Campervanning Colorado, Wyoming and Montana

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We picked up our campervan in Denver, Colorado and once we stocked up on supplies we hit the road. As usual we didn’t have much of a plan except that we wanted to see three of America’s National Parks; Rocky Mountains, Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Our first stop was Breckenridge in the Rocky Mountains National Park. We had planned to climb one of the ‘14ers’ Quandary Peak but once we reached the town we realised this probably wouldn’t be possible given the freezing temperature and the snowing. A quick visit to the Breckenridge visitor centre confirmed this when they asked what equipment we planned to take… equipment??! We were clearly out of our depth. Instead we headed north to Boulder, Colorado.

We instantly liked Boulder, a college town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, it boasts fantastic mountain views, a young hippie culture and plenty of microbreweries. Highlights of our time in Boulder were climbing the Flatirons, managing to get free tickets to go see Ryan Adams who was performing at an Obama campaign gig and catching up with our friends Greg and Jenna, who we met on the Turkey cruise and who live in Boulder.

From Boulder we headed north into Wyoming and made our way to Jackson which is just south of the Grand Teton National Park. We had left the beautiful sunshine in Boulder to find that it was absolutely freezing in Jackson with some road closures in the National Parks. Not quite what we had expected; we decided to still head into Grand Teton and check it out. We headed off on a walk round one of the lakes and about half way through it started snowing, it was very pretty but with the path quickly disappearing under the snow and the fear of hungry bears (we opted to not splash out the $50 on bear protection spray) we were keen to get back into our campervan! We survived the walk and explored the rest of the park in the van.

The next day we headed to Yellowstone. There were a few road closures there but we still managed to see a lot and the place looked stunning in the snow. We got to see Old Faithful (geyser) erupt and a lot of wildlife including bison, a potential wolf, elk and deer. Not a bear in sight.

We were really hoping we’d be able to spend more time at Yellowstone but because of the freezing temperatures and the fear of doing damage to the pipes in the campervan we decided to head back south.

On our way back south we stopped in some great towns in Montana and Wyoming. Sheridan was one of our favourite towns, cowboys galore, we got chatting to some interesting characters in the pubs and also went to see a high school football match.

We spent three days in the Rocky Mountains National Park which I think was the favourite for both of us. We climbed Flattop mountain and went on a couple of other hikes around lakes and through forests. The whole place was stunning.

One of our last stops was a town called Laramie in Wyoming. We timed our visit with the ‘border war’ college football clash between the Wyoming cowboys and the Colorado State Rams. We even managed to time our drive and got to see the cheerleading teams and army doing some sort of pre game rally thing at the border of Colorado and Wyoming. Our friend Ross who was over from Sydney for work jumped on a flight to come meet us in Laramie, where we had a fun day supporting the home team (who won - ‘the boot stays here’) at the college football.

Back enjoying some home comforts now in Manly. The adventure continues after Christmas.

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