Sunday 3 June

Up at 7.30 again. Even though we were prompt for breakfast it was very full, not helped by the fact that it’s much cooler and cloudy so nobody is eating outside as they did on the last two mornings. It was also full of young girls who appeared to be there for sporting events. We managed to find a table luckily.

We were away reasonably promptly after breakfast helped by the fact that from now on we can leave various bits loose in the car rather than doing ‘airline packing’ each day.

First part of the journey retraced our route up past the road to Pikes Peak as we decided to take the northern of the two options. We went west on the 24 towards Hartsel. We stopped first at the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Centre and were able to join the tour that had started a few minutes before at 10am. This isn’t quite the same as WWUK but good nevertheless. The wolves are kept in pairs in enclosures that are small enough for them generally to be seen. The tour lasted until about 11.15am and at the end we had a talk to our guide about WWUK.

Carried on and we made a quick coffee stop and fortunately decided to have a Danish pastry with coffee. Fortunate because from then on it was fairly steady driving through interesting countryside but there were virtually no towns of any size. Finally we got to the 24/285 junction where we were due to go south on the 285. Instead we turned north on the 24 into Buena Vista. This is a fairly small town but we managed to find a coffee shop/bakery and grabbed lunch. Anne had a sandwich but Les had a very interesting chilli soup which seemed more like curry.

Again we carried on south on the 285 and then east on the 50 to go across Monarch Pass. A long haul to the top at 11,312ft although the roads are very good compared to the climb up Pikes Peak. There’s a gondola ride from the top of the pass to the adjacent mountain top. It was only $8 and we were going to take it but after a short visit to the store/cafe for Restrooms (and to buy batteries) we both agreed that the altitude had made us feel queezy and that we didn’t fancy staying at this altitude any longer than necessary. PS We should’ve bought a can of oxygen in the shop!!

The slope down from the pass to the western side is about 12 miles and there was very little traffic. From then on you are really driving across level ground but still at 8,000ft most of the way to Gunnison.

Arrived at Rodeway Inn around 4pm. We'd covered about 180 miles. Had a very long talk with the owner? who is Polish. We had a long talk with him about Poland and World War II and the various injustices meted out to Polish servicemen in the UK when the war ended. He was pleasantly surprised by Les’s knowledge of these things and said that Americans simply don’t understand.

As we arrived at motel we saw flashes of lightning and hear a bit of thunder. Also on the TV in the lobby we saw news of forest fires near Durango and it looks as though our travel plans may be altered. Fortunately this is a very short day’s journey, so it might not be too bad if we get diverted.

Drove a couple of miles out of town to Garlic Mike’s - an Italian restaurant - and had a nice meal. Shared calamari starter and then pasta for both of us. As we left the motel it was pouring with rain, but when we came out of the restaurant it had stopped and the roads were starting to dry.

Back in the motel we watched Tracey Ulman’s Tracey Breaks the News and then watched an old Vera. Unfortunately Vera is on the ITV Hub and has to be watched by streaming as opposed to BBC iPlayer where you can download the programmes. We got to within 10 minutes of the end of Vera and then for some reason it came up with a notice about buffering and wouldn’t let us watch any more. Very frustrating.