A month in Colorado

July 24 to Aug 24:

Since we have not posted to our blog in a while I will make a quick summary of the month we spent in Kremmling, Colorado. Kremmling is a ranching community located about halfway between the Rocky Mountain National Park and Steamboat Springs. The RV park we stayed in was a small family owned park with no amenities. Connie had problems with her allergies (we think it was the sage brush blooming) and that limited our activities.

During our month we spent several days visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park. The Trail Road runs across the park (east to west) and we drove the entire length of the road twice: once to Estes Park, Colorado and once to Bear Lake. The road reaches an elevation of 12,200 feet and we got out and walked to the highest point you can hike in the park at 12,480 feet. We did a couple of hikes to some falls at the lower elevations near the entrance to the park. The pine trees in the forests here in Colorado (and throughout the west) are being destroyed by the beetles. In some places there more dead pine trees than live ones.

We drove down to Leadville, Colorado one day to visit the highest city in the continental USA (that is what they claim) at an elevation of 10,200 feet. It was a beautiful drive south from our RV park to the Silverthorne/Dillon area and then on to Leadville before returning to our campground through Vail.

We visited Steamboat Springs on a number of occasions. We rode our bikes around town one day, ate lunch in a couple of good restaurants in town and spend several days visiting with our friends Steve and Larrianne Curtis. Steve and Larrianne have a "cabin" in the community of Clark north of Steamboat Springs and we spend one night in their place. We also got to drive around that part of Colorado and do several short hikes in the area.

There was a small rodeo in Kremmling that we attended one afternoon along with seeing the winners of the local 4-H and fair competitions. We got a chance to visit with George & Susan Viscarelli who we had met last year in Maine. Their son is a chiropractic doctor in Boulder and has a place in Grand Lake, Colorado which is near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. We also drove over to Winter Park one day and had a nice lunch.

We observed the solar eclipse while we were in Kremmling. We were outside of the total eclipse path so it was only a 93% eclipse. The temperature dropped several degrees during the eclipse although it did not get very dark where we were.

 Here is a link to photos from our month in Colorado if you want to see them: Click Here for Photos