Page to Denver and a Mountain Lion, no kidding!

While the main focus of our visit to Page was the Antelope Canyons there are many other attractions in the area.  We only had time for short visits to a few but here are a couple of pictures so show that all the beauty is not below ground.

This is Horseshoe Bend just south of Page and thats the Colorado River winding its way through the rocks forming horseshoe pattern.

This is the Glen Canyon dam which holds back the water to form Lake Powell.  They do offer tours but unfortunately we didn't have the time on this visit.
    

This is the short channel upriver from the dam and beyond is Lake Powell.   Check out all the colours.
 

On Sunday we left Page and headed to Grand Junction, Co.  Every time we have a travel day I think we have seen the best possible scenery.  Sunday was no different.  Out trek up through Utah took us very close to Arches and Monument Valley.  We didn't stop but got some good shots from the road.

 We went through the town of Moab, Ut. and off in the distance we could see the changing  landscape that we would encounter the next day.

We checked into Junction West RV Park in Grand Junction and early on Monday we set out for the Rockies.  Our goal was to make it through Denver and on to Ogallala, Ne. for the night.

We had just passed Gypsum and guess what I spotted walking along a fence line, not more than 50 feet off the road.  A Mountain Lion.  I couldn't believe it.  I only caught a glimpse of him for a second and by the time I could blurt it out to Lori we were past him.  No pictures this time but he was a big fella.

Just past Vail we reached the highest elevation of our trip.  11,163 ft.  There was probably 4-5 feet of snow just off the road with plenty of skiers on the slopes.  It was 43F.  A far cry from the 93F temps in Yuma.

The trip from Grand Junction to Denver had plenty of elevation changes.  Going up our speed dropped to 60 kph and 3rd gear and while going down I was in 3rd gear and having to apply and release the brakes to keep below 90 kph.  I sure was missing the engine bake that my Dodge had. With the Cummins I could have set the engine brake, down shifted and never touched the brakes.   For the life of me I cannot figure out why Ford spent all sorts of money developing their new Diesel engine for their 2011 model and it has taken till their 2015 model for them to come out with an engine brake.  I'm going to have to  do some research to see if there is an aftermarket engine brake available.  

During one of the particularly long and steep downhill grades I started to smell my brakes and they started to feel kind of spongy.  Not a good thing.  We pulled out at the bottom of the grade and stopped for lunch and let the brakes cool off.  When I pulled out again the truck brakes seemed fine but the trailer brakes were gone.  We still had some pretty serious downgrades left before pulling into Denver and I was pretty concerned.  Fortunately for us there was lots of construction between us and Denver so driving was stop and go which was fine for me.  I found that putting the truck in 2nd would keep us at 60 kph and 3000 RPM without using the brakes.  That was as fast as I wanted to go.

We pulled into Denver at 2:30 and found an RV dealer who said they would make time to help us out.  We left the trailer on their lot and have checked into a hotel room for the night.  We'll go back in the morning and, fingers crossed, pick up the trailer and continue our trip home.  I'll let you know how we make out at our next stop.  I do know that Disc brakes for the Trailer has moved up on my trailer upgrade list.

Later