ER150 - EarthRoamer Adventures: Days 121-123 - Friday - Sunday 10/16-18/2026

Happy Happy Happy Birthday Tracy Jill (10/18)!!! We love you and miss you 💕🎂🥳

On Friday we drove from Windsor to Rocky Mountain National Park to Allenspark Colorado, about 60 miles total. It was a beautiful, sunny, blue-sky day with temperatures in the 50s.

We called to see if by any chance ER150's new tires were going to arrive Friday, and found that they were not on the truck, and it will be at least Monday before they arrive, as expected. We had Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and a salad for lunch while we decided what to do. Since we had a few days of beautiful weather to wait, and didn't need to put many miles on our worn tires, we left Windsor thinking we would spend the night in Rocky Mountain National Park (RNMP) at the only campground still open at Moraine Park.

Traffic was heavy through the mountains toward Estes Park, then on into RMNP, but it was a WOW drive!

The road follows a river that has cut a steep canyon out of the mountain, so we were surrounded by huge cliffs at every turn.

The town of Estes Park was beautiful, and very crowded. There were some pretty lakes along our route, and we saw a few white pelicans!

When we arrived at the campground in the park we found out that they were sold out of sites through the weekend. We had hoped that at least a few first-come-first-serve sites would be open. There were people everywhere. I guess they were looking for a last Fall getaway and hoping to see Fall colors, or maybe there was something else going on that we didn't know about. We saw elk and deer on the side of the road in the park.

The very nice park campground park ranger give us a tip for some possible dispersed camping that might be available nearby off Hwy 7. So we decided to try to look for it on some National Forest Service land near there. We found a spot down a long rutted dirt road near Allenspark.

There were turkeys to greet us when we turned off the main road

and Mike spotted the first IHC Scout II that we've seen on this entire trip! (Mike has owned and restored several Scouts in his life - and we had tons of fun fishing on the beaches of the Outer Banks of NC in Scouts back in the day!)

We were at almost 9000 feet elevation, and it was a beautiful area. We found a great dispersed camping spot with awesome views and settled into it. We were parked at an odd angle (even after trying to level out with our air suspension and driving up on some rocks), so we decided to reverse our sleeping positions in the bed which allowed us to look out our roof hatch at the gorgeous clear night sky.

We watched some shooting stars and were just falling asleep late. At about 3:00 am there was a soft knock on our door. We are in the middle of nowhere so it was a bit startling, but Mike opened the window to see who it was (worried that we might have been camped on private land accidentally). There stood a young guy with a flashlight who explained that their vehicle was stuck on the side of the cliff just down the road from us. Mike immediately got dressed, grabbed his jacket, bear spray, flashlight and 2-way radio, and went to see if we could help.

It turns out that Jordan and Laura had driven up from Nebraska and were wanting to tent camp nearby in a similar dispersed camping spot, but when driving the dirt road in the dark had missed the sharp right turn (not marked at all) and their vehicle was now pretty much hanging over the side of a cliff. The car was literally dangling, balanced behind the front tires and facing down the mountain.

It's a miracle that they didn't keep going, and that they were even able to get out of their vehicle the way it was leaning. Jordan recalled seeing our rig when they had driven passed us, so he walked back up the road to ask us for some help.

We quickly drove ER150 about a few hundred yards down the road to them, and Mike got out our recovery gear and the guys hooked up their vehicle to the built-in winch on the front of ER150. After making sure everything was secure, and attaching an extra line in case the winch line broke, Mike slowly winched their vehicle off the cliff edge back onto the road. Jordan was able to get in and put their vehicle in neutral and steer once the tires were on the ground, and they were now safe to drive again! It was our first rescue attempt on this trip and a success.

We were all happily surprised that there didn't appear to be any damage to their vehicle (although the bottom is likely scratched a bit). It was in the low 30s and windy, and we were all cold, so I made some hot chocolate for everyone while the guys put away all the recovery gear. We shared some hugs and said good night and returned to our camp spot. What a scary situation for Jordan and Laura! Shout out to y'all and hope you enjoyed your camping and had a safe trip back home to Omaha.

On Saturday we slept in since we didn't get much rest that night, then we took everything out of our back seat area, cleaned it, and re-stowed all of the recovery gear and other random stuff. We enjoyed the sunny, beautiful weather and also watched the AU-some Auburn football game! War Eagle! It was great to finally beat the UGA Bulldogs again after many years, (and they were ranked the #1 team in the country)! We had some frozen pizza for dinner while watching the game.

Sunday was much the same, a beautiful restful day. While walking around outdoors to view and take pictures of the beautiful views it was easy to remember that we were at 9000 feet! It was hard to breathe doing anything. Our camp spot was on the edge of a gorge, with beautiful rock formations and a forested mountainside to look out at.