The area around Denver, or the parts we have seen of it, on the two occasions we have been here, provide all you could possibly need to have an active outdoor lifestyle. It is situated in a very beautiful part of the world in which it would be easy to live. Of course we have never been there in winter, when I imagine it would be cold enough to freeze the balls of a _ _. Well you know the rest.


Had the crew at JC’s British & 4x4 in Englewood, Colorado, fit a new turbo to the truck. It has been been running like a real, well, twenty year old truck. Had a chance to chat with Jeff the owner after hours. A nice guy who runs a very professional outfit. After asking if we could ‘camp’ in the workshop to avoid the inconvenience of having to organise a hotel for the night, Jeff generously offered us a bed at his place. A very generous offer to two unkempt Aussies, one of whom has a dubious past. I’ll let you decide which one!
We thanked Jeff for his offer, but explained that the workshop would be more than adequate for our needs.
The turbo swap was, unfortunately, unable to be done by me ‘on the road’ so to speak. In the end a large vice, mallet, and heat from an oxy acetylene kit was necessary to separate the manifold sections. None of these pieces of gear we have on board, so we had to pay for labour this time around.
The hefty investment has been worth it. The truck now pulls harder than a pedophile priest, and makes driving the long and frequently steep Rocky Mountain roads less stressful for us, and the locals following.


Talking about meeting people. Since we were last over here with the truck in 2010, I added some countries of the world flags to the outside of the truck,including an upside down German flag, “oops”. This was to stimulate peoples interest, and it has paid of. Compared to last time (no stickers) we have had heaps of locals come over for a chat. There have been some wackos of coarse. Like the guy who started on about the second amendment, and raved about ‘prizing the gun out of his cold dead hand’.
We keep meeting really nice Americans! Well that is, except for the p****who ripped us off when supplying a piece of side mirror for the truck.


After experiencing some very wild weather, particularly on the drive through the plains of Iowa and Kansas, we started listened to the hurricane warnings on the local radio when we camped for the night. This attempt at being fully informed proved to be of little help as those towns that were mentioned, the towns around us, those towns to be impacted and possibly vaporised, their names meant nothing to us. We were left wondering at what time of the night we were going to be sucked on the face of the earth as the truck rocked from the wind gusts.


Since reaching Colorado the weather has settled, and although in the mid thirties at the lower altitudes, once you get above two thousand metres, it is quite bearable.
Rural Colorado is open plains country. This landscape is broken up into ranches and is quite like the area around Burra in Sth Australia, only massive in its area.
The ranchers share their land with the oil extraction industry. The country side is littered with small fracking installations. Not only are they an eyesore, the installations smell like I usually do after rather clumsily changing the trucks engine oil. The old rusted out and unserviceable storage tanks and other infrastructure appears to be left in the paddocks when they reach the end of their service. Wind turbines are visual works of art compared to these things!


We are driving North on the western side of the Rocky Mountains towards Canada this time, as opposed to driving South on the Eastern side the last time we were here. The scenery here never fails to impress.
The USA is also the easiest place in the world to find a campsite at the end of the day. You often have the choice of either or both National Parks (US$25 approx), State Parks (US$12-15 approx), National Monuments (US$25 approx), Recreation Parks (US$10-12), National Forest (US$10-12 or free if you choose to camp wild and not use one of their camp sites) or Bureau of Land Management camping (usually free wild camping).
We prefer to wild camp for the solitude and the quiet, so the National Forest areas are our choice if we can find one at the end of the day. As I have mentioned before we have spent very little on camping fees over the month or so we have been here.
Showers can be harder to find as not all parks have them, and in some they are reserved for people camping in that park. However searching the internet whilst having our morning coffee at McDonalds or Starbucks will often turn one up in the local area at a motel or sports centre if desperate enough.


Our travels up the western side of the Rockies has taken us up through Idaho, Montana and briefly into Alberta, Canada. It is here that we start to see more of the oil and gas extraction that we saw around Colorado. There are many wells positioned around the boundary of Glacier NP and they are a real eyesore.


We are seeing more dual cab trucks mounted with slide on campers over on this side of the States. But like all things American even these are big. Petrol is still king over here, with most trucks sporting engines of 4.5 litres capacity or more, and with petrol at under eighty cents a litre nothing is about to change. With engines this big these mothers fly, even towing a small block of flats, that passes as a caravan over here. If I find myself trapped on an interstate with a 70mph (130kph, I think) limit, my first priory is to maintain bowel control, and my second is to find a way off the interstate before becoming a radiator ornament or having our eye balls sucked out by a passing semi trailer.


With Visa time getting short we have turned south. We will start by sticking to the West coast, as opposed to the Rockies route we took last time we were here.