Moving Day to the Red Rocks of Caddis Flats

After five good days in Ouray, it's time to head to our next campground. Instead of continuing south down the million dollar highway, we're doing a bit of back-tracking on the drive today. We are heading back north to the town of Ridgway first. Mark found a parking spot big enough for the motor home with the tow car attached, so Denisa could go to the Ridgway Farmer's Market. This little mountain town was made famous in 1969 when the movie, "True Grit" was filmed and John Wayne walked these streets. We even ate at the True Grit cafe.

It's down the street from this building that was built as the fire station for the movie set. It served as the town's post office for years after the movie, and is now an art gallery.

Also on that street is the "Fort Smith Saloon." Now that's a strange name for a sporting goods store in Ridgway?!? The movie "True Grit" was set in Fort Smith, Arkansas, so this building was designated as the saloon on the movie set. They've left the Fort Smith name on the building to please the movie fans that come to see the True Grit sites.

The town's museum is in the house that was the movie residence of John Wayne's character, Rooster Cogburn. Out front is the jail wagon where Rooster transported the outlaws he caught. So Ridgway is full of True Grit trivia and movie locations.

After leaving Ridgway, we turned west on highway 62, to drive the beautiful stretch of highway that frames the Mount Sneffels wilderness. In the foreground, we couldn't miss the wooden fence that goes on for many miles in front of those mountains. The fence designates the 17,000-acre Double RL ranch owned by Ralph Lauren.

These are beautiful mountains, and we will return in the car to this area for a special hike tomorrow.

Earlier, we drove the car to the trail head of that hike. We drove the 9-mile gravel road in the car to the forest service campground in this area, because we were hoping to camp near the trail head. But we found that the road was too narrow and too rocky and too bumpy (that's a lot of too's!) for the motor home. On a wide and smooth section of road, we saw this trailer heading to that campground. We wonder if they will make it when the road gets worse?!?

So we are heading on down the highway in the motor home to the Caddis Flats campground instead.

This is a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) campground, so there are no hook-ups. But with views of the red rock cliffs that surround us, it is certainly a bargain because it is a free campground. We snagged one of the three official camp sites, but there is room for half a dozen more RVs in the large parking lot behind us.

This campground is popular because the San Miguel River runs beside it. We had groups of fly fishermen arrive every morning that we were here.

The water is clear, and the multi-colored rocks on the river bed make an interesting picture. In August the water level is too low for kayaking, or we would have attempted to float this section of the river.

We didn't see any of the trout that peaked all those fishermen's interest. But we did enjoy the cool water foot bath in the San Miguel River.

After getting set up at Caddis Flats, we explored some of the red rock roads in our new neighborhood.

During our explorations, we drove north to the town of Norwood to buy groceries. It's nice to shop in a town where real people live, rather than touristy mountain towns where everything is doubled in price. At the Norwood grocery store we bought items for a picnic, and then ate it at the local park. We are glad to report that the Norwood playground is well-equipped with toys that are good to entertain kids of ALL ages.

We enjoyed blue sky weather and delightful temperatures while we were camped at Caddis Flats. This has been a summer of high temperatures in the 70's for us, and we're loving that! That's important since we don't have any electrical hook-ups for running the air-conditioner. Our site had some shade, and those trees provided a nice place to hang our hammock.

After spending a record amount of money on our crowded camp site in the town of Ouray, it's nice to have so much space and quiet here at Caddis Flats for free. We love the sights and sounds of the sun setting over the San Miguel River in our campground. We think we're going to like it here!