withoutwhatifs

When we left the Applegate’s we didn’t make it that far. We ended up stopping and pulling into a Walmart to just crash and restock for the next couple days. The next morning we were up and heading towards Aspen, after breakfast in the nearby mountain town of Frisco.

Our first stop was Leadville. Leadville sits at an elevation of over 10,000 feet and refers to itself as the “2 mile high city”. It’s a very small town and what seems to be a lot of history. We went to the visitor center which said it opened at 10am… at 11am, still closed, so we just walked through town and checked it out. There was the old Opera House on the end of Main Street (judging by the “save the Opera House” signs, it might not be for long), a bar claiming to be the oldest western saloon (which was actually an Irish pub) and then there was the Golden Burro Cafe. I don’t know why, but looked out of place and right at home all at the same time.

From here we moved on. The next stop on our agenda for the day was Twin Lakes which was just before Independence Pass.

I didn’t really know much about either of these places, Twin Lakes or Independence Pass, but they were places that Tara said we needed to see and were recommended by Bryan as well. Twin Lakes is a great small mountain town. We just stopped briefly so that Murphy could stretch his legs and… well, do other things.

As we started to drive through Twin Lakes towards Independence Pass, both Tara and I began to notice a really uneasy feeling starting to set in. We passed sign after sign with warnings. They said things like “Vehicles over 35 feet – TURN BACK NOW”, “Vehicles over 35′ will not make the pass”, “You will get stuck, Ticketed, and Towed”, “Fine for getting stuck on the pass $1,500″. We stopped and I got out to measure the truck and camper… we weren’t taking any chances. 35′-7”. Now both of our stomaches kind of turned. I mean, how strict could they be on this 35′ limit? We’ve driven on some pretty treacherous roads, could this really be that bad? We turned around and headed back to the edge of Twin Lakes and stopped at a lodging office to ask a local. He didn’t want to say one way or another, but he said “The law says, if you’re over 35′ long, it’s against the law to go through the pass”, then in a slightly more hushed tone “… but, I have heard of some tractor trailers makin’ it over late at night when there’s no one up there…” Good enough. We’re going. The drive was high, and on a cliff edge, but nowhere near as scary as some of the other drives we’ve done. Thankfully, we went for it and didn’t take the 100 mile alternate route to get to a place that was only 19 miles away (taking the pass). The top of Independence Pass is at an elevation of 12,095 feet. It was freezing, super windy, snow was on the ground, and I was wearing shorts… awesome.

We had successfully traversed Independence Pass. Again, we were on our way to Aspen.

We pulled into Aspen and parked (the truck and the camper… I’m getting pretty good at parallel parking these). We walked through the town which, I have to say, puts Vail to shame… Aspen is a really nice town and I can’t imagine how nice it is in the winter. (granted I’m sure it’s jammed with people). After walking around, checking out a few stores, we stopped at Aspen Brewing Company for drinks and lunch. While we were there Tara called a ranger station and said that we wanted to hike at Maroon Bells in the morning and was there anywhere they could recommend we camp. They said that Silver Bells campground was still open. We thought, awesome, an actual campground, still open. This is perfect. After lunch we headed to the campground, and good thing we did… we got to the campground to find that it had 4 sites for Rvs/Campers and 4 sites for tents. We got the last camper site. We set up and kind of relaxed for the rest of the day, getting ready to head to Maroon Bells in the morning.

Again, I knew nothing about Maroon Bells, but it kept coming up in every discussion we had, with anyone from Colorado. It as in the guide books, and just a highly recommended area. That morning we woke up (out of water again), and got ready for our hike. As we open the door to the camper to load Murphy into the car… snow flurries. This was a first. We hadn’t been anywhere on our trip yet that it was actually cold enough to snow. It’s been cold, but we hadn’t seen snow fly yet. despite the snow, we still went to Maroon Bells for our hike… and so I could again fill our water containers using out filter pump.

Once we were at Maroon Bells, we saw signs for Crater Lake, 1.4 miles (2.8 roundtrip) so we decided to make the trip in to see Crater Lake. This was the longest 1.4 miles Tara, Murphy or myself have hiked since we started this trip. It felt like 2.4 in… at least. Each spot you thought, “this must be it” just more rocks… no lake. We finally made it, and Crater Lake, looked a lot more like Crater Puddle… it was a little disappointing, but the impromptu 3 mile hike, was really enjoyable, and was really beautiful for the most part. There were some rocky parts that were frustrating,… but that’s it… it was a good time.

The last stop we made in Colorado was Ouray. This is the last nice little mountain town before entering New Mexico. We found a place to stay, and while we were in the office paying for our spot at this RV Park, I noticed a couple pictures on the wall of a pretty big black bear. I jokingly asked the woman behind the desk, “He hasn’t been around lately has he?” to which she replied, “Well, no, he hasn’t been around, but there’s a nice little three year old black bear that’s here most of the time”, “Really?” “Oh, yeah, he was here last night”… “Great”. We didn’t see the bear. After getting Murphy squared away in the camper, Tara and I headed to Ouray Brewing for some dinner. The pulled pork was great, I highly recommend it.

That’s it. That’s Colorado. On to New Mexico and Texas.