Trips – Dan Leeth

Ridgway

Our stay at Cherry Creek concluded, we hooked up and made our escape from Gridlock Gulch. We took the backway out of Aurora, headed south through Parker, which has a stoplight at every corner which always turn red when we approach and on down Colorado 83 to Colorado Springs. From there, it’s into the mountains, though South Park and then over Monarch Pass where snow was falling.

Down the other side, we passed an Amazon truck. Is this why two-day Prime delivery takes a week in the Grand Valley?

We drove through Gunnison and out past Blue Mesa Reservoir, where the water level was down significantly.

A bunch of miles and a couple of turns later, we made it to our campsite in Ridgway State Park, one of our Colorado favorites. We got the trailer set up before the rain started and had an enjoyable evening, dining on a microwave popcorn dinner in our warm and dry “cabin on wheels.”

On our first full day at Ridgway State Park, Dianne drove into Montrose to visit some friends who had to leave the park early. I hung out at the campground, writing a rough draft of our Jackson Lake stay for my Colorado Life camping column.

On our second full day at Ridgway, we did a little hike down to a trail below the dam where there are some fishing ponds.

We hiked around the ponds…

…to a set of nicely secluded walk-in tent sites.

Continuing down the trail, we reached a dead-end fence near the base of the dam.

We bushwacked our way back to where the lower section of the trail followed the river (we apparently missed a turnoff), passing some anglers fly “fishing” in the tailwaters. I didn’t see any of them “catching” in the tailwaters.

The group camping area we passed on our way out was infested with a swarm of fourth graders from Glenwood Springs. They appeared to be having a good time. I’m envious. We never got to do anything like this when I was in the fourth grade.

On Thursday, we drove a dozen miles down to Ouray and hiked a short section of the Ouray Perimeter Trail…

Our route began near the hot springs…

…and ultimately ended at the Ouray Brewery.

Along the way, we enjoyed lofty views of this self-proclaimed “Switzerland of America.”

We took a long photo break at the towering Cascade Falls, our turn down to town point…

…before heading to the Ouray Brewery for burgers and brews.

As always, we were careful about where we parked.

Cherry Creek

The second park on our three state park expedition is Cherry Creek, which lies on the eastern side of the Gridlock Gulch (Denver) metropolitan area.

Cherry Creek offers an oasis of nature-made sanity surrounded by a man-made jungle of urban chaos.

Cherry Creek is an old favorite of ours. Our former home…

…was only five miles from here (front yard looked nicer when we lived here). While we seldom camped there, we frequently took advantage of the biking trails that cut through the park.

Our goal for stopping at Cherry Creek was to meet up with four of our long-time camping buddies who still reside in the Gulch. We arrived at the park on Friday afternoon, set up camp…

…and then met two of our buds for dinner at The Perfect Landing, one of our favorite Denver-area restaurants.

The one thing I found annoying at Cherry Creek was that at this state park, the restrooms require a five-digit secret code to enter.

It didn’t used to be that way back in the good old days when we’d stop in for a pee break on our bike trips.

On Saturday afternoon, all four of our camping buddies stopped by our campsite for a lunch featuring hamburgers…

…grilled on our trailer-side grill.

Sunday, Dianne got to attend services at her former church, saying hello to dozens of old friends.

Back in camp, it rained in the early afternoon, leaving the grass wet and puddles in the street.

When the rain stopped, we went over to the dam side of the park…

And looked out on anglers fishing. (We did not see any anglers catching, however.)

Driving out of the park to refill the truck with fuel, I began to think about…

…what I truly miss about living in Gridlock Gulch (besides goggle-wearing dogs). The answer was…

This return to the Denver area once again confirms every one of the reasons why we left.

Tomorrow, we’ll hook up the trailer and flee back to the Western Slope – the canyon-side of the Rockies.

Jackson Lake

The first of three state parks we’re visiting on this camping trip is Jackson Lake, which lies north of Fort Morgan, about 100 miles northeast of Denver. We will be camping with some of our old A-frame trailer friends at the Lakeview Campground.

We had a nice, lakeside site with an electrical hookup and a nearby water spigot, which we could use to fill our trailer’s 50-gallon freshwater tank.

Jackson Lake is a good place to observe birds. We found them in the trees…

…in the air…

…on the water…

…along the shore…

…and in the grass.

And then there was the whirlybird used by firefighters training for helicopter water drops. The chopper would fly across the lake and drop it’s sucker hose into the water, filling the tank under the helicopter body.

Then they would circle around and drop their load along the far shoreline…

…away from any motorboaters…

…and anglers on the water.

On our four-night stay, we were treated to some colorful sunsets…

…and starry nights.

Jackson Lake served as a good start to our trio of state parks camping trip.

Steamboat Springs

Around midday, we’re finally hooked up and on the road heading east. Our goal is Jackson Lake State Park, which is located on the Kansas side of the mountains. The most direct route there would be through Gridlock Gulch (Denver), but being Western Slope folks, we try to avoid Denver whenever possible.

Our route to the level lands will take us through Steamboat Springs, with an overnight stay at the Steamboat Springs KOA.

We had a nice, shady, full-hookup site, complete with adirondack chairs circling a circular table.

The Yampa River cuts through the center of the RV park, with KOA Kabins along the waterway.

I’ve thought that doing a cross-country trip in the Subaru with every night spent bunking in RV park cabins could be fun, but the price to rent one of these for the night can be more than a typical Super 8 Motel room, and most of the cabins lack bathrooms. So we’ll keep towing our trailer.

Green River

Dianne, needing something to fill her retirement days, has started peddling nutritional supplements from LifeVantage. She had a meeting to attend in Las Vegas, Nevada, so we decided to hook up the trailer and take a long, winding way there.

Day one of our Las Vegas adventure began with a 90-mile drive from our home in Fruita to Green River State Park in Utah.

After setting up with electric and water hookups (no sewer hookup here), we dined at Ray’s Tavern, our favorite burger place in Utah. Ray, the original owner, is a distant cousin of Dianne’s but we still had to pay.

We downed our half-pound bacon cheese burgers with some Evolution Amber. Gone are the old 3.2 beer days in Utah. Beehive State brews can now have 5.0 ABF (alcohol by volume) content.

Back at the trailer, we built a campfire, downed small glasses of imported Spanish white wine and listened to trains occasionally whistle by. All were freighters – the 6:32 p.m. Amtrak hadn’t yet passed through by the time we headed to bed at 10:00 p.m.

We decided our layover day in Green River should be as unproductive as possible. That was a goal we easily achieved.

After a late breakfast (granola) in the trailer, we put on our TRs and hiked down to the John Wesley Powell Colorado River History Museum here in Green River.

They had on display a series of beautiful black-and-white photos of Glen Canyon shot before the damn dam was built and the exquisitely beautiful canyon flooded.

Before heading back to the campground, we stopped at the Invasive Weed (Tamarisk) Restaurant for a late lunch/early dinner. Dianne opted to go foreign (French dip sandwich) while I chose to have my favorite Indian food (Navajo taco).

No fire tonight – it’s too damn cold and windy out. We’ll just sit comfortably in the trailer with the heat on.

Hanksville

We awoke to rain in Green River. Between drops, we topped up with fuel, hooked up the trailer and headed to Hanksville, where we would spend five nights camped at Duke’s RV Park.

When we arrived, the RV office was locked. Rather than wait around for the Duke to return, we headed for Stan’s Burger Shack, one of Dianne’s favorite birthday dinner destinations (and it’s not even her birthday yet).

Back at Duke’s (two burgers later), Dianne texted the Duke, got our assigned campsite and we moved in. These are double-wide sites, giving us more room than a typical RV park site.

I’ve got a long list of back-of-beyond roads I want to explore near Hanksville, but around these parts, rain can turn otherwise navigable byways into quagmires of tire grabbing muck that can mire even a 4×4 truck. Last year, we came here with the same backroad intentions but rain made sure we accomplished nothing. In spite of what today’s angry skies are telling us, we hope that this visit will be more productive than last.

Capitol Reef

Awakening to a windy morning, we sat in the trailer debating whether to follow through with our original plan of driving out to a nearby significant geological feature. Finally, in the early afternoon, we decided to give it a try. We fired up the truck, set off down the highway, and a few miles from Hanksville, reached what we thought was our turnoff.

The wind blew the dirt making it difficult at times to even see the high-clearance motor trail to the site. Reaching our objective would require negotiating a half-dozen miles of this followed by a three-mile hike. We can’t take photos in this crap, so we made the logical decision to turn around and go elsewhere.

The elsewhere we chose was Capitol Reef National Park, which lay about 30 miles to the west.

Our first stop was the Gifford House store and museum where they still had a few mixed berry pies available for sale. They had two fewer available after we departed.

From there, we drove down the park’s Scenic Drive to pavement’s end and continued on a dirt road past the Golden Dome.

We continued to Pleasant Creek where the remains of an old ranch still grace the ground.

From there, we turned around, left the park and headed into Torrey where we enjoyed a great meal (with wine) at the Broken Spur Steakhouse. We met the former owners when researching a magazine feature a few years ago, and we’ve been back many times since.

Then came the exciting drive back to our camp in Hanksville. Even though we were on a paved highway, dirt blowing from the empty landscape drastically obscured visibility.

Fortunately, there was little traffic and we made it back to our trailer in one piece.

We now sit in our trailer, which is rocking in the gusting wind. If we’re not blown to Oz tonight, we’ll maybe try to reach our geological feature tomorrow.

Yes, this is what we do for fun.

Long Dong Silver

It’s Friday morning and the wind has quieted to just a gentle breeze. Today, we will explore those geologic features we failed to reach yesterday.

Our first stop was the local BLM office where we got maps showing our routes and advice covering how best to get there. Our first objective was a spire known as Long Dong Silver (so named by rock climbers a few decades ago). The BLM calls it Blue Valley Spire.

We followed the directions we were given and soon reached the trailhead for our one mile hike to the spire. The fence was to keep vehicles out, but as we know, the rules don’t apply to everyone. We saw one Jeep-driving touron drive through the restricted area and were told that another did the same earlier.

Hiking up the valley, we passed towering cliffs…

…and another free-standing spire.

Finally, around one corner we reached Long Dong Silver.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to climb this needle in the sky, but climbers’ slings still wrap around the summit.

After snapping a few photos, we said goodbye to the Dong…

…and hiked back to the truck.

Our next objective was Moonscape Overlook…

…which lay a few miles away.

From there, we headed to the Bentonite Hills…

…home of the Mars Desert Research Station.

A short distance beyond, we encountered an ATV with four space-suited folks from the station onboard. We waved, but they ignored us. I guess they didn’t expect to encounter earthlings out here.

Back at the trailer, I consumed an adult beverage while Dianne showered. Then I showered. I love having full hookups with no limit on water and the ability to dump the holding tanks at will.

Given enough time, I think that I could get used to this camping lifestyle.

Carl’s Critter Garden and the Henry Mountains

Saturday offered another lazy day. After spending the morning in the trailer, we finally got out for a short walk, heading over to check out Carl’s Critter Garden.

The roadside lot contains an artistic sculpture garden of objects made from refuse. Some depict local animals…

…others feature humans…

…and some are just artistic hodgepodges depicting who knows what.

After our immersion into the Hanksville art scene, we decided to take a spin up into the nearby Henry Mountains.

The graded gravel road from town was wide and smooth at the beginning, but the higher we progressed, the larger and angrier the gravel got. With the road surface becoming wife-annoyingly rough, we turned around and headed back to town. Next time, we’ll take the Subaru instead of our 4×4 Nissan Pro 4X off-road pickup truck.

Returning to camp, we faced a serious question about our future. We could either dine tonight on Dianne-cooked spaghetti in the trailer with wine from a box, or we could drop into Duke’s Slickrock Grill, a hundred yards from our trailer, for a real meal with real bottled wine.

Although the vote was close, brisket and ribs at Duke’s beat out the spaghetti dinner option.

Back to the Moon

NASA astronauts are heading back to the moon and so are we. We got up well before the sun, brewed a pot of coffee, tossed cameras in the truck and blasted off for another landing at Moonscape Overlook. Our goal was to shoot the moonscape again, this time with early morning lighting.

On the way there, we stopped for some shots of the sunrise light bathing Factory Butte in blushing orange.

A few turns later, we reached Moonscape Overlook, which was now teaming with humans. Up on the hill sat a trio of Earth Roamers (very expensive off-road motor homes). Two had Colorado plates. The third was from Ontario, Canada.

In the morning’s sub-40 temperatures, we wandered around the cliff-top rim, shooting photos of the the dark rolling terrain below, which appeared to be totally devoid of plant life.

Some people might call this an ugly wasteland…

…but I find it strangely beautiful.

After a few hundred shots, we finally escaped the cold by crawling back into the truck and beginning our retreat to civilization. Our route ran beside the Factory Butte Special Resource Management Area, which is essentially a big adult sandbox for ATV/OHV owners. I wish these folks would just play with their toys out here where it’s legal and not go tearing up the outlying terrain where it’s not. But then, the rules, as we know, don’t apply to everyone.

Back in Hanksville, we celebrated Easter Sunday with breakfast at Duke’s Slickhorn Grill. I opted for steak and Easter eggs (over easy) while Dianne opted for flapjacks and Easter eggs scrambled.

Could this be why we never lose weight on camping trips?