Colorado

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Our first destination in Colorado was the Golden Gate Canyon State Park, just west of the Denver suburb of Golden, home of the Coors brewery. From Golden to the park was only about 12 miles, but it was on a two-lane switchback mountain road which climbed almost a mile up to the park, which is at an elevation of about 9,500 feet. Making that climb in a rig weighing over 20,000 pounds and over 50 feet long is not something I would like to do every day. It wasn’t much fun for the people behind us either, although we did pull over to allow people to pass whenever we could.

The park was very nice and had beautiful views of the surrounding mountains, still snow-capped in late June. By the time we got set up in the campground we were both feeling tired and listless, since we had not yet adjusted to the thin air at this altitude. How is it that we used to ski all day at places like Breckenridge and Arapahoe Basin (elev. over 12,000 feet) without any problem. Surely we are not getting older. Anyhow, after two days we felt much better, and decided to push on to the northwest to the Steamboat Springs, one of our favorite ski resorts.

Our route took us west on I-70 and we soon crossed the continental divide. More accurately we crossed under the divide via the Eisenhower Tunnel. The tunnel is 1.7 miles long and, at 11,100 feet, is the highest vehicular tunnel in the world. We left I-70 at Silverthorne and had a very pleasant drive up the valley through Kremmling and made another climb up to the continental divide, which we crossed at Rabbit Ears Pass (elev. 9,400 feet). From there the road drops quickly down into Steamboat Springs. We had last been there on a ski trip about 20 years ago, and what we remembered as a little cowboy town had changed into a booming resort town full of trendy boutiques and fancy restaurants—a little sad in a way.
We stayed just south town in Stagecoach State Park, so named because up until 1907 it was a stop on the stagecoach line running from Tomponas to Steamboat Springs We camped right next to a nice mountain lake. The next day we moved about 50 miles west to the Yampa River State Park near Hayden, CO where we spent the night in a quiet little campground on the Yampa River.

We have been trying to visit as many Colorado state parks as we could, because we were considering spending some time next summer as a volunteer campground host in one of the parks. However, after visiting the parks and talking with the park managers we have just about decided against it. The parks are beautiful and seem to be well managed, but they require their volunteers to sign on for the entire season from May through Labor Day. That’s just too long for us to stay in one place. We much prefer to commit for one month, or at the most two, and then move on to someplace new. We have no regrets, because it has been a lot of fun checking them out and we’ve visited a lot of beautiful spots in the process, but now we’ll make our way to Idaho.

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Photos

Eisenhower Tunnel
The highest in the world.

Steep Grade
Coming down from the continental divide. The grade is quite steep (up to 7%) and it goes on for several miles.

Runaway Truck Ramp
There are several of these on either side of the Eisenhower Tunnel. This would sure be a welcome sight for a trucker who had lost his brakes.

Bird's Eye View of Town
Neat view of a little town. I think it is Dillon, CO.

Mountain Lake
This lake is just outside of Steamboat Springs. The shot was taken on the way down from Rabbit Ears Pass.

The Road into Stagecoach
The last few miles of the road to the park winds through some beautiful farmland.

Critter
We're not sure what these animals were, but they were all over the campground. Some kind of prairie dog maybe.

Another One
They seemed to love these little flowers.

Yellow Flowers
This was just outside the park. I think those are Canola flowers.

Last Light
This was a real pretty sunset over the mountain.