Saying Goodbye to a Friend and New Beginnings

After the great bluegrass festival in Westcliffe, we had planned to spend a week in Colorado Springs, but a nagging repair issue with our trailer made us change plans and head instead to Longmont, an hour north of Denver. Here we had an appointment with an “expert” on our trailer to hopefully deal with it once and for all. Well, it didn’t work out the way we planned. The “expert” was a bust and we despaired of ever getting the slide-out on our trailer working again, and started to worry about what else might happen, and one thing led to another that led to ... our deciding to trade in the old Cypress and get a new trailer. We had gotten a tremendous amount of service out of our ten-year-old trailer that we bought knowing practically NOTHING about RV’s. As much as we loved the old Cypress, we had long wished we had some more room and some of the modern conveniences, . Long story short, we bought a new trailer in Longmont, to be delivered in mid-August, so we had a month to get ready to move and say goodby to our home for nearly 4 years. After we left Longmont, we spent the next month in Cheyenne, the Medicine Bows, Dumont Lake and Dillon Lake.

Returning to Longmont on the 16^th of August, we spent a day moving ALL our stuff out of the Cypress and into the new Open Range Roamer. We spent the next six days trying to shoehorn everything into the new space, at times despairing that we coud fit it all. But we eventually managed and drove off into the sunset. We love the new trailer and look forward to many happy travels living it her.  We are thinking of naming her"Serenity"--a few of our friends may recognize why.

In remembrance of our first trailer and our home for so many adventures, here is a photo tribute:

Alabama Hills, CA

Big Sur, CA

Blythe, CA

Buena Vista, CO

Carlsbad, CA

Cedar Mesa, UT

Cedar Mesa, UT

Dana Point, CA

Death Valley, CA 

Dumont Lake, CO

Ft. Pickens, FL

Gettysburg, PA

Grand Canyon, AZ

Grass Valley, CA

?????

Jalama Beach, CA

Joshua Tree, CA

Joshua Tree, CA

Joshua Tree, CA

Key  Largo, FL

Kings Canyon, CA

Klamath River, CA

Klamath, CA

Kodachrome Basin, UT

Lone Pine, CA

Mammoth Cave, KY

Mesa, AZ

Natchez Trace, MS

New Brunswick, Canada

Niagara Falls, NY

Cheticamp, Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia, Canada

Winery near Toledo, OH

Truck stop, somewhere in OK

Organ Pipe Cactus NM, AZ

Palm Springs, CA

Palo Duro Canyon, TX

Santee Lakes, CA

Tampa, FL

Valley of Fire, NV

Western VA

Western VA

York, ME

Yosemite, CA

Dillon Reservoir, Summit County Colorado

We got to spend a long weekend with Jeff and Katie, who flew and drove in from San Francisco. We did some hiking and some brew-pub crawling and some Rummicube playing and kept them busy the whole time. The Dillon Lake area was a total surprise to me, exceeding expectations. It’s right on Interstate 70 and in the middle of five ski areas, so I figured it would be totally developed. It sort of is, but there is so much easily eccessible nature and the campground felt quite isolated, that we loved it...and enjoyed the civilize amenities too.

We hiked McCullough Gulch, Lily Pad Lake and Lower Boulder Lake. We explored Loveland Pass, one of the highest passes in the country. We drove down a wicked bad road to a little lake and completely lost the trail that was supposed to go around it, so we just hung out on the shore. We cooked Jeff and Katie our mega-nachos and watched the amazing clouds play with the amazing mountains. And we nervously prepared to hit the road toward what we knew was going to be a momentous week...stay tuned!

Mountain goats on the McCullough Gulch trail

Lake at the upper end of McCullough Gulch in the Tenmile Range

We got a bit turned around on this hike...but never lost!

Lily Pad Lake

Little Lily Pad Lake

Cataract Lake

Sunset light over our campground at Dillon Lake

On the trail to Lower Boulder Lake

Glimpses of the Gore Range on the way to Lower Boulder Lake

Lower Boulder Lake

Lower Boulder Lake

Little waterfall below Boulder Lake

Dumont Lake--an Ocean of Wildflowers

Our next stop was Dumont Lake, which had been recommended to us by someone from Colorado that we met in Arizona. It was supposed to be good for wildflowers. That’s like saying Beethoven wrote some tunes. This was the Sistine Chapel of wildflowers. The pictures don’t do it justice, like they seldom do the fall colors of New England justice. We were camped in someone’s perennial garden that went on for miles in all directions. The flowers came up to our windows; we waded shoulder-deep in color.

Not continuously besotted with flowers, we did manage to visit Steamboat Springs, scene of a long-ago skiing trip, and do a couple hikes. The Rabbit Ears Peak hike was particularly satisfying and scenic (the trailhead was right in our campground). We could only stay 5 days here, needing to hustle off to meet our son, Jeff, and Katie in Dillon.

More of our Steamboat Springs area adventures on the Outdoor Project:

http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/upper-fish-creek-falls
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/rabbit-ears-peak

Our campground at Dumont Lake

Dumont Lake

Dumont Lake and beetle damage on pine trees, common throughout Colorado

Camping in a wildflower garden

Upper Fish Creek Falls, near Steamboat Springs

Upper Fish Creek Falls

Dumont Lake sunset

On the Rabbit Ears Peak trail

Medicine Bow Mountains

We were kind of glad to leave Cheyenne and the trappings of what Wyoming calls civilization. We had a week planned in the Medicine Bow Mountains of Wyoming, also called the Snowy Range. Just about no one knows about these mountains outside of people who live in southern Wyoming and die-hard outdoors folks in Colorado. It is a beautiful little mountain range near the Wyoming/Colorado border that you can drive right into the middle of at 11,000 feet. Imagine a slice of Yosemite high country dropped into the middle of nowhere with a good road through it. It is a real gem.

We camped at Brooklyn Lake, a tiny campground with its own traihead into the back country. There are about 130 lakes in the Snowy Range. We would easily pass 12-15 on a four-hour hike. The wildflowers were stupendous and there were many snowfields still frozen. We hiked a lot and the photos below are only a few examples of the many beautiful places we saw. I hiked to 12,013-foot Medicine Bow Peak the day before we left--my first high Rocky Mountain peak (though far from the difficulty of the “14ers”}.

These are truly lovely mountains and it is good to know that there are still places like this in our country. Places no one is making a buck on or visiting to death with tour buses. Places with absolutely no services and where people have been camping since their father took them there who was taken there by HIS father. We were very sad to leave.

See more of our Medicine Bow adventures on the Outdoor Project website:
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/shelf-lakes-gap-lakes-trail
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/lost-lake-trail
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/medicine-bow-peak-lewis-lake-trailhead
http://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/hiking-backpacking/twin-lakes-sheep-lake-trail

Tucker likes hiking in the mountains

View from our campground

Sugarloaf Peak

Medicine Bow Peak

Shelf Lake

Medicine Bow Peak

Brooklyn Lake, near our campsite

Before dawn

Sunrise on Mirror Lake

Full moon setting over Mirror Lake

Medicine Bow crest

Land of Many Lake

View from the top of Medicine Bow Peak, 12,013 ft.