The summer seemed to last forever

I really thought that this was my Summer of 69. On Tuesday we dined in the basking sun for lunch and the temperature was a nice, hot 29C. Today we woke up to light snow and the Flatirons had left us for the day, playing hide and seek in the heavy, white clouds. Gloves and hats has been a must today. However, even though it is cold, the dryness makes it very bearable. The air is fresh, the yellow colors of the cottonwood trees along the creek brighten the dimming day light and people on the creek path seem more aware today. The eye contact with the passing byers was much more intense than normally. Maybe it's the seasons reluctant promise of snow and a coming skiing season that lures people. I am not sure.
But I am happy with this cool weather, because next week the mercury will again reach 20C. As my supervisor, Ted, says: Don't worry, the summer will return soon here in Boulder.

After we came back from our roadtrip this past Sunday, I really started noticing the fall colors. Especially along the beloved bike creek path. Boulder must get fall later than most of Colorado. In Aspen, the aspens (aspetræer) are almost finished, but for all the other places we visited, last week was the peak of the fall seasons. As you will see below - we love yellow!

Colorado Roadtrip September 21st-30th
Morten and I set off for our counter clockwise roadtrip of the hilly and mountaineous part of Colorado on Friday at 4 pm. We enjoyed the changing colors every where we went along with the charm of travelling in off season - or in between seasons as it is here in Colorado. All the campsites and hotels were almost empty and this emphasized the grandeur of the many National Parks and National Monuments we visited.

I won't give a detailed description of everything we experienced, but rather some highlights and stats which I find interesting.

Here's the places we went:

Go west
To avoid the afternoon trafic we took the mountain route through Nederland to I-70 which is one of the largest roads in Colorado. We got off at I-40 towards Grandby on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park and continued to Steamboat Springs.


Street view of Steamboat Springs. This nice bench can be put in your garden. Here you can also buy a table covered by an eagles nest including eagles and its youngs. So if you have a huge ranch house and loads of money you really need to go shopping here. Less prosperous people might call this place kitch...

Strawberry Springs north of Steamboat Springs was like an oasis

A visit to Strawberry Springs and we were ready for the next stretch going to Dinosaur National Monument.

Enjoying the evening light and the fast flowing waters of the Yampa river at our first campground Deerlodge Park in the eastern end of Dinosaur NM

Here we enjoyed outstanding nature scenery along the Yampa river, rode some crazy four wheel drive on Yampa Bench Road along ever changing canyons and burned regions, saw the piles of dinosaur bones sticking out of the rock and had encounters with the cute critters on the camp sites.


The chipmunk Flying Squirrel
at Strawberry Springs

The chipmunk Bear

The chipmunk Hungry Bear

Food?

The chipmunk Cat
At Green River Campground, Dinosaur NM

Down south
Going south towards Grand Junction we had a bit of rain - while Boulder had lots of rain the whole week. Grand Junction was an American town when it is worst. Elongated along the highway and interstate (yup, right next to each other) the town stretches on and on engulfing many smaller towns ending in Palisade to the east. If there is a pretty, old towncenter we surely weren't close to it. Most of what we saw was fast food restaurants, the usual hotels and gas stations and badly build houses (vægge af bølgeblik!). We ended up staying luxuoriously at the Wine Country Inn in Palisade. This is the wine region of Colorado which they are very proud of. However, they are much more famous for their giant, juicy and tasty peaches. Unfortunately, we were just a few weeks late for peaches.
We slowly made our way further south on yet another daytrip with the 4WD in Umpahgre National Forest and straight through the little town of Montrose and directly into the stunning Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park where a roaring river has cut deep, bold scars in some of the most ancient cliff in Colorado. We spend the whole afternoon and sunset looking down, down into the awe-inspirering deep. I recalled my childhood where my mom would instruct me in pulling my hanging jaw back up where it belonged. After a night in bear country on the bottom of the canyon we headded further south to The little Switzerland of the Rockies - Ouray and onwards to its sister city Telluride which is renowned for its hippies and bluegrass roots.

Telluride city sign and a piste in the background

After enjoying the stunning scenery, hot tub in the cool night and accidently running into a book reading and promotion with free beer and Colorados craziest mountain columnist we continued our trip to the next national park: Mesa Verde. This is where houses from the 13th century of a prosperous indian people still stand today. The barren, wide stretched plains with scrub and trees - almost a dessert made you wonder how people could build a civilisation here that lasted 600 years. We stayed inside the park at the Far View Lodge which didn't seem to have changed a bit since it was build in the 60's or 70's. This was truely a visit to the past.

Where the wind blows
Towards the east we found Great Sand Dunes National Park, a dot of sand in the middle of the scrub land and mountains which surrounds it. It reminds me of Råbjerg Mile in Nordjylland, Denmark. At first the 800 feet tall sand dunes didn't look like much with the roaring fourteeners (mountains 14.000 feet high, red.) of the Sangre de Christo mountain range in the background. A closer inspection did change my perception and now I think they are plenty tall and pretty rough to traverse. Squeezed between the sand dunes and the mountain range a sandy 4WD road took us up through Medano Pass (Spanish for sandy pass) with deep sand, many river crossings, a car that was stuck with a transmission problem and a couple without their runaway dog. Did I mention this was also bear country?

Homeward bound
After a good nights sleep and the mountain crossing we headed north towards Summit County where many of the great fourteeners and ski areas are. Just south of Leadville we turned left, drove over Independence pass, saw the mining gost town of Independence in 12.000 feet, which was abandonned in one day during a long lasting winter when supplies ran out. They cut down their cabins to make skiis and organised a race down to Aspen a days travel away. Aspen was busy and the hotel prices went through the roof. Our first 3 campsites were full and the last one we found had only a few spots left. We decided to skip the concert we had planned for (probably good as we hadden't showered for two days and were pretty smoky) and stayed back in camp and enjoyed a Palisade Cherry wine with REI's freeze-dried apple cobbler cake. The next day we really got to feel that Aspen is not anywhere near its off season. Trying to visit the beautiful Marroon Bells we were kindly told to park our car and take the shuttle which couldn't hold all the visitors wanting to go there. This is truely a place for the rich hollywooders and other people not accustomed to the wilderness experience. However, the view was stunning and although Aspen had passed the peak season of the yellow aspens the view was breath taking.


 Aspens pride: The Maroon Bells seen from Maroon lake where the bus stops. They are also know as The Deadly Bells due to the treacherous, crumbly stone that makes up these mountains. The recent death of a climber was just 2 weeks ago.

We did the "hard" hike up to Crater lake eternally hoping for blue skies for the picture taking. These people fed all interested animals, critters and birds and I comforted my soul with the likelyhood of these people not making it to any other wildernesses in Colorado so that these clans of mountain animals were the only ones being poisoned by human food. After the splendid and overcrowded hike we jumped into the less white Ford Bronco and headed towards I-70. A lunch stop on the I-70 in the amazing lego mountains of Glenwood Canyon and a shop-stop at the outlet city in Silverthorne were our only distractions before we reached home at 8 pm and ordered take out.