DAY 10 - Mesa Verde to Ouray- A delightful day

We awakened to another beautiful blue sky and fair weather. Not to jinx our beautitful weather, but now we have had 10 days of blue skies, with only a few clouds. We have only worn jackets going over Tioga Pass. Today we antiicipated needing the jackets, but we went up to over 10,000 feet with just a light shirt on. Ken and Pat were kind enough today to follow Linda and allow us to drive with the group and have some fun. Thanks Ken and Pat.

We left the high desert of Mesa Verde and headed up the mountains, stopping at Durango for about 2 hours. After coffee at Starbucks,  purchased a pretty belt and a lovely scarf. We walked around town and Linda bought an extension cord to plug in her trickle charger each night for her Morganit , since the new genearator is not charging her battery. She now has the first electric Morgan, each night being plugged into her room socket from the parking lot.

We then traveled up the beautiful Colorado mountains, stopping for lunch in Silverton and ending up in Ouray. Southern California Morgan members, Dick and Lois, has us over for a BBQ at their home in Ridgeway  about 11 miles away  It finally was a  fun day, and Linda made it successfully up the hill. We did have our brake lights go out, but that was solved with a new fuse, installed with borrowed needle nose pliers. 

Tomorrow, off to Leadville, CO.

DAY 9 MESA VERDE

With no travel planned for today, we could ignore Linda’s car and have a grand time, which we did. We started off with an early breakfast at the MV Park Cafeteria. Our tour guide picked us up at 0800 and we went on a very fascinating700 year tour of the Ancestral Puebloans and the sites of the area since 600 AD. We stopped at pit houses, cliff houses, and even completed the 1 hour strenuous Cliff house tour which consisted of climbing down steep pathways and stairs, walking along ledges, climbing up ladders and back up the hill. Being thoroughly exhausted afterwards, we grabbed a bite of lunch, headed to our room for a siesta. A visit to the Museum, dinner with Linda and Bob, and back to our rooms to back for tomorrow and early to bed. It was another beautiful weather day.

DAY 8 Page to Mesa Verde- Day 2 from Hell

The day started with ferrying Philip to A and J Automotive at 0800 to get started on fixing Linda’s Morgan. The fuel pump was replaced and the generator found to be not working as well as the voltage regulator. These were all replaced and the Morgan started up about 11 AM. I had a bit of time to take a package of ‘things not being used” to the post office to mail home, do a load of laundry, pick u[ a long sleeved shirt for Kathy who didn’t bring one and allegedly George wouldn’t stop for her to get one . Alan had stayed behind to provide support for us. About 11 AM and several hundred of Linda’s dollars later, we headed out on another beautiful day, and 8 miles later, Daseymay lost all power again. Fortunately we were within cell reach of Page so called back to A&J and they sent a tow truck another 2 hours later. We picked up some lunch on the way back to the shop. The mechanic tested lots of things and basically there was no power getting to the dash. He reported the wiring mess to the dashboard and indicated it would take hours for him to sort it out. So he created a toggle hot wire switch for Linda to bypass the ignition switch (don’t ask me, I don’t understand). He was concerned the lights wouldn’t work, but initial testing showed they MAY work. He also didn’t think this fix would take the car another 4500miles. About 4 PM we again headed off to Mesa Verde. When it got dark, the lights didn’t work, so we had Linda and her Morgan between our cars, and managed to make it to Mesa Verde about 11 PM with her having no lights, and the 25 miles into MV from Cortez being on dirt road undergoing construction in the very dark night. She turned off the car, checked in, and her car wouldn’t start to take her to her room. So she left it at reception, only to have her camera stolen which she had forgotten to take out in the dark. We ferried her belongings to her room and finally got to bed about 11 PM. Not a fun day.