailer on site, then they would move and setup the trailer for us when we come up to camp. I know, many people will scoff, and say that this isn’t camping! After many years of camping in a tent, we came to the conclusion that camping is about what you do while you’re away, not about sleeping on the ground! We enjoy hiking, and sightseeing, taking pictures of wildlife and wild flowers, etc… We decided that it wasn’t necessary to sleep on the ground to do those things… Even though we “camp” in the comfort of our trailer, we still preferred to stay in “primitive” campgrounds in the Arapahoe and Roosevelt National Forests, and other remote areas in the Colorado Rockies. We had the trailer at the Glen Echo Resort in

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Rustic Wildfire

Camping, Photography / By / / , , , / 1 minute of reading

This weekend while camping in the Poudre Canyon, near Rustic, Colorado, we were able to witness a wildfire from start to finish! A lightning strike started a wildfire just across the Poudre River from our campsite on Saturday morning, 20 May 2006. We confirmed that the fire had already been called in to officials. Throughout the day, we were able to see the fire spread, and saw several “slurry drops” from a small plane. The local volunteer fire department and the Forest Service moved in several crews, and had a “line” below the fire before nightfall. While we were able to see the glow of the fire during the night, the firefighters must have been hard at work, because by daybreak on Sunday there was very little sign of smoke or fire. Click here for more pictures…

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