Enjoying free camping as we travel across Colorado

We enjoyed some free camping to finish up our travels this summer. We spent one night at Cabella's parking lot in Colorado Springs for free. Our main reason to stop here was to visit friends. But we also did a 3-mile hike in the nearby city of Monument, Colorado. We got a late start on our hike, and the sun was already setting by the time we made it to our destination--Monument Rock. This is a sizable rock, as Denisa is looking pretty small standing at the base.

Even though it is wide from one angle, that same rock looks pretty thin when we took its picture from a different angle. It's fitting that Mark is standing at the base for this thin view, as he is looking mighty thin himself. We don't own a scale, but it will be interesting to see how much weight he has lost this summer with all our rigorous hikes. He has run out of holes in his belt, as he keeps having to tighten it. Denisa is going on the same rigorous hikes, but without the same dramatic results.

Then we headed to southern Colorado Springs to meet one of Mark's cousins. Jerry started Heidrich's Colorado Tree Farm Nursery many years ago. Now he has three of his children running the business while he is semi-retired.

We are visiting at the end of the planting season, when their inventory is at the lowest. But we could see that this is a big business.

Jerry gave us a personal tour of the nursery, and we also got to see Levi, Katie, and Joel at work. So we had another day of spending time with family members.

Jerry invited us to park our motor home at his house south of Colorado Springs, so we got two more nights of free camping! We were a little worried if we would fit under the entry-way to his land, so we measured before we got there. Whew! We even had a foot to spare.

The view from under that entry is of Pikes Peak, lit up by the setting sun.

We were surrounded by pronghorns, getting to see them in the yard and corrals and lounging around the motor home.

We had just witnessed elk rut season in Rocky Mountain National Park. Here we are experiencing pronghorn rut as the males seemed to be chasing the girls. Pronghorns are some of the fastest land animals anywhere, so this could be a very fast chase.

Jerry also took us to see his other 80-acres higher in the mountains. Covered in Ponderosa Pine, he bought this land to resell the trees at the nursery, and now he has a summer retreat that stays cool.

When we left Jerry's house, we headed south and east through the flat, flat plains of eastern Colorado. After spending months in the Rocky Mountains this summer, we are officially out of the mountains as we drive across Colorado. The land around us is achingly flat, with no mountains to be seen.

We have two more Colorado stops to make in this flat country. First is Bent's Old Fort National Monument. 

Built by the Bent brothers in 1833, it was the center of trade with trappers and the local Indians. It also served as a great stop-over for pioneers heading west on the Santa Fe Trail.

Even though it looks like a military fort, it was privately owned and operated. The Bent brothers enjoyed a peaceful relationship with the area Indians that came to trade goods here. It was fun to tour all the rooms built into the walls of the fort, and to stand in the middle of its plaza imagining life here almost 200 years ago.

The fort's resident cat is standing guard over the merchandise in the general store. Just like Denisa, this cat often closes his eyes when photographed.

Our last stop was in Rocky Ford, Colorado. This little town is known for its sweet cantaloupe, and we were lucky to get some of the last melons harvested for the year. We stopped at a couple of the road-side markets along the highway in this area. We bought two watermelons, nine cantaloupes, a box of Colorado peaches, and some just-picked sweet corn. It's a good thing that we are heading where there will be people to help us eat all this!

For our fourth and final free night of camping, we pulled into the Walmart parking lot in Lamar, Colorado. As we always do, we asked permission and got instructions on the best place to park our motor home overnight. Then we went inside to do some shopping. That would include the RV antifreeze we'll need to winterize the motor home soon. Mark also boosted the local economy by stopping in for a haircut. We won't be stopping in Lamar for another cut, however, as Mark would tell you it is his worst haircut in our five years of travel. With all this free camping, perhaps we can afford a good haircut when we get to Oklahoma!