Darlene and I joined Geof and Jennifer last week in Vail, Colorado for four days of skiing.
A 3.5-minute video montage of our ski days at Vail.
I’ve already posted a series of galleries for most of our Colorado road trip:
This last gallery (Florissant, Shelf Road, Flaming Gorge, etc.) contains more miscellaneous pictures — visiting the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, driving the dramatic, unpaved Shelf Road south out of Cripple Creek, stopping by the Royal Gorge Bridge, hiking out to the dinosaur trackways near Red Fleet State Park (Utah), spending a couple of days at the south end of the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, seeing wild horses in Sand Wash Basin HMA in northwest Colorado, and overnight stops in Wyoming, Utah and Nevada on my way to and from Colorado.
Old homestead at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
On the Shelf Road
Flaming Gorge Reservoir
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As part of our month-long Colorado road trip, we spent about four days in Dinosaur National Monument but could have happily spent more if not for the worsening smoke from this year’s California wildfires.
One of many canyon overlooks along Yampa Bench Road
Coming from the south, we started with the canyon portion of the park and spent two nights at the Echo Park campground. One day was just biking out along the Yampa Bench Road and checking out many of the amazing river canyon overlooks.
The following day we turned our attention to the dinosaur fossils and petroglyphs in the western part of the park by taking a slow, rough 4WD road to the other side of the park. (Why take the easy way around??)
At the Quarry Exhibit Hall, you can see hundreds of fossilized dinosaur bones still embedded in the rock:
Lots of petroglyphs along Harper’s Corner Road
And we had a close encounter with a pair of bighorn sheep:
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As part of our month-long Colorado road trip, we stopped at a fossil quarry site along I-70 near the Utah border called A Trail Through Time where you can see a few fossils still embedded in the rock:
Afterwards we chose to check out the mountain biking trails in the BLM area just across the highway. Turns out this very pretty area, Rabbit Valley, is part of the popular Kokopelli Trail that continues southwest into Utah and all the way to Moab, over 140 miles. We just ended up riding as far as an overlook of the Colorado River that afternoon before returning to our campsite for dinner and to watch a very cool, very active, distant thunderstorm. I went for another ride later that night after dark.
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As part of our month-long Colorado road trip, we decided to check out the Museum of the Mountain West in Montrose after seeing it in Atlas Obscura. Jim was our friendly tour guide for several hours and it proved to be quite an amazing collection of old west artifacts. Very easy to recommend – check it out – but you’ll want a guided tour as as a lot of rooms are now cordoned off for self-guided visitors. (They kept having thefts.)
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As part of our month-long Colorado road trip, we spent a day exploring the south side of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. And yes, it is an incredibly deep, steep and narrow canyon! We camped on some BLM land just outside of the park and spent a full day gawking at the canyon from the various viewpoints, including hiking out the Warner Point nature trail.
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As part of our month-long Colorado road trip, we found ourselves in Creede and immediately discovered the incredible scenery of the 17-mile Bachelor Historic Mining Loop starting just outside of town. We camped on a spur of the loop and then proceeded to follow the historic loop and gawk at the incredible scenery. I do regret that we didn’t choose to ride our bikes along the route instead but it was still fantastic to see.
Later that day we decided to make our way up to the staging area (at 11,000 ft) for the Wheeler Geologic Area, based on an entry from Atlas Obscura. You can’t actually easily drive the whole way as the dirt road gets seriously messed up and eroded away at points requiring serious 4WD maneuvering. (Most people seem to take ATV’s or other off-highway vehicles.) There is also a hiking trail but that’s best done as an overnight backpacking trip as it’s seven miles just to the trailhead leading to the formations. We opted to follow the 4WD road on our mountain bikes as they aren’t allowed on the hiking trail. (Except for the carve out for the dirt road, this is deep inside a designated wilderness area.) Interestingly, the Wheeler Geologic Area used to have national monument status until 1950.
As it turns out, the road goes way out-of-the-way to get there (14 miles) and it both gives up and regains a lot of elevation along the way. Doing 30 miles round trip from our nearby boondocking site at 11,000 ft of elevation with a two-and-half-mile hike in the middle to actually see the formations turned out to make for a seriously brutal day – and that was with our electric-assist mountain bikes. It was however a gorgeous ride and the geological formations are very cool – definitely worth the effort of getting there.
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As part of our month-long Colorado road trip, we spent a couple of days at the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
We rented some rather worn out sand sleds, hiked to the high point of the first ridge (while fighting the strong high winds that day) and eventually managed to get the sleds working well enough to glide back down.
Sledding down the dunes
We had also planned to take the 4WD route over the mountains (Medano Pass Primitive Road) but were put off by the reports of very deep sand to get through. We did hike up to see the nearby, cool-to-see Zapata Falls though.
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In early August, I met up with Darlene on her way back from Wisconsin and we spent a few days hanging out (and playing games) with Dave and Martha at their home in Conifer, Colorado. We then headed out in the camper van to wander around exploring a bit of Colorado for most of a month. On our return, Darlene kidnapped Martha and brought her back to California to stay with us for a few days.
Giving Dave & Martha a taste of VR (virtual reality)
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This year, Jon, Bill, Kat, Jim, Stan and I hit up Beaver Creek and Vail in Colorado for our annual week of skiing and board gaming. We started off the week with the remnants of a heavy snow storm (as in heavy, wet snow) for a rough first day full of new and old moguls. It was also pretty cold with highs in the teens. As the following day promised to be much colder, we all sheltered indoors for a day of gaming including Sushi Go Party, Chinatown, Bang!, King of New York, Instinct, Cheaty Mages, For Sale, and the card game version of Shadows over Camelot. The following days turned warmer and even sunny and blue skies at times so we were happy to venture out and explore the slopes again.
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Continuing on our way home from Wisconsin, Darlene and I came across Colorado National Monument just outside of Grand Junction and decided to have a look. I’d never heard of this place but the scenery was gorgeous and there were fantastic views and rock formations in every direction throughout the park. We ended up spending a couple of days to check it out and do a little hiking – click through for the full gallery:
On our return trip from Wisconsin, Darlene and I made our way down through Iowa and Missouri and across Kansas with one overnight stop and then into Colorado stopping off in Denver but failing to find anywhere nearby to grab a campsite. (Ended up in a motel parking lot north of Boulder.) We stayed a couple of nights in Rocky Mountain National Park to do some hiking. The long views weren’t all that great because the smoke from the huge California wildfires were filling the skies even in Colorado.
Heading south, we found a spot to camp for a couple of nights in national forest land outside of Winter Park and got in some high altitude (10,000′) mountain biking. We visited Dave and Martha at their new home in Evergreen before continuing west on I-70. We camped out a couple of nights and did some trail riding in the hills above Eagle and had to wait out the mud in the morning in order to get the Traveling Cat Adventure Vehicle™ safely down the mountain again.
We also took some time to ride along Glenwood Canyon and tried to hike up to Hanging Lake late in the evening but ran out of time. We came across a mama bear and her two cubs climbing in the trees near the trail though:
Pictures and videos from a week of skiing (and tabletop gaming) in Colorado at Breckenridge, Vail and Keystone with Jon, Bill, Stan, Rick, Jim, Lewis and Tom:
