Colorado Places and Beauty

[TerryMiller]

Veteran's Day - 2015

We woke up yesterday to find just over an inch of snow on the vehicles. The ground is still just warm enough that the snow had already melted a lot before I took these photos. This will be our second Winter up here.

The wife's sister near Colorado Springs sent us a text message stating that they were getting blowing snow. She lives out east of Colorado Springs, so it is out away from the mountains and on the plains. We are right at the base of a mountain in the RV park where we are.







This snow is no where near what we got last Winter. Looking back through this thread, I had posted several winter pictures in the earlier pages.

 

[Hobbes]

Overall, how was last Winter in an RV?
Were you comfortable in the coldest weather? Use a lot of propane?

Just curious.

 

[TerryMiller]

Overall, how was last Winter in an RV?
Were you comfortable in the coldest weather? Use a lot of propane?

Just curious.

Let me start first with a short description of our RV. It is a Mobile Suites made by DRV Suites. The Elite Suites and Mobile Suites are specifically designed for those that are going to be living in them full-time and/or living in colder/warmer climates. A big factor in them is that they have 3 1/4" walls where most RV's only have 2" walls. With the 3 1/4" walls, they also have more insulation. Our particular RV has the optional feature of what they call the "Canadian Package" in that it has two 30,000 btu furnaces instead of one single 40,000 to 42,000 btu furnace. One furnace heats the living room/dining room/kitchen area and the other heats the bedroom in the nose.

In addition to the furnaces, we supplement our heat with the electric fireplace in the living room and two Lasko electric heaters. A larger Lasko is in the living room area and the smaller sits on the dresser in the bedroom. We use the electric as much as possible to reduce the use on the furnaces and reduce gas usage. (An electric heater is a lot cheaper to replace compared to repairing or replacing a furnace.) At night in the winter, when I go to bed, I turn off the electric heater and fireplace in the living room and let the furnace heat overnight. That also puts some heat into the underbelly where the water lines are located.

We have lived in the Mobile Suites now for about 4 1/2 years full-time and have experienced temperatures ranging from 115 degrees (there in Oklahoma City) down to -6 degrees here in Colorado. In the case of summer times, we have two air conditioners on the roof and also use two oscillating fans for air circulation. In both extremes, we've been comfortable inside. (Comfortable to us is roughly 68 degrees in the winter and 77 degrees in the summer.)

The one issue we have had with freezing is that at around zero degrees, the hot water line from the water manifold in the underbelly to the kitchen sink freezes up. It has only been that one line in the whole trailer. We've never skirted our RV, so I'd say we've done very well. Oh, and the water line freezing isn't much of a problem because the water lines are PEX lines, so they aren't likely to freeze and break very easily.

As for propane usage, we've leased 120 gallon tanks that are filled by the LPG supplier. Here last year, they came to the park every 5 weeks to refill the tanks. In the five week periods, we never ran out. LPG here is under $1.50 a gallon.

The Suites models are considered "luxury fifth wheels." If you'd like to see what our RV looks like, check out the link below:

Our New Home

 

[Hobbes]

Thanks Terry
Good info

 

[Larry Morgan]

Here's a few from hiking Mt. Lincoln. Hiking up there in thin air (14k ft) was one of the harder things I've ever done. We were really not as prepared as we should have been.

Starting out

Working up slowly

Even higher, with the clouds now

The distances started to get misleading about here. That looks close over there... It isn't. It's hours away.

At the top. We couldn't stay long. The wind was blistering and below freezing. We snapped some pictures of all of us, took a screenshot of our GPS and headed back.

I have some from my latest trip this last October, but my phone camera was shot and they aren't very good. Everything on the bottom right is in focus and everything else isn't. After I got home I noticed I could actually wiggle the lens in the phone. Oh well.

 

[TerryMiller]

Good shots, Larry. However, I'll have to be content with your pictures. At 69 years old and 50+ pounds overweight, I won't be hiking up on any mountains much. We tend to try to do a walk each morning that we will be at the RV park all day, and that walk is just under 2 miles. The first part of it is uphill, and by the time we reach the ridge road where we turn around, I'm breathing pretty heavy.

Thanks for sharing, though. Other might be more inclined to take the hike.

 

[TerryMiller]

Recently taken images of snowfall this year.



I absolutely love the "flocked tree" look.

 

[dennishoddy]

Very nice. Did you use a filter? A lot my wife takes has a serious grey look when shooting snow.

 

[TerryMiller]

No, Dennis. No filters at all. Most of the time, I like taking pictures just as I see them, and I seldom ever manipulate the images in post processing software. Well, other than to resize them for the forums and occasionally to crop out a distraction at the edge of a photo.

I did have one photo that I changed the lighting on. It was a photo of one of the steam engines in the yard at the Durango, CO terminal. When I zoomed in on the engine, that lens let in less light, so the photo was pretty darn dark, especially for such a sunny morning. I experimented with the photo until I got a lighting effect that I liked.

 

[jim7711]

Engineer Pass on the Apline loop between Silverton and Lake City.