As we headed out of Routt National Forest in beautiful northern Colorado, we had an absolutely gorgeous fall day, and the foliage was putting on a great show. We bid a final goodbye to Rabbit Ears Peak, with the best view of it yet, as we headed down the road away from Dumont Lake Campground. See the "ears" way up top? After driving through a rocky canyon, we continued our descent (though not that far down as our next spot was still at over 8000'). We had the pleasure of driving alongside the Colorado River for quite awhile on the way to our destination for the next couple of days, Winding River RV Resort in Grand Lake. We chose to visit the western part of Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), as we'd read and heard how busy the eastern part is, even after Labor Day. The western part gets many fewer tourists, and as such, was more our speed. The Winding River Resort is located just down the road from the visitor's center for this part of RMNP, and hiking trails are conveniently located right outside the resort. Although it's called a "resort", Winding River was casual and western in feel. The main draw here is horses. Some of the campsites even have individual corrals for people who bring their horses with them, and there's a large barn and corral with horses that can be rented to ride on stock trails on and off the property. They also rent ATVs, but since it was late in the season, we didn't see much action there (yay!) The resort has lots of activities for families with children during the summer, but since we were there after "back to school" time, not much was going on. It was only about half full and very quiet. The resort is so large that we had to take our laundry to the small but clean laundry room (two washers, two dryers) on our bikes! The roads in the resort are unpaved but well packed so good for bicycling or walking. Since we'd been dry camping (aka boondocking) for awhile, we chose a full hookup site. Even with our Good Sam discount, it was on the pricey side, but full hookup sites at $49 before discount are only $14/night more than primitive sites, so not so bad, given the location so close to a National Park. We might have chosen to stay in one of the National Park campgrounds, but this late in the season, only one that could accommodate Pearl was even open, and it was totally full when we made our decision to visit the park not very far ahead of time. Our site, #7, was close enough to the horse corral that we had a couple of adorable visitors on our last morning at camp. This is "wildlife" you won't see very often in a campground! The Colorado River runs by right outside the resort entrance; thus the name Winding River. Paisley enjoyed heading down for a sip of that sweet western agua! We had a really nice afterglow from the sunset on our first night. Stay tuned to see what we did in Rocky Mountain National Park!
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Emily & BarryWe're a long-married, early-retired couple who are currently traveling as nomads with no fixed home base. After years of living in North Carolina (Emily's home state), we spent 18 months living oceanfront on Ambergris Caye, Belize, a year road-tripping the US in a Honda CR-V, a year in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and are now roaming North America in our 32' motorhome, Pearl, following warm weather whenever possible. Archives
July 2019
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