RVing WITHOUT a Towed Vehicle! (34ft 4x4 Class C RV Golden, CO)

It has been years since we've been to Colorado and after an 1100 mile road trip from Indiana, we're here again. Our first stop is going to be Clear Creek Campground in Golden, Colorado and we have not explored this area very much at all so we're kind of excited. I am very excited to be back and it's so nice to see the big green lush mountains. The campground we're staying at is within walking distance of the Coors Brewery which I don't know maybe we'll go do a factory tour. Not sure on that. We're just excited to be back in Colorado. It's been a while. You know the last time we were here, do you remember Aaron? Yes, setting up the tent is starting to get old but it's not just the tent. It's everything. We literally lived in the rooftop tent in Colorado for six months so I think when we were done with that experience we were like okay we're done with Colorado for a while and we've since recovered from that. This campground is kind of right downtown Golden, Colorado. It was kind of expensive. I think it was almost 90 bucks a night. That's not something we normally splurge for on campsites. We were going to do some harvest hosts around the area. You know after 1100 miles on the road we just want to sit for a couple nights and relax. Maybe it is worth the $90. I don't know if this picked up on the camera or not but out of sheer muscle memory Chris turned the wheel the opposite direction to turn like she was backing up a trailer. I did that the first time I parked it too. Yeah you did. It is pure muscle memory. Just give me some time. My brain will wrap itself around this. It's like too easy to park. It's like you want to challenge yourself. I need more of a challenge. Literally this 34-foot classy and this tight little city park. What a piece of cake. I just enjoy the hitching up, non-hitching up, lack of hitching up and non-hitching. That's really nice. It's just great. Getting to a campsite, hitting the auto level button and then I'm still pretty cautious about the slide so I went outside this time and used the app for the first time to put the slides out. I like to be inside and I like to be outside because it's you know you don't want something to be caught underneath the slide on the inside and you don't want to hit a tree out there. Good thing you have me. I would love to spend a full week here. If you can get us anything more than two nights I will be a happy person and if you can't I'll still be a happy person because as much as we don't like spending the big bucks for RV parks, you can immediately understand why it's more expensive. You have a creek right here, a walking path here, we got a map of trails around us, we're half a mile from downtown Golden. Like there is so much fun to be had here and two nights just isn't enough time. We have one day tomorrow, that's it. So I know a lot of you are wondering how we're going to circumnavigate not having a tow vehicle or towed vehicle and this is one of the ways we're going to do it. We're going to try to get campgrounds that are closer to things that we can walk to and then we got the e-bikes too which is going to give us that good five to ten mile radius where we can get out and explore. Another area of concern for the storage is the outside storage and I actually think the Isata 6 is going to have more outside storage. I can't really tell it's you know because the shapes are different, we don't know yet but the big thing I want to find out is if our folding e-bikes that we do store inside the fifth wheel pass-through will fit in one of the storage bays of the Isata and that's a big deal because we are not planning on having a towed vehicle yet. So the bikes fit pretty good in the fifth wheel, a little tight if it was just the bikes it would be no problem but we're in the middle of moving so there's just kind of stuff everywhere but we love keeping the bikes on the inside. These things look brand new, they don't have any dust and dirt from riding on the back plus your overall length gets to stay as short as possible so I like it. Okay here's the moment of truth. That is really close. Is it gonna fit? Ta-da! I don't know if that's victory yet or not, that's only one bike. Well I can't believe it but it fits, kind of. I was really just racking my brain. I can't believe it, it doesn't fit well and it was almost perfect. So the height of those bikes is 27 inches, the front pass-through bay is 27 inches, it literally fits perfectly in there so I thought we were good to go on the back. Well that one turns out to be 25 inches deep so we had about two inches that it just wasn't going to fit. I couldn't figure out how to do it and I ended up angling it a little bit to get that 25 inches to work. It's now starting to rain. I guess that's perfect timing. So little by little all of this moving is going pretty well and I hope it doesn't rain all day because I still got a lot of stuff to do. I could just sit here and people watch the walking trail all day. Yeah the trail and the creek right outside our dinette, that's gonna be cool. I'm gonna get a cool time lapse of that. Yeah I'm excited to set up and jump in and get going. Well two short days in this campsite is not enough but you can see why it's so sought after. The creek right in the background and this amazing walking path. We got really lucky and a site opened up over this holiday memorial weekend for four more nights so we actually just have to move a couple sites down. We don't get the creek in our backyard but nonetheless we're still in the same area. All we gotta do is put the slides in, take the auto level up and go. So moving a couple sites over, pretty simple in the motorhome. I think that the nicest thing is that you can do a hundred percent pre-pack up. Yeah. We had to wait until 11 o'clock but we could be completely ready to go exactly at 11. There was no final hitching up process or anything like that. Yes and it's really nice in this particular unit because there's very little stuff to do on the inside to prepare. We have one rug at the entry and we have two anti-fatigue mats in the kitchen and those stay in place when the slide comes in which is super nice. We don't have to move or relocate any of that. We don't have any knickknacks to put away. Everything's just so minimal in here that it's really a matter of picking up the things that you're using, putting them where they belong and that's it. So our first two days here in beautiful golden Colorado. I mean we've definitely fallen in love with this town, the creek, the running, the trails, the people, the energy. All of it is really amazing and we have really just been recouping from our 1200 mile drive here. So tonight which is Friday holiday weekend and it's our wedding anniversary weekend as well so it's a double whammy. We are taking this awesome location that we're in and we're doing a little bit of a staycation vibe with it. We're gonna have some fun. We're gonna go out a little more than we usually do and we're gonna enjoy being centrally located right in walking distance of all of the fun things that golden Colorado has to offer. So we kind of haphazardly planned this whole trip. We had four harvest hosts throughout the past couple days and into the holiday weekend and we got really lucky with two nights in this RV park and then we got really even more lucky with four more nights and now we really get to just enjoy the area and not worry about being off grid or unplugged with the heat wave that's coming. Yeah there is a heat wave. It's going to be 83 degrees today which is quite warm so I feel better just knowing that we're plugged in for the dogs to be home alone and what we did here by stringing together a couple reservations we got lucky with cancellations very similar to what we did at Catalina State Park where we got last minute bookings like literally we booked today's yesterday. So I've been enjoying the spontaneous travel like if you're flexible and if you're able to shop for cancellations it's really a great way to get into these ideal top-notch places that otherwise book out really early so you got to give a point to the flexibility and spontaneity and getting in when you can. And I think the biggest thing that we have to get used to especially with the dogs and warm weather is not being able to run our air conditioner from our batteries. So there's enough power and the system's big enough but the way a lot of motorhomes are set up they have certain circuits that are inverted that you can run off battery power and certain circuits that are not inverted. So the air conditioner is one of those circuits that is not inverted. That might be something that I can change but for now most people would be relying on their generator and you know if we're not going to be here I'm not familiar with how the auto gen start fully works I need to kind of test that out to be comfortable leaving the dogs alone with that. So that's the first kind of thing that we need to get used to it's just a little bit different of an electrical system. We just arrived to Red Rocks and I'm already overwhelmed by the beauty and I can't wait for the night that's it I'm just excited. So the main reason we came to this area in Colorado was to go to Red Rocks Amphitheater, a geological wonder at the foothills of the Great Rocky Mountains consisting of massive red sandstone formations that somehow naturally created an acoustically perfect venue for music. Although Red Rocks officially opened in 1941 it has attracted world famous musicians for over a hundred years and by the 1960s word was definitely out about this unique open-air venue at 6,450 feet above sea level and with a seating capacity of almost 10,000. This attracted some early musical hall of fame artists like the Beatles, Johnny Cash, and Jimi Hendrix. Since then thousands of acts have performed here and if you're a music fan it won't disappoint in providing you one of the most unique places you can catch a concert. And even if you're not a music fan it's worth the visit. Red Rocks is open to the public for free on non-menu days as well to walk around and explore or get a little workout in on the steps with a hundred feet of elevation from the bottom to the top. The number one question that people are asking us is are we getting a car to tow behind us? What are we going to tow behind us? This thing has an impressive towing capacity so some people think we're going to go crazy and get something really fun like a toy but we're resisting. We are not going to be towing a car behind us and we're going to do this for as long as we can. How long will it be? You might think that we will fail pretty soon but don't forget we are experienced in this department. We lived in the van for two and a half years without a towed car and we used our e-bikes for a lot. For groceries that was a big thing. I just took my very first grocery trip with the e-bike and I felt like total van vibes back in that thing. Felt like I was living in the van again. It was a super convenient trip to a Safeway grocery store. It was about a mile and a quarter. Easy to get to. I got a normal load of groceries. I loaded up this big refrigerator tote on one shoulder. It's quite heavy and then I had two more big totes on this shoulder. I was really weighed down and not to mention just these bags. I also had the pannier bag that is attached to the bike. You can fit a lot in there. I don't know how much all this stuff weighs but it felt like a hundred pounds. By the time I got home I was struggling a little bit but what's nice about the e-bikes is as long as you can maintain your balance you just gotta throttle all the way home and stopping at stop signs you need to be careful. Passing pedestrians you need to be careful. Being really loud and proper bike etiquette with letting them know you're passing on your left. So of course I was wearing a helmet but it's a lot of fun especially when you're in places that are very convenient. Why wouldn't I want to go take my bike out and go visit a local grocery store and in the event that we can't we'll always have Walmart to pull up into and get groceries there on travel days. I think we're gonna go to just regular grocery stores in this thing. Yeah I mean I'm sure we can. It's gonna be we'll be driving by and we'll be like yes that looks good pull in there. I have to admit my shopping sprees are a little bit smaller now since one I have to carry it home on the bike and two we have a lot less pantry space so everything's coming together. The week-long stay in Golden was all too short especially when we had to move sites three times which interrupted the middle of each of those days and this last site for some reason was sloping down so far in the front I ended up battling the auto level for about a half hour. I really found out that my ramps were just not tall enough to handle this particular situation and I really had no way around the front The weather was hot and beautiful the first couple days but in Colorado mountain weather fashion it quickly shifted to sporadic rainfalls, clouds, sun and even some colder temps. So we didn't get to jump into the creek to cool off but it was fun to watch the local Denver Fire Rescue Squad do some water training in full gear and although we didn't get to try out all the places we wanted to go to we did make it to one of the coolest rooftop breweries and restaurants we've ever seen. This one was pretty unique not just for the great views and location on the creek but for the multiple options of dining and for the pour your own style drinks vibe. We had a pretty good combination of beef brisket barbecue and sushi. Join us next week as we hightail it out of Colorado and into our first attempt at boondocking in our new Thanks for watching. Ever wonder where the name Irene Iron Travels comes from? It's actually named after my online fitness and nutrition coaching business Irene Iron Fitness. I help people move better, feel better and eat better with strength training and real food. No fad diets, no harsh restrictions, no counting calories and absolutely no processed food in a package. If you want to get stronger and feel better at any age check the description below for the links with my new client special or join in on our next and upcoming group challenge.