Welcome to Colorado

We're way behind in getting travel posts published because we were having way too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

July 24, 2023 

After five days in a no-hook-up campground in the Snowy Mountains, it was time to leave Wyoming. It's been a great month in this state with lesser-known mountains and great wildlife sightings! It wasn't far down the road that we crossed into colorful Colorado on Highway 125.

We had great travel weather for this longer-than-usual day for us. Staying two extra days in the Snowy Mountains meant that we drove right on past a planned stop in the foothills of northern Colorado.

It also meant we were driving so far that we needed more diesel for the motor home. Denisa had to take a picture of the fuel prices. Not long ago we paid $1.20 more for each gallon of diesel than the gasoline price. This was the first time in a very long time that we noticed diesel cheaper then gasoline.

We pulled into the Red Mountain RV Park in Kremmling, Colorado, for a three-night stay. The camping sites are separated by aspen trees, and we couldn't help but notice that the aspens seemed to have eyes.

It looked like the trees were always watching us!

It was nice to have full hook-ups, and we were catching up with laundry. But we also had time to take a drive on Trough Road, a few miles outside of Kremmling. Our first stop was overlooking Blue River, to see if that was a good kayaking possibility for us. But the mosquitoes were so bad that we ran back to the pickup very soon after the picture below was taken. We won't be kayaking on Blue River!

We stopped at one of the high overlooks along Trough Road to look down into Gore Canyon. It looks tiny because it is so far below us, but that's the mighty Colorado River running through the canyon. We could see the class IV and V rapids in this section of the river that can be floated only certain times of the year by very experienced rafters.

After that scary section of the Colorado River, we stopped in at the tamer Pump House Recreation Area.

The flow is a pretty high 1130 cfs. That acronym stands for cubic feet per second, and it measures the volume of water passing a specific point in a river every second. Kayakers don't want to fall into the water, because it's a chilly 55 degrees even though it's the 24th of July. They also need to watch out for downed logs in the water.

While 1130 cfs doesn't mean much to us, we read another sign at the water's edge that helped to explain it. We're familiar with snow ski slopes that are rated as green for easy, blue for intermediate, and black for expert. When the Colorado River is flowing at 1,500 cubic feet per second, this stretch of water is an expert black diamond. By this time of the year we were supposed to be seeing 860 cfs, which makes it more like an intermediate blue diamond experience. This day's 1130 cfs puts this section of the river somewhere in between.

We were amazed to see that the ramp at the pump house was very crowded with people that were ready to start a float trip on the Colorado River.

We continued downstream to an area with drop offs and white water rapids. Maybe this is too tough for a couple of wanderers in an inflatable kayak?!?

But just a little further down-river, the water looked very placid. Maybe we could do this after all?

We stopped by another put-in spot and talked to some people preparing to float the river. If this many people were comfortable floating the Colorado River, can't we do it too? It's too late for us to arrange a shuttle this afternoon, but maybe we'll try it another day . . . ? Stay tuned as we were welcomed to Colorado and planning more adventures in a new state.