Season's First Trip Washed Out!

[MarkoPolo]

We were set to take our TM out for the first time to Crow Valley campground near Pawnee Buttes in northeastern Colorado today for our "shakedown" trip to get everything set for longer trips this summer. Got an e-mail last night that the recent rains and overflow from a Wyoming reservoir have flooded the campground and the people there had to be pulled out by farm tractors! Campground closed until at least the first of June.
So, I guess we will definitely be doing "Camp Driveway" to get things ready and it does give me a chance to get Bill's excellent screen door installed.
A little disappointed, but would much rather learn of this before we got stuck in the mud out in BFE.:D

[Bill]

Mark -

As it turns out, you were lucky. The same storm caught us. Since you are from Greeley, you know about St. Vrain State Park. For those who don’t, it is a 750 acre park, with several small lakes, and almost 100 well-maintained, well-separated, full hookup campsites on the shores of the lakes. We’ve stayed there several times in the past, and were based there for 6 nights in early May while we visited family and friends in the area. The only bummer was the days and days of unending rain.

To make a long story short, at 1AM on the third night, the park was suddenly lit up by half a dozen police SUVs with strobe lights, sirens, and bullhorns. Rangers went running from campsite to campsite, banging on doors, and explaining that the park was under a mandatory flood evacuation order, and we had 15 minutes to get out. The folks in the big diesel motor homes simply pulled their utility connections, threw them in their basements, and were gone in 5 minutes. I’ll admit that in the TM, our exit wasn’t quite that fast. But I pulled the utilities while my wife prepared the interior. We closed the camper, hooked up to the tow vehicle, and were out of there in 10 minutes. Not bad, huh?

Most of the campers simply headed down to the local WalMart and lined up in the parking lot. But we weren’t set up for dry camping, and it was a cold night, so we had to find a hotel. You can imagine my annoyance when the 800-number reservation agent for Best Western wouldn’t tell us if they had a room available in either of their local sites until she had slowly explained the advantages of their Membership Club and taken all our information to sign us up! Finally, by 2AM, we crashed into bed, exhausted, wet, annoyed, but grateful to get back to sleep.

This happened on May 8, and the park just now reopened. So Mark, if you got advance warning of he storm system and stayed home, you were indeed lucky.

Bill

[MarkoPolo]

Bill,
I am so glad you are safe and made it Maine OK. Gosh, If I had but known, you could have come to Greeley, set up in our back yard (our Trailmanors could admire each other), not paid for a hotel and best of all, you could have helped me install my new screeen door:D. Seriously, we are less than 30 minutes away and would have been glad to help.