On the Road to Vega State Park

After a stop in Montrose for church, we were on the road to another one of Colorado’s State Parks.  After traveling in several different states, we are finding that every state park system has its quirks.  Colorado’s quirks include having to make reservations through reserveamerica.com that includes an extra $10 in fees.  Also, in addition to paying for a campsite, we must also pay a day-use fee every day we are camped there.  So we bought an annual Colorado state park pass that covers the day-use fee.  It just makes sense to make use of that annual park pass now, so we are camping at Vega State Park for the next five days.

Even though the drive only took 3 hours, it seemed like worlds away.  We drove beside the mile-long fields of sweet corn near Olathe, and were suddenly in the barren desert.

 

A turn to the east at Grand Junction took us right beside Mount Garfield and the very interesting Book Cliffs.

We drove beside the famous Colorado peach orchards in Palisade, and were surprised at how small these peach trees are.  In fact, there isn’t that much size difference between the peach trees and the grape vineyards that are also prolific in Palisade.

Mark is a brave motor home driver, and he even found a Palisade peach fruit stand beside the highway so Denisa could buy some more of those delicious peaches on the drive.

We have bought peaches at grocery stores, two different farmers’ markets, and now two different fruit stands.  The peaches from the Palisade fruit stand were the most expensive at $3.99 per pound.  The peaches from the Fritchman  fruit stand in Eckert were the least expensive at $.99 per pound.  We found that the peach crop south of Grand Junction was decimated by a late freeze on April 21 when all their trees were blooming.  We have learned about premium peaches and seconds.  So we had to have a formal blind taste testing to let our taste buds vote on the tastiest of those tasty Colorado peaches.

The bad news is those $3.99 peaches won the taste test.  But we both agreed that we would rather have four times as many of the $.99 peaches that came in second.  So we made a peach cobbler (with blueberries and raspberries added) as soon as we got set up in our new site at Vega.

Our drive took us from an elevation at Grand Junction of 4,586 feet up a very winding road 

to our campsite at 8,000 feet.  It looks like we have found a cool spot to relax for another five days.  We stopped by the Vega State Park visitor center and found the bad news.  We knew we were going to a remote location, and there is no cell phone service and no wifi hot spots in the park.  We will be isolated from the rest of the technological world for the next five days.  So we took a nice bike ride around the state park in celebration.  

 It’s a seven mile ride around the lake, and doing it clock-wise seems to be mostly downhill.

Downhill would not be a good descriptor of the other bicycle trail we tried at Vega State Park.  There’s a forest road that starts at the edge of the park.  Even though we are at 8000 feet, that road headed straight up in elevation, then straight down to the creek.  Denisa watched Mark cross successfully and approached with confidence.

Then she promptly fell over sideways in the water.

 After 1.5 miles of struggling up that steep road, we parked the bikes in the woods and hiked instead.

There are beautiful aspen groves all along this forest service road.  Mark is notorious for getting off the path and bushwhacking through the forest.  Here is pictorial evidence that he did it again this day.  This also explains why we always wear hiking pants (instead of shorts) and why Denisa always has an assortment of bruises on her shins.

The wildflowers are still blooming at high altitudes here as well.

So we are enjoying our time here at Vega State Park, even though we might now be on a list of suspicious persons in Mesa County.  Rumor has it there is an old couple with out-of-state license plates hanging out by the grave yard.  We must confess--it's us!  We have found a good phone signal six miles down the road behind a cemetery, and it's the only place we can go to make phone calls and check email.