Back on schedule!

After our very hectic time in Buena Vista and Taos, we made our way north through Leadville to Grand Lake, CO to the Winding River Resort.  It was a nice drive through beautiful scenery.  We had a few preconceived notions about Winding River, as we had called ahead to confirm they would accept mail or packages, we do that as a courtesy, and have never had a campground turn us down until now!  With that in mind, Jan checked us in, and we proceeded to our site.  Now I should say this is a huge resort/campground, horseback riding, rental cabins, ATV rentals, sites where you bring your own horse, and packed to the gills.  They embrace the rustic look, let me interpret that for you, there is no grass cutting, no definite delineation of sites in the tall weeds, er wildflowers, stumps everywhere, in fact they had a horrific beetle kill in this area, and just in the campground alone, they removed over 8000 trees!  The mountainsides are devastated.  Enough about that, oh yeah, we also had to move sites halfway through our stay. 

Otherwise, it is dark, quiet at night, and the views are spectacular, and the Colorado River runs right by the property as does the boundary of Rocky Mountain National Park.

First we wanted to drive into the park and scope things out.  We had been here a couple other times, and I had chickened out before reaching the top.  Well, this time too.  Once you pop out of the trees above the treeline, that is it for me.

This is the valley on the west side of the park where the Colorado River runs

I managed to get to here, but that was it for Billy-boy

We turned around and went to the Holzwarth Historic Ranch, founded in 1917 and hiked a nice short 1 1/2 miles to the old ranch and checked out the river on the way.  

The mighty Colorado near its headwaters

It's a gorgeous piece of water

One of the buildings at the original ranch 

And an outhouse you probably wouldn't want to use right now:-)

After we got back I convinced Jan to go by herself into the park the next day, it would be the only way she could see it all and get a bunch of pictures.  She reluctantly agreed and off she went the next morning.  Meanwhile I was able to switch sites and do a couple small projects to keep me out of trouble.

One of her first views

We didn't know baby elk had spots

Views from places I couldn't go

Awesome!

She made it all the way over to Estes Park and then turned around.

The highest point on the Trail Ridge road is over 11,000'.  

She even got to see a bunch of Big Horn sheep

And a cute chippy

She ended up having a great time, even without me if you can believe that.

We decided we needed to get some groceries, and the nearest place to do that is Granby about 15 miles away.  Of course we went out to lunch as well to the Maverick's Grill, supposedly famous for their green chili stew.  You have to remember out here everyone has the best green chili stew, like in New Mexico everyone has the best green chili cheeseburgers.  We weren't particularly hopeful but had to give it a try.  It was absolutely delicious!  Just the right spice, nice and thick and full of tender chunks of pork.  It was so good we need up buying 2 quarts of it to freeze.

It was awesome!

We chilled all Sunday morning and then decided to hike up along the Colorado River from the campground.  It was beautiful, peaceful, and quiet and we ended up doing about 3 1/2 miles, but the sky was threatening with thunder so we turned around.

What a view

Just gorgeous

Even shared the path with this deer

We then went back in the park the next day and hiked into Coyote Valley, also along the Colorado about 2 miles or so, this time really scoping out the river for fishing.  

Along the Coyote Valley path

It looked ideal, easy to wade, deep holes here and there, it really looked fishy.  So we decided on our last day, we would go fishing.  As we were getting ready to go in, we were met by a couple rangers, very nice, but wanted to see our licenses, and we chatted with them for awhile about the fishing.  They did not make us feel very confident.  They said that back when the ranch was there the guests would pull out a hundred trout a day!  But the overfishing and mismanagement by the park service really decimated the trout population in the upper Colorado.  They felt that it was slowly improving now that they were leaving it alone.  With that glowing report Jan and I hit the river.  It was absolutely beautiful wading along with the perfect scenery, casting our lines, and at least in our opinions, there are NO fish in the upper Colorado, no wonder we didn't see throngs of fishermen in this gorgeous water.  Oh well we still had a great time.

We have now just arrived in Casper, WY for an overnight on our way to Sheridan, WY tomorrow, and just got a nice surprise, Karen and Tom are meeting us there for the weekend!