From Trailer Trash to Home on the Range, The Front Range that is

And I always thought AZ had the
best sunsets!!

I really thought our adventures would end when we arrived Denver, thus ending our blog, but we decided to continue for a bit since searching for a place to live has been an adventure in itself. Our first night in Denver was spent at Barr Lake RV Park not too far from where Brandon and Lindsey live. Now, I might have said this before about other RV Parks, and I really meant it at the time, but Barr Lake RV Park was by far, the worst RV Park we had yet to stay on this entire trip. We were placed in the middle of the long term residents which didn’t necessarily take care of their RV’s or the area around their RV’s. The trailer next to us, looked like it had suffered a fire at some point in it’s pathetic life and was held together by plywood, duck tape and bailing wire. He should have lived in his truck since it was a brand new Dodge Crew Cab Pickup. Much nicer than the dump he was calling home. As far as the rest of the long term residents? Picture cousin Eddie’s RV in Christmas Vacation and you know just what I‘m talking about. The park was located next to the freeway which was located next to the train tracks. And let me tell you, trains do not run on bankers hours and shut down promptly at 5pm everyday. No, they run all night, every night and they love to blow their horns through every intersection of the city. After a sleepless night, we got up the next morning and decided we had already had enough. Bright and early, we started looking for another place to “live.”

Denver, we quickly learned, was a lot like Chicago in the fact there are virtually no RV Parks to be found anywhere. There are two kinds of RV Parks in Denver, those in questionable areas of town, which were most of them, and the only other one which was in a decent area but cost $900 a month, plus electricity!!! $900 a month?!? That was more than our house payment in Arizona!!! It was only noon and our frustration level was soaring at this point. One last RV Park on our list and if this one didn’t work out, we’d be forced to pay the $900 a month. We arrived at what our GPS said was the exact location only to find the RV Park we were searching for was now a Chick-fil-A. I suppose camping in the Chick-fil-A parking lot wouldn’t have been so bad. We like Chick-fil-A and breakfast, lunch and dinner would always be available, but I’m not sure the manager of Chick-fil-A would have appreciated us boon docking in their parking lot for more than what it would take to down one of their chicken salad sandwiches and their to-die-for ice cream cones. No, as good as it sounded, we had to move on.

Frustrated and not knowing where to go from here, Brian started aimlessly driving around. “Checking out the countryside,” is what he said. Now, I hate just driving around with no agenda. As a young kid, we used to pile in the car every Sunday afternoon and “go for a drive to check out the countryside.“ I got to where I’d sleep through the entire drive but what the heck? We didn’t have anything else better to do and after a sleepless night, I needed a nap. We didn’t get too far when just before closing my eyes, I spotted the tops of a group of RV’s in the far distance. “What’s that? Check it out.” So off we go, headed to what we hoped was an RV park.

As it turned out, it wasn’t an RV park exactly but an RV storage facility which happened to have 6 RV pads which was rented on a monthly basis. The monthly rent of $450 included water, electric and sewer and also included free laundry. And the best part of it all was they had one spot available with a beautiful view of the Colorado Rockies. Score!!! We paid our rent, drove back to Barr Lake RV Park, which by the way, was no where near a lake, hooked up, drove back and set up our temporary home.

The minute we set up camp, Brian pulled out his computer, I pulled out my computer and we started looking for a house. As much as I wouldn’t have minded staying in our new location, we had the view of the Rockies and was close to shopping, but the 5’er is not an all season RV which means when the temperature drops to freezing, so does our water pipes and since it was now the end of September and the average first snow fall for the Denver area is October 19th, we needed something and fast.

Our original plan was to rent for a year or so, then buy when we had a better knowledge of the area and knew where our jobs would be located but somewhere along the Eastern coast line, I started looking at the price of rent in the Denver area and quickly decided I wasn’t crazy about giving $20,000 to $25,000 a year for someone else’s mortgage so after some coaxing on my part, talked Brian into buying a house instead.

So off we go. Day one of house hunting...