We were saying good-bye to Ranger Lakes Campground after four nights at State Forest State Park. We got up in time to hike one more circle around the lakes before we headed to our next destination. We have enjoyed our six days on highway 14, but we found that there are no gas stations, no cell phone signal, and no groceries along this 99-mile stretch of road. So we were almost on empty when we pulled into Walden, Colorado, for gasoline and lunch. Then we were on our way to our next camp site at Meadows Campground in the national forest.
The drive included going down one mountain, through the high desert around Walden, and then back up to Rabbit Ears pass at 9,426 feet. This is one of the most easily recognizable passes in Colorado. An unusual two-ear-shaped rock formation can be seen from the highway, and Denisa tried to take a picture of it as we drove by.
Meadows Campground is a forest service campground. We were glad to get the half-price senior rate, because $26 was too much to pay for a spot in the woods with no hook-ups. Granted, it's a beautiful place with tall trees that absolutely made our trailer look tiny.
Our welcome into the campground was a sign warning us of bear activity in the area. One of our neighbors told us she saw the bear from her trailer last night, and had bear tracks next to her van this morning.
The dumpsters in the campground had the usual bear bars that hold the tops down securely. That keeps most bears out of the trash. But we had never seen dumpsters with padlocks with four-digit codes needed to open them. We guess this bear was pretty good at opening dumpsters, but hadn't yet learned how to open a padlock.
We found a hike leading from our campground loop, and took a little hike with our new neighbor. That gave us a couple more miles of exercise before we called it a day. The trees in this area were so tall, and you can barely see Denisa standing beside one in the picture below.
But the most exciting part of our new campground with all its tall trees, was that we were once again in AT&T cell phone service area. We got to send texts and got FaceTime calls from both our sons. Yay!
We were at 9,300 feet in elevation, so it was a delightfully cool 46 degrees at night, with daytime highs in the mid-70s. That's our kind of July weather! There was also great hiking in the Routt National Forest that surrounded us. We found three different hikes that interested us, and our hardest chore was picking just one. Should we do the Wyoming Loop (which is longer but we love loop hikes), or Rabbit Ears trail (which goes to that cool rock formation we could see from the highway)? We finally decided on the Wyoming Loop Trail, mostly because we had hiked Rabbit Ears 6 years ago. We were on the trail by 8:00 the next morning.
You will probably get tired of pictures of wildflowers, but we can't remember seeing more abundant flowers anywhere!
This was a 6.8 mile loop with only 790 feet in elevation gain. That's a pretty easy hike by our usual standards. We soon had views of Dumont Lake. The picnic tables overlooking the lake were almost hidden by the wildflowers. Mark was sitting on the table, because the benches were covered with flowers.
As we gained elevation, the flowers didn't stop. We were soon high above Dumont Lake.
All these wildflower pictures were taken miles apart. It was like strolling through a never-ending botanical garden on steroids.
We were definitely wandering through God's wonders on this hike! We decided that we made a good choice on this hike, even though it's not the most popular trail. We only saw a a handful of other hikers. One of them was a young woman on her ninth day of hiking the "Colorado Trail"--a 567 mile hike between Denver and Durango which passes through some of the best of the Rocky Mountains. We didn't take her picture, but we did take more pictures of the wildflowers she got to enjoy today.
This trail is also part of the Continental Divide trail, and we saw some of the trail identifiers on the trees.
We met Huck, who was hiking the entire Continental Divide Trail. He was in a great mood, and greeted us cheerfully. When we asked what mile of the trail he was on, he thought a while and then said, "about 14 . . . " With such a low number of miles, we thought he had just started. Then he finished his statement, "about 14 HUNDRED miles." He started this trail in May in Mexico, so he had been on the trail for over two months.
The Continental Divide Trail stretches from Mexico to Canada and is almost 3,000 miles in length. Later, we would see this sign in town. It looks like Huck was about half-way on his journey, as he was 1,436 mile from Mexico and 1,441 from Canada.
To put that in perspective, if you walked 20 miles every day at high altitude going up and down mountains, it would take you 5.5 months to complete the trail. We think people that hike these long trails are amazing, but it isn't anything we want to do ourselves. Huck waved and was back on the trail just like that. Did we mention that the wildflowers were beautiful?
We hit the top of the Wyoming Loop after about 4.8 miles, and we were heading back down towards the pickup. We were still taking pictures of some beautiful wildflowers that looked like they came out of a florist shop.
When we had hiked 6.5 miles, we got the wild idea that we could do our second choice hike too. If you look at the digital map on the All-trails app, we were at 10,000 feet in elevation at that time. If we could stay at that elevation and hike across the mountain for a mile, we could hit the trail leading up to the unique rock formation known as Rabbit Ears. So after hiking 6.4 miles, we veered off of the loop trail in search of the Rabbit Ears Trail. Our All trails app beeped, and asked "Wrong turn? Looks like you've taken a detour from your planned route." Well yes, we had.
We thought we could follow the topographical map to keep from going up and then down in elevation. But that map didn't know what was in that mile in front of us. Our detour started in a beautiful meadow, where it was easy to hike a consistent elevation.
But then we headed into the forest, where we had to traverse over fallen logs, and around big trees. There was some snow, but we couldn't let that get in our way.
But the hardest section was through a bog filled with pussy willows that were so thick we couldn't see our feet or even each other. We were trying to keep our feet dry as we dodged the water through the willows. Was this a good idea?
We were glad to finally find the second trail after a mile of slogging through all kinds of obstacles. We were not glad to find that we had just joined to the Rabbit Ears trail at the point that it turned into a crazy steep trail. Now we remembered the trail description, "pleasant until the last mile when it turns sharply uphill." It was about this time that we met a jeep on the trail. What?!? Riding up this section feels like they were cheating.
It was the kind of up-hill hiking where we made ourselves go 100 steps before we had to stop and catch our breath. We must be getting older, because it was so steep we often made it only 60 steps. Granted, we were at 10,000 feet in elevation and that made it even harder.
But we did prevail, and we have pictures to prove that we made it to the top of Rabbit Ears. Here we are, standing in front of one of the ears.
The top of Rabbit Ears was 10,589 feet, and we worked hard for every one of those feet.
and the wide view to give you more of a feel for how big things are at the top of the mountain.
It was crazy that this rock was so big and so noticeable from far away, but we couldn't see it most of this hike because we were right under it. It wasn't until we were over a mile back down the trail that we could look back and see those ears again.
And of course, on this hike, we would have to include a picture with wildflowers in the foreground, and the ears in the background.
We are sorry to keep including so many pictures of wildflowers. But they were the most amazing display we have seen, and they were like this throughout the entire hike!
Okay, so we're not sorry for including so many wildflower pictures. But we have to say that we didn't carry as much water as we should have for this unexpectedly long hike. So we were sipping instead of gulping water on the trip back down the mountain.
By the time we got back to the pickup, we had hiked a total of 11.5 miles with an elevation gain of 1,499 feet. Whew! The other stats for the day included: we spent 6 hours and 38 minutes on the trail, we burned 2,597 calories, and we saw 474,318,674 wildflowers. When you have to decide between the Wyoming Loop hike or the Rabbit Ears hike, and you have that much beauty around you, we recommend that you take both!
We have visited CO many summers looking at flowers, but this wild flower display is the winner
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