As I mentioned, heading into Colorado, meant colder weather. We knew that there were roads in the Rocky Mountain NP that were already closed, and towing a 54 year old camper didn’t bode well for testing our limits. We also didn’t realize that all the State Park, and National Forest campgrounds are closed for the year.
You read that correctly… Closed for the year. This meant that anywhere we were going to stay would be somewhere we found. Once we were in Colorado, we passed through Grand Junction. Murphy needed a wash. We found a place with a self dog wash and did the deed… Murphy was funny… I don’t know if he loved it or hated it.
We headed out and were on our way towards Aspen. While Tara searched for a place to stay, I managed to drive us one solid hour in the wrong direction. I mean, wrong direction like, we need to go north, I drove south. No idea what happened but I’m blaming it on the GPS. Anyways, this set us back considerably. (It was roughly a 100 mile detour) We ended up having to drive through a National Forest mountain range and would definitely not be anywhere close to where Tara had been searching for places to stay. As we drove over the range the temperature dropped 25 degrees from the bottom to the top, and then as we came down the other side, we gain about 20 degrees back. That first night, due to my little miscue, we ended up in a Walmart parking lot. This worked out because we were able to try to plan out or strategy for this massive state, which had a lot to see.
The next morning we got up and decided that we were going to have to skip the Rocky Mountain NP because it wasn’t worth the risk given the weather and road closures. Instead we decided that we would head towards Vail (as we were now not that close to our original destination of Aspen… again, my bad) and check out the area, luckily before their season started. Vail is really impressive, the town, is essentially just a ski mountain village… actually I think it’s three villages, but you know what I mean. It’s a little over the top, and is designed to look very European. Tara and I (mostly I) couldn’t even pronounce a number of names for stores and restaurants. We ended up and the Vail Brewery (obviously… I mean, do I still need to write that we went to a brewery?) We walked around some more and checked out a few of the stores (that we knew, like Patagonia, and Helly Hensen) One of the guys working at Helly Hensen was actually from Massachusetts, Amesbury to be exact, so he gave us some pointers about how to maneuver the state and gave us an idea of a few things we should hit, and the best route to do it. Given the info, we established that we would head to an area outside Boulder, and find a place to spend a night or two.
Finding places in Colorado to “Boondock” is pretty damn tough. The BLM site gives you the names of the areas that have dispersed camping, but they don’t tell you where it is. Tara and I ended up stopping in Nederland and asking our waitress for some recommendations. I was actually really surprised with the number of places she gave us, given that everything else was closed. As we started to check these places out, I was much less impressed. They were either littered with “No Camping” signs, were closed, or they were down some backroad that the Shasta wouldn’t survive. After driving around, now in the dark Colorado wilderness, Tara and I drove 2 miles down a dirt road only to find that the route to the camping spot was one that we couldn’t do. Just narrow and rocky.. again, the Shasta wouldn’t make it. We ended up asking a guy who had just hiked out of the woods if he recommended a spot… again after checking them out, we ended up driving 5 miles up a bumpy dirt road to the Rainbow Lakes Campground. The campground was closed but there was a large parking lot at a trailhead just before the campground. This would be the spot for the night. As we pulled in, we noticed that there were a few cars in the parking lot and another camper. So I guess this is legit spot? I jumped out of the truck and there were two other couples frantically gathering firewood. It was getting cold and getting windy. While Tara and I were getting the camper set up, they invited us over to their fire. We joined them for a while, and what we found was that no one knows where to camp in Colorado once the season is over. These four people lived in Colorado, and randomly ended up at the same spot we did, because they didn’t know anywhere else. This make Tara feel a lot better about the struggle she’s had finding spots. We left the fire and headed to the camper to get some rest.
As the night progressed, so did the wind. The wind was so bad that Tara asked me a number of times to go outside and check the camper and make sure the aluminum siding wasn’t being pulled off. It wasn’t, but it sure as hell felt like it was and while I was outside I could see the 40′ tall trees swaying back and forth like they were extras in a Naughty By Nature video. The wind would rush down the mountain (which looked awesome in the full moon light) through the campground and hit the camper broadside. The camper shook violently all night long. We did not get much sleep.
The next morning we woke up, inspected the Shasta, which had survived, and we realized that we never filled our waters the day before. We had absolutely no water. So, we decided that we’d hike the Rainbow Lakes trail hoping that there would be lake access and we’d be able to use our filter pump, to get water from the alpine lakes. The hike consisted of passing 4 lakes over the course of 1.5 miles. So it wasn’t going to be that bad, and hopefully it would tire Murphy out a bit. The first lake was a little dingy, so no water there, but the second lake was great. Clear water, and this would be the spot to fill our Nalgene containers.
Once the waters were filled we continued on the hike. Along the way, we had met the four people who shared a fire with us the night before and they said “Make sure you go up on the rocks at the lake, you can see two lakes and the mountain”… unfortunately we didn’t ask many questions, and when we got to the fourth lake… no rocks. Rather than head back and see if there were rocks we missed, we continued, off the trail. Now, it’s definitely Tara who wanted to continue (she hates to miss a good view) but after being completely lost for about a half hour, and arguing over whether we needed to go “left” or “down” it was Tara’s “down” that got us back to a the trail. I will say this, being completely lost in a Colorado forest is terrifying. After 30 minutes, I ready to just start calling for help. 30 minutes turns into an hour, turns into a couple hours, and then it’s dark. I wasn’t about that…
Anyways, we found the trail and made it back to the Shasta. We had lunch and then decided that we couldn’t put our home through another night of that wind. We packed up and headed out.
Let’s check out Boulder.
withoutwhatifs 