From Steamboat Lake, we dragged the trailer down to Steamboat Springs, up over Bunny Ears Pass, down to Walden and across to State Forest State Park. To find our campground, which was not on our 2017 park map and absent from any roadside signs, we drove to the Moose Visitor Center. There we were given up-to-date maps showing the proper turnoff.
We’re in what is now called the North Park Campground. Until a few years ago, it was a commercial KOA Kampground. According to the lady at the Visitor Center, when the husband of the couple who owned it died, the wife decided to sell the property. Ultimately, the state bought it and turned it into a public campground.
The old A-frame KOA check-in building still stands in a vacant, somewhat dilapidated condition.
The old KOA cabins remain and are apparently still rented out by the park.
The bathhouse appears to be brand new and is beautiful.
We have a nice site with full hookups. It must have been a handicapped site at one time with a cement pad under the picnic table and a cement sidewalk leading to the bathhouse. It must not be considered handicapped now or I would have reserved something else.
I’m convinced that campgrounds are universally designed by folks who have never camped. Here, for example, our sewer connection is on the opposite side of the sidewalk from where the trailer is parked. Thus, our sewer line must cross the sidewalk. Since the sidewalk only leads to our picnic table, our backyard neighbor suggested we just back the trailer to the sidewalk and run our hose across.
Our first full day here, we drove around part of the park. Friends from Grand Junction were also camping somewhere out here. We had their campsite number but not the name of the campground they were in. They’re anglers, so we first looked for them up the road around North Michigan Reservoir. They were not there.
Next, we headed down the highway to the Ranger Lakes area, where they were parked. We camped in this campground 12 years ago with our old A-frame trailer – the fourth trip we ever made in that trailer.
Having had enough of this sitting around, we went out for a hike on Tuesday. I chose a six-mile loop trail that would lead from the Visitor Center to Ranger Lakes and back. The writeup promised this was prime moose country, and I wanted a photo of a moose for my Colorado Life feature. We kept looking out to meadows and marsh lands, but nary a moose appeared. Bullwinkle must be taking the day off.
The weather here has been overcast and rainy since we arrived. The skies graciously remained dry until we got to Ranger Lakes. When the sprinkles started, we knocked on our friends’ trailer door and sat inside. The rain stopped and we hit the trail again. Finding the second half of the loop proved to be a bit of a challenge, but we managed to find the correct path back. Still no Bullwinkle.
So far, the only moose we’ve spotted have been the stuffed moose inside the Visitor Center…
…a statue of a moose made of barbed wire outside the Visitor Center…
…and, of course, the trophy moose head we have mounted in our trailer.
Wednesday was to be photo day for my upcoming Colorado Life story. Unfortunately, the day dawned with battleship gray skies. No, today would be a sit in the trailer and read day. With only one tiny bar of Verizon cell coverage, we couldn’t even hit the internet for Facebook posts.
In the afternoon, we fought off boredom by getting in the truck and driving down the road, first to the Cameron Pass area. We followed that with a jaunt up toward North Michigan Reservoir to visit the yurt we bunked in on our first few trips to State Forest State Park.
It now has hard siding on the outside. It looked different back when the sides were fabric.
Our last day at State Forest dawned slightly more clear. Hoping to photograph an unstuffed moose, we drove up to the Crags off Cameron Pass.
Finding no moose along the highway there, we returned to the North Michigan Reservoir area where we discovered an Escape trailer parked in a really nice, get away from it all campsite at the north end of the pond.
Our park map showed a viewpoint called “Moose Overlook” up the road. Hoping it wasn’t a case of false advertising, we drove to it.
The map didn’t lie. This Moose Overlook was so named because it was built by a Moose Lodge from Fort Collins.
It began to look like the only moose we were going to see was a moooooose grazing beside the road.
Fortunately, my eagle-eyed wife did spot a pair of real moose foraging along a hillside a good quarter mile (or more) away. Even with my best telephoto lens, the animals were tiny brown spots in a big green landscape.
It was still better than this Canadian moose photo I took a few years ago in Newfoundland with the same lens.
(A better telephoto lens is now on order.)
Today was our 44th anniversary. Back in camp, Dianne grilled a fine bison steak dinner, which we enjoyed with a bottle of Bookcliff Vineyards’ best.
The next morning, we drained sewage, unhooked water and power…
…hooked up the trailer and hit the road for home…
…with, of course, a quick burrito stop along the way.
