Colorado – Summer of ’22

We are excited to set off on a month long trip around Colorado with our new companion – ZuZu but at the same time we are going to miss Bambo terribly – we had so many great adventures with the little guy…….

Our first day on the road with little ZuZu went as well as could be expected. He complained frequently for the first hour but then settled down. At one of our stops he found a cool place to hang out and look down on us (literally).

We stopped in the little town of Comanche, TX to buy a few essentials and had to take a picture of the Fire Department’s July 4th tribute.

We spent our first night at Copperas Creek near Comanche, TX and tried sleeping without AC but it was way too hot. Even ZuZu didn’t nestle with us in his customary way.

This campground is a great place to relax, keep cool in the lake and swat flies on the deck overlooking the lake. ZuZu has his own bug tent and spent most of the morning chasing a grasshopper around that found its way inside.

We are spending the night on an Alpaca farm in Clovis, NM. It is owned by Rick and Rosemary (she came out to NM from the UK 35 years ago and never returned).

Santa Fe is bustling at this time of year. The days are glorious and night time temperatures drop as is typical in the high desert. Lynne and I had a lovely day browsing all the galleries on Canyon Drive and chatting to the artists. There is some serious talent in Santa Fe. Our favorite was Alex Watts who sculpts beautiful pieces.

From New Mexico we headed off to Durango, CO for a train ride to Cascade Creek on the Durango Silverton rail line. The open air carriages were fun and offered great views of the scenery.

We had a short ride the next day to Mesa Verde National Park where we stayed overnight in the park. We arrived early so we had time to offload Umfana (that is the name of our scooter for those unfamiliar) and toured the park. Lynne was incredibly brave once again with all the steep climbs, descents and hairpin bends.

Mesa Verde is home to some spectacular archaeological discoveries dating back to 550 AD. The Ancestral Pueblo people built elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of canyon walls.

After doing the laundry – off to Elk Ridge campground in Ridgway CO. The drive was amazing. Traveling on Route 145 between Dolores and Rico the temps dropped from 84 to 48 due to heavy rain and we came across freezing rain that looked like an inch of snow on the ground. Crazy things happen above 8,000 ft! One way to clean the solar panels after all the dust in Durango. This drive was beautiful, no wonder it is called the “million dollar highway”.

We stopped for lunch in Telluride but by the time we found a parking it was a late lunch! I can’t imagine what it must be like in skiing season.

We are spending 2 days in Ridgway at Elk Ridge campground where we will continue the frustrating exercise of securing a booking in the Rocky Mountain NP. So far we only have one night (July 17th), so we could find ourselves boondocking in the BLM forests adjacent to the park for a few nights.

Lynne found a remote, primitive camping spot run by the Forest Service near Dotsero, CO. It is next to Sweetwater Lake but only has 6 spots that are first-come-first-served so we are keeping our fingers crossed. If there isn’t any space we will retrace our steps, only 10 miles of dirt road.

Sweetwater Lake is very picturesque and peaceful but we had a hell of a time getting Ushingi into a spot and somewhat level. We felt that the “hard-core campers” objected to our “glamping” – oh well, it was only 1 night. We didn’t have the courage to run our generator to make our morning Nespresso coffee so we meandered down the road before having breakfast and coffee.

Silence frees us. When the noise of the world falls away, so does the cloud of busyness and anxiety that permeates every aspect of our lives. It is in silence that our greatest thoughts surface and revelations unfold. We become free from the world, free from simply reacting, and surrounded by infinite possibility.”

We chose the scenic route v the Interstate to get to Elk Meadow Campground in Estes Park, just outside the National Park. Why doesn’t Google maps tell you there is 30 miles of dirt road? The views were amazing but not sure if we would take Route 131 again.

The best views of the day were driving through the National Park from Grand Lake. At one stage we were at 12,000 ft. Lynne has become a human altimeter, she gets a headache as soon as we go over 8,000 ft. ZuZu also goes quiet at higher altitudes.

Sadly we only managed to secure one night at a campground in the actual National Park itself. No wonder they are so booked up, it is such a privilege to camp in these majestic areas.

To ascend Rocky Mountain National Park’s Old Fall River Road is to leave this world and enter another. This dirt road is a one way, uphill with tight switchbacks and no guardrails. It carries you, breathless with wonder and altitude, towards a fragile alpine realm, the tundra where no trees can live. It ends at Fall River Pass at 11,796 ft. No wonder it is called Nature’s Knife Edge.

We had planned to do the Old Fall River Road in Ushingi after departing Aspenglen Campground but Lynne had a change of heart about the altitude for her and ZuZu so I did a solo trip on Umfana – what a blast! The 9 mile portion on the “white line” in the map above takes 1 hour and then you hurtle yourself downhill on Trail Ridge Road to return to Aspenglen. The video below is a short clip of the ride, taken with my left hand while steering with my right 🤠

There were so many scenic stops on the way but I only had 90 minutes before having to check out of the campground but here are a few pics.

It was sad to leave the mountains but we need to keep going. We took a scenic drive on Route 7 and then Google Maps took us on another dirt road but it was pretty. The drive into Denver was horrendous – traffic nightmares due to multiple accidents.

We are now just outside Denver at a great State Park called Cherry Creek. We have rented a car from Avis and we will be off to the Red Rocks amphitheater for a live show called “Killer Queen”. “Thanks Tom for the suggestion”.

Red Rocks Amphitheatre – what an amazing place for music. We are in awe of the visionaries who arranged for the city of Denver to purchase this area in 1927 and build the Amphitheatre, which opened in 1941. We parked and walked all the way up the hill and countless steps to the seating area – phew! The event was sold out and Killer Queen certainly rocked the Red Rocks.

Now we wait a few days and monitor any possible COVID symptoms…..hoping the fresh air venue mitigated transmission 🤞🏻

We are now in Colorado Springs at Cheyenne Mountain State Park. We have been so impressed with the standard of the CO State Parks, very well maintained. Lots of hiking trails here.

As we were retiring for the night we heard a “boing/sproing” sound from the kitchen area, similar to a single pluck of a guitar string, then silence. Few minutes later, same sound. We looked under the sink, nothing. Turned off the water supply and by now I had started timing the interval of the “boing/sproing”. Approx 7 minutes, 10:24, 10:31, 10:37….. how were we going to sleep! The regular interval of the sound pointed me to electrical, checked the appliances, lo and behold the empty kettle was hot with no “on” light showing. The bi-metallic strip for auto shut off was malfunctioning and that was the source of the “boing/sproing”. Peace at last….. or is it the military messing with us – Cheyenne Mountain is home to a NORAD base – who knew.

‘THE MOST SECURE FACILITY IN THE WORLD’

The bunker lies 2,000 feet (610 meters) under Cheyenne Mountain outside Colorado Springs, Colorado. It can be sealed off by two giant blast doors made of concrete and steel, each 3½ feet (1 meter) thick and weighing 23 U.S. tons. It is the most secure facility in the world,” said Steve Rose, deputy director of the base.

The heart of the complex is a grid of six tunnels up to 40 feet (12 meters) wide and three stories high. They hold 15 connected buildings made of steel plates, riding on massive coil springs to absorb the shock of a nuclear blast or earthquake. The granite and steel also protect electronics from destructive pulses of electro-magnetic energy that nuclear explosions produce and it can make my kettle boing😜

We managed to secure another two nights in Cheyenne at a different site so we went off to explore The Garden of the Gods and get lunch at Shuga’s restaurant in COS (Colorado Springs). Hiking around The Garden of the Gods was amazing….

Our next stop is the Great Sand Dune National Park. We drove through torrential rain in the afternoon and fortunately the rain subsided when we arrived at our campsite. The next morning I embarked on a hike into the dunes. I thought my heart would burst out of my chest climbing some of the steep dunes!

We could only get one night in the National Park so we headed off to a State Park on the other side of the dunes. We stopped off at Zapata Falls where the view of the dunes and valleys was stunning.

We stopped on a pull-out to have lunch and take a moment to recover from our morning hike.

Google Maps screwed us again – the route was intended to avoid a road closure but the closure had been delayed. We travelled for 45 minutes to the supposedly open section but that was still closed. Google Maps then took us on a dirt road for 10 miles where we came upon an impending storm.

A few miles on we came to a locked gate – so much for that detour! At least we didn’t have to drive into the eye of the storm. We turned around and travelled all the way back past Zapata Falls and entered 6 L North from the supposedly closed section.

The State Park was a great deal. A $9 Colorado fishing license provided free access to a site with 30 amp electricity.

The next day we headed off to a “dispersed camping” site on the banks of the Rio Grande after a resupply shop at CID’s organic supermarket in Taos. Google Maps strikes again! We came to a County Road off Rte 567 and turned right as instructed. We arrived at another dirt road that descended down to the Rio Grande. There was a motorhome at the top and we assumed (incorrectly) that they had just ascended. Once we headed down there was no way to turn around on the narrow road with a sheer drop on the driver’s side. Unbeknownst to us the area had recently received more than 2 inches of rain that had washed away most of the driving surface of the road. With Ushingi in 1st gear, brakes and white knuckles we gingerly made our way down over rocks and ruts, praying that the tires would hold. We eventually made it down to a pull out area near the bottom where I stopped and walked down about a 1/4 mile to see if we could make it to a little bridge that crossed the Rio (not so) Grande. Although the road had washed out it looked passable so we made it across the bridge onto a welcoming paved road. I offloaded Umfana and took a ride back across the bridge to a campsite that was too primitive, even for us. Fortunately there were a few more options down the paved road and we eventually settled down by the river for the evening.

Thank goodness there was another way out from this campsite. We had an uneventful trip on paved road to Ojo Caliente, a world renowned mineral spring resort in New Mexico. We were pleasantly surprised that they even had RV spots so we ended up staying the night. We spent the entire afternoon moving between the pools, rejuvenating our bodies.

The next day we headed off to Carlsbad Caverns to walk down into the caves.

The walk into the caves was absolutely amazing! It was like visiting the moon, outer space, walking upside down and strolling undersea all at the same time. We walked all the way down but the best part was the additional section to the Big Room. It added about an hour to our walk but so worth it. When it was time to leave we encountered a line of approx a hundred people waiting for the elevators, which were not running. Rumors abounded about a 3 hour delay and suddenly most people left the line and started to walk out! That was not our plan so we stayed and eventually determined that there had been a fire alarm in the Visitor center above and they had shut down the elevators. After about 30 minutes the elevators started and we happily entered the first cab to arrive and 750 ft later we were at the top!

Our last night was in Fort Stockton TX where we had Mexican food for dinner and slept with the AC on all night to keep us cool and drown out the traffic noise from Imperial Highway. Not the best stop of our trip.

3,862 miles and we are home, back to the TX heat. ZuZu is very relieved to have an entire house to run around and explore.

Cheers!