Adventure Awaits in Colorado. Oh yes it does.
Road trip time! Listening to The Hobbit on our drive while Ashley worked on her crocheting.
Longest curly fry ever at the Arby’s in Grand Junction Colorado.
After making it to the mountains, we drove straight to Clear Lake to meet up with Stan, Kevin and, their families. The marmots and pikas were all over the place on the drive.
The truck bed was at 100% capacity, while still being able to close the cover.
The wildflowers were incredible! The fishing was fun, but only Stan had any real luck. Go figure.
After leaving the lake, we drove to our camp spot nestled into the forest partway up Corkscrew Gulch and unloaded all our gear and set things up. Since campfires weren’t permitted due to fire restrictions, we brought along a propane campfire which was a big hit.
We ate well on the trip, taking turns cooking breakfasts and dinners.
Thursday’s adventure was driving the Alpine Loop. There were nearly constant incredible views.
We drove up to Hurricane Pass at an incredible 13,200 feet, and then some of us hiked the short stint up to Hurricane Peak, sitting at 13,447 feet.
Meanwhile, Eliza was a superstar cousin and entertained the littles with a very long round of Trot Trot to Boston.
Frisco Mill
Animas Forks ghost town
Back at camp, we had s’mores with color changing marshmallows, which were mentioned as a highlight of the trip by the kids afterwards.
Thursday night was quite the wet adventure. After we went to bed, the thunder giants went to work, duking it out for several hours with an impressive light and water show. Then Friday morning once the rain stopped, Kevin, Stan, and I took off on a side quest adventure to hike the 14,153-foot Mount Sneffels sitting at the top of Yankee Boy Basin. Stan drove us right to the foot of the mountain on a fun trail that made use of the Land Rover’s capabilities. To get to the peak, we hiked a short approach, and then turned right to hike right up this scree slope up to the saddle.
And then turned left to hike up this tight chute. Then climbed through a little crack, and scrambled up to the peak.
The views were incredible!
Here we all are at the top. Awesome to bag a 14er. The weather was pretty dynamic.
Meanwhile, back at camp, they got a full-on hail storm and pouring rain that flooded the camp site!
But we were enjoying great views on the drive down off the mountain.
Once we got back to camp, we were astonished to see the state of things, especially since the weather was so much nicer over toward Ouray. So, we hustled off the mountain. Kathryn made sandwiches in the truck while we were bouncing back and forth down the trail. We went to the Ouray Hot Springs Pool and enjoyed swimming for the rest of the afternoon. Ashley had a goal to go down the waterslides 20 times to get her money’s worth out of the slide pass.
This was the park and playground right next to the pool. Pretty incredible views.
I was amazed at all the roads through these mountains. Here was one spot where the road curves over a waterfall.
Back at camp, things had dried out a little and we enjoyed some more fun around the fire.
Saturday morning was our turn to cook breakfast. We put on a pancake production with scrambled eggs and 4 different kinds of pancakes. Then we packed up everything as best we could and barely got it all to fit back in the truck-after smashing some things with a hammer (figuratively speaking).
Cousin time!
The last big planned adventure was driving the Ophir pass to cross over and end up in Telluride.
We made it to Telluride and had lunch and aired up the tires. Then we said our goodbyes and hit the road towards home. We stopped for dinner at the Moab Diner.
Then we made it home! What an adventure! Thanks, Stan and Mel, for letting us tag along on one of your camping/jeeping expeditions. Great to be with you Kevin and Bethany.